15 Questions for More Powerful Relationships

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. 

Making the Right Move into Management

Congratulations!  You have just promoted some excellent talent into supervisory roles.  Maybe they had great sales skills.  Or perhaps she is technically brilliant.  Or maybe he has been with the company for some time and is reliable and productive.  Whatever the case, it’s highly likely that whatever fueled their ascent is likely not enough to ensure their success as a new leader.  To be a good or even great manager, they will need to shift their focus and acquire a whole new set of skills. It's a bit like trying to become a golf pro, after being a great basketball player for years. Their strong athleticism will help, but they need new equipment, skills and strategies. Managers need to accomplish company goals through people.  They facilitate the process that keeps the business operating.  Because of the function of front-line leaders and the major role they play, it is obvious that good leaders are the key to the success of any organization. Many of the leader's daily decisions affect profits, attitudes and morale. With a role and a function of this magnitude, it would seem logical that the process of becoming a supervisor would require years of training. However, if your company is like many I work with, most supervisors have had little or no training in supervisory skills.  Investing in consistent supervisory learning and development will save money in the future and improve work quality, professional development and job satisfaction throughout all levels of your organization.

Here are some best practices common skills and knowledge your new leaders and rising talent need:

1. Essential people management skills such as managing performance, providing feedback, coaching, delegation, and developing others
2. A common organizational approach and alignment to developing this group of rising stars
3. Practical tools and resources to support their day to day management skills
4. Ability to establish clear expectations and hold people accountable
5. Confidence in their management abilities, especially in challenging situations.

Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team

The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™  is an assessment-based learning experience that helps individuals and organizations reveal what it takes to build a truly cohesive and effective team in the most approachable, competent and effective way possible.  Powered by Everything DiSC®, the profiles help participants understand their own DiSC® styles. Bringing together everyone’s personalities and preferences to form a cohesive, productive team takes work, but the payoff can be huge — for individuals, the team, and the organization. The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team program helps teams understand how, as a team, they score on the key components of The Five Behaviors model:

• Trust
• Conflict
• Commitment
• Accountability
• Results Each individual on the team will also understand their own personality style and their team members’ styles, based on the DiSC® model: D: Dominance, i: Influence, S: Steadiness, and C: Conscientiousness, and how their style contributes to the team’s overall success. The program is designed exclusively for intact teams and work groups. The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team harnesses the power of Everything DiSC® and the clarity and simplicity of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team™ model.

The Five Behaviors Model is used to help team members learn to work together more efficiently and effectively and become a more cohesive team. A productive, high-functioning team:

• Makes better, faster decisions
• Taps into the skills and opinions of all members
• Avoids wasting time and energy on politics, confusion, and destructive conflict
• Avoids wasting time talking about the wrong issues and revisiting the same topics over and over again because of a lack of buy-in
• Creates a competitive advantage
• Is more fun to be on!

Variety is the Spice of Life

April Spice of Life

There are 4 Types.  Which are you?

When I’m asked to do a client intervention to help increase communication or diffuse conflict, often the first thing I do is have the participants complete a personality or behavioral inventory.  I have found that the vast majority of the time, conflicts are due to the way we are hard wired.  We speak differently, we work differently, and we hear things differently.  Each personality type has its distinct strengths and blind spots.  There are 4 major types and we are all made up of a combination of these but usually have 1 type from which we lead.

Dominance Type

Natural Strengths:  The Dominance Type has a strong need to get results.  They embrace challenges, value fast decisions and focus on the bottom line.  They take charge, communicate with urgency and always follow through to get the job done.  They have a competitive nature which translates into a high need for achievement and a propensity to win.  Blind spots:  They are not sensitive to the needs of others and often value the job over people.  They are seen as lacking patience, being controlling and making decisions too quickly.  They can come across as critical and not supportive of other people’s ideas.  You’ll find the Dominance Type having a difficult time listening, being blunt and confrontational, frequently clashing and stepping on toes.

Influence Type

Natural Strengths:  Influence Types love to connect.  They are warm, outgoing, convincing and enjoy creative outlets often in service to others.  They are seen as trusting and optimistic. They are highly social and often highly charismatic, and they love working on teams and being around people. They love jobs that involve a high degree of social interaction and don’t like being in jobs where they are alone.  Blind spots: They are seen as unfocused and overly talkative.  They can come across as being impulsive, disorganized and having lack of follow-through.  They are not good with details and are more concerned with people and popularity than with tangible results and organization.  They can over promise and be slow to action.

Steadiness Type

Natural Strengths: The Steadiness Type is very team-oriented, helpful, and cooperative.  They follow the rules and value harmony.  They are known for being steady, stable, and predictable. They are even-tempered, friendly, and sympathetic with others.  They are good listeners.  They strive for consensus and will try hard to reconcile conflicts as they arise. They are good at multi-tasking and seeing tasks through until completion.  They enjoy routine.  Blind Spots: They are often unhurried and reluctant to make decisions, which can irritate the more fast-paced Dominance and Influence types.  They are not inclined to change.  They can be especially sensitive when it comes to criticism.  They may have a difficult time saying no or establishing priorities.

Conscientiousness Type

Natural Strengths: The Conscientiousness Type are analytical, logical, and highly structured. They value accuracy and spend time being the quality control person.  When something new is proposed, they will think through every detail of how it works and the process.  They are even tempered and very thorough. They make decisions carefully with plenty of research and information to back it up.  They have very high standards for both themselves and others. Because they focus on the details and see what many other styles do not, they tend to be good problem solvers or very creative people. Blind spots:  They can easily suffer "analysis paralysis," and struggle to make fast decisions.  They are bound by procedure and find it difficult to stray from order.  They are seen as getting too bogged down in the small details, making it difficult to see the next steps or big picture.  They need clear cut boundaries in order to feel comfortable at work, in relationships, or to take action.

In order to build more effective teams, increase alignment to goals and help propel your company to achieve its business goals more rapidly, developing an awareness of various work styles is critical.  This means understanding your own style, the style of others and how you both must adapt your styles to work better together.  In doing so you can leverage the strengths of each member of the team, increase productivity, decrease conflict and boost morale.