Workplace relationships are important. People are social creatures, therefore you need to be able to relate to the people at work. If your work relationships are poor – and you spend most of your life at work, it stands to reason that your general happiness will suffer.
Related articles:
Diversity in the workplace: https://wowza.blog/?p=218&preview=true
How to find the person who can help you get ahead at work: https://www.ted.com/talks/carla_harris_how_to_find_the_person_who_can_help_you_get_ahead_at_work?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
Perception
There is a phrase that goes ‘Perception Is Reality’ – and this phrase is very true in the workplace. How you are perceived, is what you are, in the minds of the people around you. It is your responsibility to manage how you are perceived. Do be mindful of how you come across in what you say. Sometimes it’s not even what you said, but how you said it. If someone gets the wrong idea about your actions, be quick to correct the misunderstanding. Even when someone deliberately twists the interpretation of your actions – set the record straight as politely and as civil as you can. It may not be clear to you at first, but as you grow in your career, you will realize how small a world it is. Many people know each other and can easily source information about your behavior and work ethic. How you are perceived(whether true or false) will become your reality in your career, wherever you go.
Currency
Besides the emotional peace we get from settled relationships: in the workplace, relationships are capital. You will need to fit in. Get into that circle of trust and influence within your organization. Other than that, you will remain a perpetual outsider and always on the backfoot of most decisions taken. Relationships are currency in this environment. Much professional success owes to relationships cultivated and nurtured during the course of one’s career.
Mentors & Sponsors
It is very important to find mentors and sponsors within your organization. Mostly, institutional relationships are left to the personal connections of individuals. Researchers have found, time and again, that having someone more senior and powerful rooting for you, is strongly connected to surviving and thriving in the corporate jungle. A sponsor is someone with power, who has enough clout to make things happen in the organization. A mentor is someone more experienced than you, who may not have much influence in the organization. A mentor can share their skill and knowledge/wisdom to help you grow professionally. A sponsor can remove obstacles to your professional growth.
Competition
Forming genuine relationships can be challenging at work, because of the competitive environment. Be careful of sharing confidences with colleagues. Your secret(s) may be betrayed in the competition for favor and promotion. Sometimes cliques will form. These cliques will monopolize their source of privilege, by keeping others out. It is for this reason that toxic colleagues will try to control how others perceive you. To curb your popularity some people may misrepresent you, and twist your intentions. This is to hurt your brand and keep you out of the power cliques. That way, nobody of consequence will want to back you if you are already tarnished.
So how does one connect without getting too close, while protecting themselves from negativity and sabotage? It is a tricky situation to handle. My advice is to be discerning. Try to form relationships around the work, initially – until such time as you know people enough to be able to tell who you can trust with discussing everything. At work, as in Life, there will be people with bad intentions around your friendship.
Relationship challenges
Relationships are always challenging, even with our nearest and dearest. It is important to keep a healthy perspective in the face of challenges and remember that not everything is about you. Sometimes a decision made by superiors will put you on the back foot. However, those superiors may have been faced with a worse choice and were not concerned with putting you at a disadvantage. Other times, you could be facing challenges and it is the hand of God putting you at a disadvantage – to force you to look at other avenues that are more suitable for you. Always keep an open mind.
A challenging situation will work best for you if you keep your emotions in check. Also, always follow procedures to get things clarified and/or addressed.
Should the time come that you have to leave an organization, whether because you were unhappy or simply found a better opportunity – you need to leave gracefully. Preferably without burning bridges, and also not under a cloud of unresolved issues. Remember that you need to protect your image in the industry.
Promote yourself
With respect to work, you need to stand out from the crowd, with your strengths. Tell your line manager when you have managed a noteworthy accomplishment. Make sure you raise the topic of your accomplishment during one-on-one meetings with him/her. If a client writes to thank you, as you reply to the client, copy your line manager in. Perhaps also loop in your mentor and your sponsor in that communication. This does not have to be done in a rude or obnoxious fashion. Just gently get important stakeholders to take note. Otherwise, it gets easy for everyone to take you for granted, while you quietly slave away, solving big problems unseen and unrewarded. The ones who know how to manage their brand will keep stepping over you and getting the recognition and promotion, and this will make you bitter in the end, if left unmanaged.
Leverage your personality
Being an introvert will put you at a slight disadvantage as business culture values extroverts. The people who speak up and collaborate over every little thing. If you are an introvert, you likely prefer to work quietly in your own space. You also will not like to share your ideas/(collaborate) until you are sure of them. As an introvert, you can make yourself visible in other ways than speaking up. You could volunteer to make a presentation during a meeting, on a subject that you are good at. Volunteer to help organize the Christmas party or coach some interns when you have some time. Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, try and say something in meetings, however small your participation.
Workplace Relationship Payoff
Finally, relationships will afford you the leverage to manage risks and solve problems. A strategic relationship can provide the support you need to execute a task at your best. At a personal level relationships will afford you the flexibility to change jobs and build your career. For example, someone may help you land a better or more enjoyable position within the company. Even outside your current company.
Build those relationships
Relationships are not built over once-off team-building outings. As I write, the pandemic has eliminated team-building events anyway. Relationships take intentional planning, as well as time invested in engaging. Ideally, you want to establish relationships that are meaningful and based on common interests. Many a blunder can come out of trying to be something you are not, just to impress people.
I wish you luck, as you work on building trust with your colleagues and as you address relationship issues. May the high trust you build help to improve communication, collaboration, and execution.