In a 4-part episode series on the Managing Well podcast, Tonya Ladipo talks with licensed counselor Elizabeth Byrne about relationship-building and cultivating healthy connections in the workplace. Your ability to make sure your team feels valued and heard begins with the work culture.
In this episode, we start the conversation by discussing how to set the foundation for healthy relationships.
Key Takeaways:
- Our ability to create and sustain healthy relationships at work does not occur in isolation. How we develop relationships with people in our personal lives mirrors how we build, maintain, or reject professional relationships in the workplace.
- People managers have the power to set and sustain the tone and culture of their team based on the strengths of their relationships.
- Transparency and the accountability that comes with transparency, are key to building trust and connection.
Reflection Questions:
- Consider relationships, personally or professionally, that bring you great joy. What specifically do you enjoy and appreciate about these relationships?
- Often, relationships develop organically and, at times, without focused intention. As a people manager, we have the responsibility to be deliberate with developing and sustaining our workplace relationships. List 1 to 2 actions you currently do to enhance your working relationships with your team. Then, list one new action you want to start doing.
- Work is a natural space where expectations and norms seem to constantly clash because many people have unspoken ideas, standards, and beliefs about ‘how we should work.’ Finish the following sentences to better understand your own, perhaps unconscious beliefs.
- Professional behavior means doing __________.
- Sharing personal information at work is ___________.
- The best way to work with other people is to __________.
Action Items:
- Consider how you connect and relate to everyone on your team. Identify one action you can start or stop to strengthen a healthy working relationship with each individual on your team.
- Engage your team to discuss generating and sustaining healthy work relationships. Ask them to complete the three sentence-starter questions above, and then discuss them as a team.
- Name unspoken team norms and expectations. Ask each team member to identify the unspoken team norms from their perspective and then discuss them as a team.
Additional Resources:
Don’t miss episodes from Managing Well’s Relationship-Building Series:
- Ep 31: Relationship-Building – When Conflict Happens with Elizabeth Byrne (Part 2)
- Ep 32: Relationship-Building – Rupture and Repair with Elizabeth Byrne (Part 3)
- Ep 33: Relationship-Building – Maintaining Strong Relationships at Work (Part 4)
The Managing Well podcast, with host Tonya Ladipo, talks about wellness in the workplace with people leaders, mental health professionals, HR experts, and more. Click the link to subscribe to the podcast and get the latest episodes.