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. 

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!