Building better workplace relationships: 5 things to focus on

Wherever you work, it’s highly likely you’ll be working with other people. If you manage people, your impact on others will be greater, making relationship management an important part of your skillset. When you move into a management role, and the more senior you become, your impact becomes less about your technical skill and much more about your ability to manage relationships.

Quote from What got you here won’t get you there, by Marshall Goldsmith

In this article we’ll explore:

• The five key competencies of relationship management
• Activities to help you develop each of the five competencies

THE FIVE COMPETENCIES OF RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Professor Richard Boyatzis set out several clusters of competencies within emotional intelligence, one of which is the relationship management cluster. The relationship management cluster is about our people skills and contains five competencies:

1. Coaching and mentoring: Being aware of other of others’ development needs and providing appropriate and timely support to help them learn and grow.
2. Inspirational leadership: Providing inspiration and direction to the people around you, whether that’s individuals or teams.
3. Influence: Knowing and using a range of approaches to persuade others.
4. Conflict management: Being able to constructively negotiate and resolve disagreements, doing this in a timely manner.
5. Teamwork: Working with others in a collaborative way and helping the team work together towards shared goals.

DEVELOPING YOUR COACHING AND MENTORING

A coaching manager is different from a professional coach. The relationship and dynamic between coachee and coach are different, for a start. Managerial coaching consists of three elements:

1. Providing guidance – clarifying performance expectations, providing feedback, and discussing ideas on how to improve.
2. Facilitation – creating a learning space to help people think about and explore ways to solve problems.
3. Providing inspiration – encouraging people to learn and grow, seeing and reaching their potential.

Quote from Are you listening? Stories from a coaching life, by Jenny Rogers

There are two important skills at the heart of effective coaching and mentoring: Deep listening and asking good questions. Research looked at data from 3,492 participants in a development program designed to help managers become better coaches. The most effective listeners (top 5%) consistently did the following:

• They behaved in ways that made the other person feel safe and supported.
• They took a helping, cooperative approach with the other person.
• They occasionally asked questions that gently and constructively challenged.
• They offered up occasional suggestions to show alternative options.

DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY

Think about how effective you are at listening. Rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is the worst, and 5 the best. What is the reason for your score? What is one thing you will stop doing, to get better at listening? Tell a colleague what you will stop doing. We are more likely to succeed when we tell others our goals.

Further reading: 5 reasons you should use coaching as part of your management approach

DEVELOPING YOUR LEADERSHIP

There are many different theories about leadership, many of which stem from another time – mainly the mid-20^th Century and with a very masculine and Western philosophy. A recent review in The Leadership Quarterly reminds us that leadership is:

• Grounded in relationships and connections
• Reliant on followers. Without some form of followership, there can be no leadership.
• About getting people to want to do things rather than making them do things.
• A group process and ultimately about the activity and achievements of the collective, not an individual.

Quote from Coaching women: Changing the system not the person, by Geraldine Gallacher

In research involving 10,000 people, Gallup found that “leaders who are perceived to be trustworthy and compassionate and who offer stability and hope have a significant impact on their employees.”

DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY

Using a 1 to 5 rating scale (where 1 is poor and 5 is exemplary), ask each of your direct reports to rate you on 1) how trustworthy you are 2) how compassionate you are 3) how effective you are at keeping things stable in challenging times, and 4) how effective you are at giving people a sense of hope about the future. Let them do it anonymously if they would prefer.

(Caution: How you react to the feedback is crucial. You set the tone for how to handle feedback, including role modelling receiving and processing negative feedback with grace.)

Further reading: 10 leadership skills all leaders need

DEVELOPING YOUR INFLUENCE

We’re at our most influential when we align our objectives with the needs of our audience and choose the best style appropriate to situation. The most influential people recognize that influence isn’t about having a win/lose mentality. Ultimately, it’s about listening to people and not being closed off to their input.

Quote from Wilful blindness, by Margareth Heffernan

In his book, Getting things done when you’re not in charge,Geoffrey M Bellman suggests answering these questions:

• What do I want?
• What do they want?
• What do our wants have in common?
• How can I help us achieve our common wants?
• Where do our wants differ?
• What can I do to reduce the gap?

I think these questions are helpful to think about even if we are the one in charge. After all, there are still times we need to influence others, even if we’re in charge.

DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY

Good relationships are at the heart of being influential. What are you doing to build good relationships up, down, and across your organisation?

Further reading: 5 essential tips to improve your influence skills

DEVELOPING YOUR CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

One study found that:

• 85% of a cross-section of executives said that they had, at some point, felt unable to raise an issue or concern with their manager.
• While 51% said that they felt truly comfortable raising issues or spotlighting problems and only 15% said that they had never felt unable to express themselves openly.
• The recurrent theme in this research is that people stay silent at work because they don’t want to provoke conflict, be (or be labelled) troublemakers.

So many of us avoid dealing with conflict. Yet, for those of us leading a team, our avoidance can be the think that ultimately, breaks the team and lead to a very fast downward trajectory in performance.

Quote from Learning from neurodivergent leaders, by Dr Nancy Doyle

One thing I have found over the years, both in my experience of leading teams with lots of different personalities and in helping managers resolve conflict in their teams, is that you must be in the right mindset to tackle the issue. For example, if you are mediating between two warring colleagues, before that meeting, spend 10 minutes getting centered and reflect on the following questions:

• Aim – what is the most important outcome to achieve in this meeting?
• Attitude – to achieve that outcome, how do I need to show up? How do I need to be?
• Attention – what do I need to pay attention to in the meeting? In myself? In others?

Something that can help not just you, but the rest of the team, navigate conflict is to develop a set of ground rules for handling differences of opinion. A question I like to ask people to think about and answer, when managing a discussion about conflict, is:

“What is the most important ground rule for me and that will help me participate positively in this conversation?”

I include myself in answering that conversation. So, if there are three of us in the discussion, the three of us share our most important ground rule. In her book, Now we’re talking: How to discuss what really matters,Sarah Rozenthuler suggests five key ground rules:

1. Use ‘I’ statements – people own what they say.
2. Welcome uncomfortable moments – recognize that this is part of learning and growth.
3. Be present and listen fully – a true conversation is co-created.
4. Share equal airtime – make space for others.
5. Nobody gets to be wrong – difference of opinion doesn’t mean wrongness.

DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY

Rate yourself on your confidence in managing conflict on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the worst you could be and 10 is the best. Now think about your score. For example, if you gave yourself a ‘4’, what stopped you giving yourself a lower score? What strengths do you already have? What practices do you already have in place? Now, think about what it would take for you to progress upwards, to a ‘5’. What would you be doing as a ‘5’ that you’re not doing as ‘4’? What does that gap look like? Revisit this activity once a month to push yourself to progress up the scale.

Further reading:  How to mend broken relationships in the workplace

DEVELOPING YOUR TEAMWORK

Whenever I deliver HALO Psychology’s flagship course, How to build a high performing team, the first thing I tell delegates is that creating a great teamworking culture takes consistent effort. It cannot and should not be left to chance. You’ve got to put the work in.

And then, tough talk, if you don’t want to put the work in, that’s okay. You just need to live with having an average team where collaboration is sometimes a struggle. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Quote from The culture code, by Daniel Coyle

I come at team performance from several perspectives. First, as someone who has led many different teams (including setting them up and closing them down). Second, as a psychologist who helps managers improve how their teams work. Third, as an academic who has spent more than 25 years reading and reviewing hundreds of studies into what makes a great team. Here are the 16 things that I’ve found the best teams pay attention to:

TEAM PERFORMANCE BEHAVIOURS	TEAMWORKING BEHAVIOURS
GOAL CLARITY: Team goals and objectives are agreed and understood across the team.	LEADERSHIP: Strong leadership of the team, with clear vision and direction for the team.
USE OF TEAM RESOURCES: All resources (knowledge, skills, experience) of team members are recognised and used fully.	TRUST: Team members trust each other, feeling able to be vulnerable, honest and open with each other.
CONTROL & PROCEDURES: Clear and understood controls and procedures in place to support the team’s effective functioning.	PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY: Members are safe to try things out, without fear of punishment or backlash in the event there is failure.
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES: Team members each know what each other does and how their respective roles fit together.	CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: Conflict is worked through and dealt with in a timely and constructive way by team members.
DECISION MAKING: Team has clear decision-making protocols, including how to work through disagreement of a decision.	FREEDOM & AUTONOMY: Team members have the freedom and autonomy as to how they go about doing their work.
CREATIVITY & INNOVATION: Team regularly experiments with different ways of doing things with the aim of improving services.	OWNERSHIP & ACCOUNTABILITY: Team members each take ownership and accountability of their behaviours and actions.
PROBLEM SOLVING: The team proactively and constructively supports each other with problem solving.	COMMUNICATION: Good quality and timely communication exists between team members. People are open with each other.
EVALUATION: The team regularly evaluates its effectiveness, such as through seeking and using feedback.	LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT: Members have sufficient time and space to learn new things, develop, and grow.

© 2018 HALO Psychology Ltd® This framework may not be reproduced with permission.

DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY

Audit your team against the list of 16 characteristics outlined in the table above. Which are the three best? Which are the three that need your focus and energy to improve? How can you use the three best to support the improvement of the three worst areas?

Further reading: 3 essentials to focus on if you want a resilient team

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REFERENCES

Bellman, G.M. (2001). Getting things done when you are not in charge (2^nd ed). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Boyatzis, R.E. (2009). Competencies as a behavioral approach to emotional intelligence. Journal of Management Development, 28(9), 749-770.

Brim, B.J. (2015, 9 October). Strengths-based leadership: The four things followers need. Gallup.

Haslam, S.A., Alvesson, M., & Reicher, S.D. (2024). Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3), 101770.

Heslin, P.A., Vandewalle, D., & Latham, G.P. (2006). Keen to help? Managers’ implicit person theories and their subsequent employee coaching. Personnel Psychology, 59, 871-902.

Rozenthuler, S. (2024). Now we’re talking: How to discuss what really matters. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

Zenger, J., & Folkman, J. (2016). What great listeners actually do. Harvard Business Review, July.