Have you ever stopped to think about what you truly know about the people you work with?

Beyond the daily tasks and project requirements, how much do you actually understand about your colleagues and clients? It’s easy to get caught up in calendar commitments and project plans, but shifting your focus towards truly knowing the individuals around you can be incredibly powerful. 

At the end of the day, people buy people. People want to work with people. And it’s the people who make our work worth doing and give us the energy to keep going every day. Let’s dive into five ways you can deepen your working relationships that will help you both now and into tomorrow.

Today, we’re exploring how to create genuine connections so that we can deepen our working relationships and create the influence and impact we truly desire through our work. 

I’ll also take you through practical ways to intentionally connect with those around you:

1. Shift your focus from deadlines and deliverables to the people executing them

2. Show genuine interest in other’s lives 

3. Be fully present

4. Celebrate both the big and small wins of your colleagues 

5. Offer support during challenging times

By focusing on these strategies, you can create deeper and more meaningful working relationships. Remember, it’s about the people you surround yourself with that enrich your professional life, give you purpose and provide the energy needed to thrive every day. 

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Now, there's something that I've been noticing quite recently in business. And it is our tendency to get so wrapped up in the everyday tasks, in the things that we are doing every day, in our own self interests, that the risk is we actually become very disconnected from the people around us. The risk is, is that we live in a world of spreadsheets.

Right. Genuine engagement is a powerful tool. Genuine and intentional connection is something that we need to work on. It's something that we actually need to cultivate in all areas of our life if we are truly wanting to create influence and if we truly want to create impact through our work and in this lifetime.

I need to think for a second about when was the last time that you actually paused? When was the last time that you stopped and you paused and you had this genuine conversation to actually connect on a deeper level? Maybe ask yourself, what do you really know about the people that you're working with?

What do you really know about your clients? Do you actually know anything apart from the day to day requirements of the job. Have you actually got to know them? It's so essential to shift our focus from calendar commitments and project plans to the people. At the end of the day, people buy people. People want to work with people.

The first one is around initiating meaningful conversations. Maybe take a moment to engage with your team, Or even engage with someone in your family, a loved one, on a more personal level. Ask about their interests. Maybe ask them what they dream of. Ask them, you know, what do they want to feel like when they complete that project, when they achieve that goal.

A few years ago, she headed up a property company and she was getting increasingly frustrated because her team weren't delivering through on the sales targets. And I asked her, well, what's going on? And she actually couldn't answer it. I then said to her, Do you know anything about your team? And the challenge that I set her was for two weeks to have meetings with her team, not to talk about work, but to actually get curious about their lives.

At the end of that two weeks, we reconnected and it was just fabulous what she'd learned. She learned about a member of her team that was looking after an aged parent. She learned, learned about their hobbies. learned about the things that were firing them up, the things that interested them, and I then asked her, what are you going to do with this information?

I want you to think about that. So that's number one. Number two, maybe consider how you can create space for more vulnerability, for more honest conversation. It's about encouraging an environment where people do feel comfortable, where they feel like it's okay to be their authentic selves, where it's okay to be brave enough to share their goals and their dreams and how they feel, where it's okay to be brave enough to have the conversations that they want to have, where it's okay to ask for help.

don't know and to ask for help, but to also genuinely and generously share what they know. To, understand that it's okay to talk through mistakes, to talk through what they do differently, to understand that these vulnerable conversations, these real conversations are a huge opportunity for growth.

And when we create that space, when we create that space for vulnerability, what you do is you allow others to bring their whole selves To the table, to the conversation and actually have this incredible ability to meet them where they're at, to engage in the work that needs to be done and to unlock other people's true potential.

This is harder than it sounds. Now, when was the last time that you truly listened? You didn't listen to respond, but you actually listened to understand. You listened to ask the next question, you listen to go deeper on the conversation. awesome thought leader in this space, my very good friend, Oscar Trimboli has written a great book called Deep Listening.

It's making sure that you are avoiding distractions and that you're actively listening to their words. You're picking up on the emotion behind their words. You're picking up on any concerns they have. To some extent, you're truly listening for the thing that they're not saying. And that's where I Talk about going deeper on that questioning.

And what are you, tell me more about that. Can you explain to me why you've said that? I'm really curious to understand what makes you think that. Tell me more. So these questions that you can layer into the conversation to allow that conversation to go deeper, this active listening piece demonstrates.

So that's number three, active listening. The fourth thing to consider is strategic partnerships. You know, if you're looking at creating more impact, in your business through your work, both for your clients, your team and for yourself, then strategic partnerships may be a way to do it. Engaging with external stakeholders, such as suppliers and industry experts and influencers often opens up these doors for strategic partnerships and collaborations to happen. And when we build these authentic connections, when we're curious about how we can help each other, when we're listening deeply for the problems that other people have, and we're curiously connecting dots as to how we may help, that is where you're able to gain valuable resources and knowledge and open up opportunities where you can [00:10:00] potentially propel your business forward, together and in partnership. These partnerships can lead to new markets, increased visibility, higher revenue streams, all of that stuff. But it requires you to have a conversation that isn't one of transferring information, that isn't one of telling, that isn't one of shouting from the rooftops, how awesome you are, but is more one of curiously understanding what their challenges are, what their problems are, what their measures of success are, and then connecting the dots to see if there is an opportunity so to work together so that there is that mutual value exchange. And with that comes my final point. I think when we build better relationships, when we connect deeper, we have this incredible opportunity to unlock new ideas and thinking.

She's the founder and CEO of a company called the Future Hunters. And she was sharing that her view on us being future ready is it's really challenging because every single one of us, she argues, is stuck in this space of educationally incapacitated, and we are not willing to unlearn what we know. We're stuck in that loop. We're stuck in the zone of what we know.

and so, If we're too busy ticking off our to do list, if we're too busy transactionally, um, having conversations, if we're too busy hustling, our risk is that we're going to become very robotic in how we're going to problem solve and how we're going to find solutions to our problems. And yet the challenges that we're facing right now require all of us to get new thinking.

We've got to get out of our own way. as Edie shared, we've got to get out of that that space of educationally incapacitated and actually get more curious about what we don't know, what perspective we haven't thought of, what ideas are out there. We've got to go deeper on this intentional connection to unlock more opportunities.

That's where we always have the magical aha moments that are actually going to be incredibly critical as we navigate, continue to navigate this very complex, challenging and competitive market space that we're all trying to operate in. Fundamentally engaging with others on this deeper level, brings about positive change, both personally and professionally.

It allows us to harness the collective power of our relationships, of our thinking and drive meaningful connections together, because honestly, if we can't do it, we can't do it on our own if we're not careful, we allow ourselves to get buried in work. We allow ourselves to come blind to those in your field of influence.

It starts with being intentional about how you connect and how you build these deeper relationships. So this week I want to challenge you to go beyond the surface. I want you to Think about taking a little bit more time to connect with the people that you work with and those in your personal life.

Have an awesome week and I'll see you next week.