With so many personalities in the workplace, have you ever found it difficult to work with everyone? In every organization, regardless of where you work, you will naturally have some coworkers that are more challenging to work with. Hopefully you are in a culture that has very few of these but learning how to boost your relationship is a skill worth perfecting.
Think about 1 person in your company with whom you would like to improve your relationship. Read on to find some important questions to ponder to begin nurturing a more positive and effective relationship.
1. If you could change one thing about this relationship, what would you change? What could you do right now to effect that change?
2. What is working well about how you both work together? What could be improved?
3. What would need to happen for you to walk towards this relationship? What would cause you to walk away?
4. How might you be misunderstood by this person? How might you be misunderstanding them?
5. How have you contributed to the current health of this relationship?
6. Do you value this person’s success as much as your own? If not, why not? What could you do to change that?
7. What, if anything, would have to change for you to describe this relationship as collaborative?
8. What do you expect and need of this person in this relationship? What are their expectations and needs of you? How could you confirm the expectations?
9. What mistakes do you need to recover from? What mistakes do you need to forgive this person for?
10. How much time and energy are you willing to invest in developing this relationship?
11. How do you talk about this person when they are not present?
12. What can you learn from others who have a good relationship with this person?
13. What baggage are you bringing that you need to let go of? What baggage are they bringing that they need to let go of?
14. How would you describe your decision-making style? In what way is this similar to or different from this person’s preferred style?
15. In what ways would this person describe you as challenging to work with? What would make this person not want to be your supporter or advocate?
Spend some time reflecting on each question. Ponder it for a while. Jot down some notes. Notice if you are seeing any themes pop up. Improving relationships requires you to see the other person differently. Then act! You can continue to think about it for weeks, but acting on -those thoughts is the only way it will improve.