Willett had never lived to please or impress others. He preferred to just be who he was and let others be who they were, letting things fall where they may, without trying too hard to get along. Yet lately, Willett had noticed just how poor his work relationships were. No one greeted him, smiled at him, or even acknowledged his arrival at work or his work presence. Everyone just did their job, while leaving Willett alone as long as he did his job. Willett’s only interactions with anyone was when they had a complaint over what he did or how well he was doing it. Willett could see, too, that his poor work relationships were affecting him both on the job and personally. Maybe, he finally concluded, it was time for a change in attitude about his work relationships.
Relationships
Relationships are essential to a full life. Somewhere, someplace, you need someone who knows and cares that you exist, what we would call a friend or at least an acquaintance if not a friend. We are social. Our relationships and communications with others correct our wandering cognition, informing us who we are and how we should see, hear, and think. The rare human who grows up alone in the wild never becomes fully human, having lacked human nurture, culture, society, and relationships. If you’re not cognizant of the value of your work relationships to your mental and physical health, and general outlook on the world and life, then you’re missing something important. Family relationships may form the bedrock of society, but work relationships lay close atop that bedrock in keeping us sane, stable, social, healthy, engaged, and functioning.
Engagement
Your work relationships are important not only to your mental and physical health but also to your job success. You can otherwise be the perfect employee but still lose your job to layoff or miss an opportune promotion, if you have poor work relationships. If you can’t get along with your supervisor or co-workers, if you are insolent and insubordinate, or if you just don’t care enough to contribute to morale in a team environment, then your employer may be moving on from you soon. Positive, committed engagement in the workplace is a huge issue for employers and employees. The platitude that 20% of the workers do 80% of the work may not be too far off in many workplaces. The quality of work relationships can have a big influence on worker engagement. If you don’t care about your co-workers, you may not care about the work. Employers pay attention to building and maintaining a strong, positive work culture for good reasons, to keep work tolerable and productive by engaging the mind, talents, and energies of workers.
Reward
Be a big part of your workplace team, and you’ll likely find significantly greater job success. Your employer may reward you outright for your good work relationships, with team assignments and supervisory roles. Even if not, you’ll likely see your job security improve with strong, positive work relationships. Managers and supervisors generally value competent, skilled, productive, and committed employees, whether they like those employees or not. Yet when most of the workers exhibit similar skills and productivity, managers and supervisors may allocate resources, award assignments, and make promotions based more on the quality of relationships than objective measures of skill or productivity. Why reward an enemy and punish a friend? Why not favor team players who foster workplace engagement through caring workplace relationships? The sullen, although productive, employee may call it playing favorites, but care for one’s fellow workers can have such significant impacts on workplace morale, creativity, and productivity that rewarding those who generate favor can make good business sense. Don’t obsequiously curry favor, but if you improve your work relationships, you’ll likely improve your job success.
Respect
Improving work relationships need not take substantial time. Instead, it generally does take at least some attention. Nurture your work relationships with an appropriate degree of personal interest and a full degree of professional respect. The professional respect aspect comes first. Always respect the knowledge, skills, and commitment of your employer’s workers, whether superior, lateral, or subordinate. Do not suck up to supervisors while talking down to subordinates. Treat subordinates with the same respect that you treat colleagues and superiors. Those subordinates may be the children of owners or best friends of managers and supervisors. Word gets around quickly in the workplace, whether for good or bad. Do a colleague or subordinate a favor, and others will hear about it to your benefit. Offend a colleague or subordinate, and others will hear about that, too, to your detriment. Respect can mean a lot of things including greeting others using appropriate kindness and forms of address, recognizing competence, and letting others do their job as they know how best to do it. Don’t talk down to others, dismiss their opinions and conclusions out of hand, or unduly devalue their job knowledge and expertise. Listen and learn, and when appropriate teach and gently correct or redirect, always valuing the relationship as much or more than the task.
Interest
Improving work relationships, though, may take more than merely professional respect. Depending on your workplace, it may also take at least a small and appropriate degree of personal interest. Some workplaces, for example those involving law enforcement, corrections, and security, may discourage any personal communications among co-workers. Personal disclosures in some workplaces may lead to personal risks. But many other workplaces accept or even encourage some degree of personal interest, particularly around landmark events like birthdays, engagements and marriages, childbirth or graduations, and family severe illnesses or deaths. To ignore those events in your workplace may show inappropriate insularity, even arrogance or carelessness. Don’t be a party pooper when the workplace is celebrating a co-worker’s personal achievement or a dispassionate jerk when the workplace is grieving a co-worker’s personal loss. Show an appropriate degree of interest in your co-worker as a person.
Boundaries
At the same time, don’t cross the workplace line into personal gossip or snooping. If a co-worker tells you something personal, maintain the disclosure as confidential even if the co-worker does not request you to do so. Your co-worker may have intended confidentiality and may hold it against you if hearing the personal matter from another worker with whom you shared it. Loose lips sink ships. And don’t disclose anything personal about yourself that you don’t want the whole workforce to know. What you share privately with one may get quickly around with others, undermining your trust in your colleagues. Also, don’t suggest any desire for an intimate workplace relationship. Sexual jokes, comments, innuendo, and advances, or communications or actions implying the same, may result in formal complaints of sexual harassment leading to discipline up to termination. Even if others in your workplace engage in sexual banter, avoid doing so. While others may appear to consent, they may in fact object and may report the banter as misconduct. Keep your personal interest in the welfare of your co-workers to within the usual bounds of professional workplace culture.
Factions
Don’t join or foster workplace factions. Some workplaces, particularly those involving dangerous conditions and emergency operations, need especially cohesive units where camaraderie may be essential to performance. Having a strong and close team can be fine, even critical. But joining one side in a workplace dispute against others, or ostracizing some co-workers while recruiting and welcoming others, can unnecessarily divide and degrade the workplace into inharmonious and disruptive factions. Don’t let your workplace devolve into middle-school antics involving ingroups and outgroups. If you see that sort of behavior developing, make a point of maintaining friendly relationships with both sides, while avoiding endorsing and if possible subtly correcting the factional misbehavior. If factions are affecting your work performance, broach the issue with your supervisor or the personnel department for appropriate guidance. If, instead, you join a faction that is interfering with good work relationships and a productive workplace, you may suffer job discipline or passover for promotion. Be a team player involving and supporting the whole team.
Culture
Especially avoid any unlawfully discriminatory factions. Indeed, in addition to avoiding factions, beware of other negative aspects of your workplace’s culture, affecting your job relationships. Reject any aspect of your workplace culture that is in any respect demeaning or degrading as to any innate characteristic or positive attribute of any single co-worker or group of co-workers. You don’t have to go along with the crowd, and should instead resist the crowd, when the crowd engages in unlawful, unethical, or destructive conduct. You may not be able to change and improve the culture alone. Yet while workplace culture involves the patterns, commitments, and values of the whole workforce rather than any single worker, every worker can have some effect on sustaining or modifying culture. Stand up to the crowd when necessary and appropriate to maintaining positive relationships with all your co-workers. You may be surprised how many co-workers may come forward to join you and how your lone actions can turn an unpleasant factional tide toward universal respect.
Conflict
Don’t pick fights with co-workers over matters having no significant impact on your work. Conflict on the job can strain work relationships, decrease productivity, and in some roles even expose workers to danger. Conflict over irrelevant but emotional or dearly held matters like politics or social stances can especially undermine workplace relationships. You need not agree with everything everyone says. But rather than disagree sharply over irrelevant matters, politely change the subject or remove yourself from the conversation. Your co-workers will soon learn where you stand and respect you for keeping your peace and preserving work relationships. Indeed, your willingness to turn the other cheek may win co-workers to your side. On the other hand, if your conflict involves a work-related matter, then advocate diplomatically as you must to ensure that you get your job done correctly, competently, and efficiently. Don’t concede on issues material to important job outcomes. But advocate respecting the role, opinions, responsibility, and authority of others. Once again, your fair mindedness will win you the respect of co-workers and trust of your employer.
Resolution
Some workplace conflicts you can’t resolve, especially when the one opposing you persists unreasonably on an issue you need to resolve in your favor to do your job. Rather than exacerbate such a conflict, enlist your supervisor or, if your dispute is with your supervisor, then the human-resources department to ensure that your employer hears and documents your concerns. Your employer may have individuals skilled at resolving workplace disputes who can mediate your conflict to an acceptable resolution. Whether you find the resolution acceptable or not, be prepared to show others your mercy and grace, and to forgive quickly. You will also be wrong at times and will need your co-workers’ mercy, grace, and forgiveness, too. The quicker you forgive, the quicker your antagonist may admit that they were at least in part wrong. Your employer may value your ability and willingness to resolve conflict and move on, even when at some loss, greater than your other strengths and talents.
Reflection
List both your positive and negative work relationships. What makes the difference between your two lists? How could you move some of the negative relationships into the positive category? Do you give appropriate honor to the service and respect to the skill of your supervisor? Are you participating adequately in your workplace’s traditional practices, surrounding significant personal events your co-workers are experiencing? Could you be sharing a birthday card or similar honorific now and then with some of your co-workers? Does your workplace have any ongoing issues involving inappropriate intimate relationships or communications, affecting your work or advancement? If so, confidentially consult your employer’s human-resources department while documenting your consultation in writing. Get qualified attorney review if your employer does not take appropriate remedial action. Do you need to resolve a conflict with one of, or a group of, your co-workers? If so, what steps can you take, beginning with diplomatic direct communications and continuing with supervisor review? Do you need to apologize to a co-worker whom you treated unfairly? If so, then plan to do so.
Key Points
Value your work relationships as important to your outlook and health.
Also value your work relationships as important to your job success.
Good work relationships build workplace engagement.
Pay professional respect to superiors, colleagues, and subordinates.
Nurture work relationships with appropriate personal interest.
Respect workplace boundaries, avoiding intimate communications.
Don’t foster or join factions, but maintain all relationships.
Influence workplace culture toward positive relational norms.
Avoid immaterial co-worker conflicts, even when in the right.
Resolve material conflicts amicably when arising, with necessary help.
Show co-workers the grace and forgiveness you also need and expect.