Building Relationships

A couple years back, I sent out the book Extraordinary Leader by authors John Zenger and Joseph Folkman to my team with a message about leaving their imprint on the workplace (see post Leaving Your Legacy 11/8/2008). I also explained that the company we work for had adopted the book and associated curriculum in the new leadership model which would assist leaders from around the company develop their full leadership potential.

Within the book, Zenger and Folkman discuss the behaviors of building and maintaining solid relationships. I thought this especially fitting considering the importance of connecting inside and outside the workplace.

From the book, some example of the behaviors demonstrated for builds relationships include:

• Be approachable and friendly.
• Establish rapport easily.
• Be trusted by work group members.
• Handle difficult situations cnstructively and tactfully
• Deal effectively with people in order to get work accomplished
• Balance concern for productivity and results with sensitivity for employees' needs or problems
• Maintain and utilize relationships outside the company through which resources or information can be generated

Below are ideas captured from various leaders on how to improve effectiveness in the building relationships while demonstrating the core competencies of Collaborates and Relationship Savvy.

• Take advantage of informal times to share with key business partners about you and the work our team does.
• Get to know and understand the needs of your business partners well.
• Remember how we all fit together for the common purpose.
• Share the same vision of collaboration with each other and their clients.
• Build trust and establish an effective feedback process.
• Don’t react to feedback defensively. Take a moment to reflect on the words spoken.
• Positive Optimism: Find the positive in someone prior to a meeting/interaction and focus on it.
• Make an effort to learn about your peers and teams.
• Give a personal thank you to peers and partners; Meet to discuss your appreciation.
• Ask partners what support is needed and deliver on their expectations.
• Translate a technical problem and solution into English that everyone can understand.
• Chart out 15-30 minute discussions with customers on your schedule.
• Make networking part of our culture and prioritize it by blocking time for this function.
• Seek a specific project opportunity to partner with a colleague you don’t know well.

As you make building relationships a focus, I would love to hear about your successes with. Email them to me at stacy@ouncecattery.com or stacyth@yahoo.com.

Thank you for letting me share!
~Stacy