When looking for a job, people ponder many aspects other than the job description before making a decision. Some of those could be the schedule, the salary, the company’s location, or the provided equipment, but without a doubt, the one that will make them stay or leave before giving it a full trial is the company’s culture and work environment. Just think about it, it could look like the job of your dreams on paper, then you go one day to the office and everyone is very distant, they don’t help each other and the air is simply tense. Who would want to stay and grow professionally in such an unfertile environment?
Healthy work environments create the best workplaces, and having functional and healthy work relationships within the company, won’t only make it more appealing to new talent, but it will make your company more effective and sustainable through time. We work with people, and the relationships we cultivate with them affect our performance, whether we want it or not.
Why do they matter?
There are obvious reasons why having healthy work relationships matters, but they are still worth mentioning. Creating these kinds of relationships increases team cohesion and improves group performance and overall employee satisfaction. When team members feel taken into consideration like they have a voice and they can use it safely, they can provide feedback, give opinions, and ask questions, that team member will develop a feeling of belonging and will want to stay in that team and do their best for it to grow.
Working on improving this aspect of the company pays off in lasting relationships, better performance, professional and personal growth, and a lighter environment within the company. At Freelance Latin America, we care about fostering the environment for these relationships to blossom with spontaneity, and we take in our hands to help them walk on the healthy path. For example, in our monthly workshops, we make group dynamics that improve their existing relationships, or by creating spaces like our book club, where freelancers with the same interests can gather and share their thoughts on a book. The important part, is to do something, don’t just magically hope it will happen, because it might not.
What do they look like?
Healthy teams have productivity as an added value of being healthy. But is every productive team a healthy one? That is very questionable. Healthy work relationships can be developed all around us and without us even noticing it. We all talk about how relationships within a company should be this or that, but do we know what a healthy work relationship implies? One thing is clear, we might have a good idea about what it is, but most likely, we could also have some unhealthy dynamics very normalized, and that does not help the case.
Richard used to work on a creative team for a newborn brand. Although the company was emerging, it invested a lot in its people and its company’s culture. He had regular meetings with his team and the heads of the company and always said that he thought he had found the place where he’d want to invest his talent and most productive years. And, what happened in Richard’s workplace? Well… they each had a voice, everybody felt heard, and even when their proposals couldn’t be taken into action they listened. His team cooperates all the time, they trust each other professionally and know when to ask or offer help, they care about their teammates’ growth and promote situations where they can grow professionally with the required guidance. The managers lead by inspiration and never micromanage. Even though they don’t always succeed at it, they try to have a balance between life and work, limits are encouraged and respected. And to make the long story short, there is an overall sensation of well-being.
Yes, of course, we know that healthy relationships can look different and still be healthy. At the end of the day, they need to be based on trust and balance, the rest needs to be tailor-made for every one of them.
How do we cultivate them?
If you want a team like Richard’s, you should promote and take care of it as his company did. Consider the specific requirements your company has, how are the connections you are fostering? How would you want them to be? Are you creating the space for them to grow the way you want them? How are your leaders? Are you revaluating a readjusting what needs to be for the environment to blossom?
But if there is no recipe for a healthy work relationship, is there anything we could do to cultivate them? And the answer is yes. Although every group dynamic will need specific adjustments and adaptations, there are some basic things that prepare the ground and plant the seeds when it comes to healthy relationships.
Build trust
There is nothing that creates more the environment for healthy relationships to blossom than trusting one another. A team that trusts feel free and safe to communicate, provide feedback, share ideas, propose solutions, and ask for help. Trust tends to be situation specific, but there are general things that can help it, or destroy it.
A team, a leader, and a company need to be authentic to be trusted. When people sense that they are being talked about with honesty and authenticity, they are prone to trust that person or institution. Being transparent and true to your values is what every leader should aspire to, what every company should promote, and most certainly, what will make them more trustable in the eyes of others. And being transparent also means acknowledging when you are wrong, being vulnerable if needed, and asking for help or suggestions, because, believe it or not, that vulnerability comes with empathy, it humanizes you or the company and benefits your relationships exponentially compared with trying to look cold and flawless.
Work on emotional intelligence
We need to be responsible for our actions to have healthy relationships, and so is the case when it comes to emotions. Having emotional intelligence and regularly checking what we do is necessary to develop relationships where empathy reigns and we know how to attend to others’ reactions and our own.
Being emotionally intelligent means being able to perceive and understand our emotions and others’ as well, and this comes with a sense of how to respond to those emotions. Let me just put it this way, someone with a high level of emotional intelligence can sense when the manager is having a bad day and won’t take personal any attitude from them, and most importantly, a leader with a high level of it will be able to perceive they are having a bad day and wouldn’t affect their team with that.
Reflecting on oneself and actively listening to our bodies and everything around us will make us more aware of our context and give us many more tools to use with it. If you want to know more about emotional intelligence we have a whole other article just for it, so click here to read more.
Promote active listening and effective communication
Is never enough to think of a good idea, or have well-intentioned feedback to provide if you can’t communicate it. Connection can’t grow without communication, therefore, without it how could we form a healthy work relationship? At work, everyone might be busy, but we still interact, somedays a casual conversation by the water cooler can be the highlight of the day. Whether is to give an instruction to our team, or to ask for a new project from the manager, the way we phrase the sentence makes all the difference.
People need to communicate and understand each other to create a relationship, so we need to make sure we are being understood, that we are asking for what we need and not for something that might look alike. The message needs to be shared with clarity and purpose, let no space for doubt, and if there is one, don´t forget to ask for them and clear it out.
Remember that active listening is a basic skill that works miracles, you just have to work on paying attention and making sure you are listening to understand rather than to respond. Is important to be self-aware and not let our inner dialog interrupt the valuable information our co-worker might be providing, since to be honest, our interactions with other people are our primary source of knowledge, we have been socially learning since preschool. Communicating and listening will improve relationships because people will see each other for who they are and learn to complement each other on their joined projects without having to discuss much of it, it will happen naturally.
Foster empathy and kindness
Keep in mind that work relationships will never stop being human relationships. To create a healthy bond with people, we need to be empathetic and kind. Be that co-worker that genuinely wants to know the answer when asking “how’s life going?” treating people like we want to be treated is the best way to ensure we will get along easily, as some say, that’s the golden rule. So, don’t be scared to talk about patience or values if you see that it could be helpful.
Once again, it is important to foster the space for this to happen, it is not enough to put people inside an office for them to create healthy relationships, we need to give them the opportunity to get to know each other, interact and learn to work together. A good leader will find a way to make this happen, and the path to it will always be being kind and relatable. When you talk to a teammate about a project or to provide feedback, they are not a number, they are human and you need to acknowledge that by being kind to the person behind the task that needs to be done.
Encourage self-care
To create a strong and healthy bond with others, we need to work on our bond with ourselves first. How well are you taking care of yourself? Be mindful about your decisions, and be kind to yourself. Those extra papers do you need to work on? They can wait a couple of minutes so you can take an active pause. The project you have been stressing about? It can wait for you to be in the office to attend it, you don’t have to burn out while at home. Your lunch break? Take it, don’t eat at your desk, it doesn’t pay off. Maintaining our sanity and energy in check is what will give us the support to create strong and healthy relationships with others.
Human relationships are not perfect, and most certainly, solid healthy ones are not made at the snap of a finger. They might take time and effort, but having a team that cares about one another and lift each other up is an endless path to learning and growth. Without people around us that lend us a helping hand, we wouldn’t be where we are today. So, what are you waiting to invest in your people?
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