Everyone has them. Sometimes we want to avoid them and we retreat to a private corner of our own little world far from ringing telephones and endless e-mail. However, relationships are a necessary way of life, we have many of them in our personal and professional lives and its beneficial to understand our professional relationships. Types of Relationships in a Professional Setting Unless you are self-employed, the employer/employee relationship is common in all professional lives. Roles are clear in this relationship: the employer provides a work environment and duties and the employee performs those duties for some type of remuneration. Remuneration does not have to be monetary, volunteer organizations will still have employer/employee relationships. Monitoring performance of duties is usually the check and balance to determine if this is a working and worthwhile relationship. Customer Relationships occur with the customers of your organization. Whether you are a vendor with a list of clients or a librarian serving a user community, customers are usually exist in professional life. Most librarians are "selling" a service. Recognizing your user community, visiting with them, hearing what they have to say and what is important to them ensures a working and worthwhile relationship. This success of this type of relationship is monitored by turnover in clientele, ability to bring in new clients and length of client relationship. Peer/peer relationships occur within an organization with people at or around your level. These relationships are often less formal and more social. These relationships are monitored by your "ability to get along" or work with teams. Teacher/student relationships occur in organizations when one person is educating another. This can be in formal training programs for new hires or new positions or formal or informal mentoring or coaching programs. A professional life generally sees both sides of each of these four types of relationships over time. Regardless of the type of relationship in your professional life, it is beneficial to understand how to manage and maintain healthy relationships. Social styles in Relationships Since childhood, people have gravitated to certain types of individuals in their social relationships, usually for very complex psychological reasons that are often difficult to articulate. In the workplace, individuals lose the flexibility to choose their relationships and must work with the individuals that exist within the organization. There are frameworks to help understand social styles so individuals can work well in all the different types of professional relationships with those that they would not normally gravitate to. Not everyone falls neatly into one framework but they do serve as useful guides to understand what motivates individuals and their behaviour in relationships. Once the understanding in there, it is easier to work with the needs of the individual. One framework defines sociability, dominance and openness as characteristics that blend into a social style. Sociability has to do with a person's preference for being with others. Those with high sociability find the rapport-building and dialogue-leading dimensions easier. Those with low sociability may be seen as unapproachable and need to work harder to build relationships. Dominance is about a person's preference for being in charge. Those with a high preference to lead need to work hard to listen instead of talk, while those exhibiting low dominance need to learn to take the lead in the relationship. Openness refers to how easily a person trusts others. High openness individuals tend to have many close relationships, find it easy to reveal themselves, are comfortable being vulnerable, and express feelings easily. Low openness individuals are cautious, guarded, and reluctant to show feelings that must be overcome to communicate that their mistakes might have dire consequences. Another social style framework cites four social styles: analytical, amiable, driving, and expressive. These styles are neither positive nor negative on their own but can cause problems in relation to other styles. It is important to recognize your own social style and its strengths and weaknesses when working with other styles. Then understand social styles of the other parties in relationships and recognize which individuals do not work well with your social style. Analytical people are most comfortable with facts and logic and are sticklers for detail. When working with an analytical person, it is important to be well prepared and to get right down to business and provide the factual information, without rushing them or coming on too strong. Amiable people are friendly, conscientious, empathetic and supportive and make excellent teammates. It is important to make genuine personal contact, slow the pace, focus on their feelings, and express sincere appreciation when working with amiable people. Driving people are comfortable taking charge, are decisive, like challenges, and results driven that makes them demanding of themselves and others. Driving people are most comfortable in a task-oriented and fast-paced environment. They should be spoken to in practical, action-oriented terms. Expressive people create excitement and involvement. They enthusiastically share their ideas and motivate others to go along with them. They can also be flamboyant, impulsive, and restless. Be casual and informal when working with expressive individuals and give them recognition and freedom. Characteristics of Healthy Relationships It is usually obvious when a relationship is working well. As work proceeds smoothly, both parties in the relationship may not take the time out to determine what or why the relationship is working. Regardless of social style, healthy relationships have certain characteristics. Evidence of unhealthy relationships rears its head through frustration, lack of focus, meetings dragging on for hours and an inability to meet deadlines. Reviewing the 5 characteristics of a healthy relationship with social styles in mind will help pinpoint areas of improvement. Benefits of Healthy Relationships Everyone knows it better to have a healthy relationship and is important to improve the relationships, regardless of its type. Increasing retention and decreasing stress are valuable benefits. Employee retention prevents brain drain from your organization, develops technical skills and ensures quality individuals stay in the organization and remain motivated and effective. Customer retention provides security and a solid base for business. Less time and money is spent finding new employees or customers. There is much documentation on the negative impact of stress. Employees will function better, feel better and meet their deadlines. There will less time lost due to sick days, leaves of absence and project delays. Challenges to Relationships The busy lifestyles of individuals in organizations, increased workload due to downsizing, the virtual world and change all work to challenge relationships and possibly destroy them. When individuals are busy there is less time to reflect on or change relationships. Other priorities may reduce the importance of relationships. Working virtually may mean you never physically see the other person that can hamper the development of the relationship. In organizations that promote from within, one peer can be promoted over another resulting in a changed relationship where the individuals are friendly but can no longer remain friends. Recognizing the challenges and working with them to maintain a healthy relationship is a must. Revisit the characteristics of a healthy relationship. Make the relationship a priority. Healthy relationships create healthy individuals and healthy organizations. Harvest your relationships. Gayle Kiss is a Senior Product Consultant for LexisNexis Butterworths. Prior to that, she was a librarian at The Toronto Star. |
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