Building Strong Relationships: The Key to Personal and Professional Success

Strong relationships are essential for both personal and professional success. In our personal lives, strong relationships provide us with love, support, and a sense of belonging. In our professional lives, strong relationships help us to build trust, collaborate effectively, and achieve our goals.

In this article, we’ll cover relationship dynamics:

1. Real Situations: A case that underscores the pivotal role relationships play in shaping individual and communal social bonds, and how managing time and priorities can align you relationally.
2. Cultivating Bonds at Work: Insights and steps tailored for managers to nurture and amplify a sense of connection within the workplace, thereby enhancing team cohesion and shared purpose.
3. The Individual Imperative: Actions that individuals can undertake to build enduring and meaningful connections, elevating both personal and professional dimensions of life.

The Art and Science of Relationship-Building
Studies from diverse fields such a social psychology, leadership, and neuroscience, show that social connections play a central role in fostering a sense of purpose and well-being in the workplace. They also impact the bottom line. Effective talent management facilitates learning and knowledge sharing, increases employee retention and engagement, reduces burnout, sparks innovation, and improves employee and organizational performance.

A Tale of Three Hospital Visits
John went to the emergency room over the weekend panicked that he was having a heart attack. This was the third time in six months he had visited. Three times out of three, he was advised that he was having a panic attack. John admitted that he was over-extended at work, spending 60-80 hours a week focusing on work tasks, fighting fires, and trying to keep everyone happy.

​At home he could not spend the time he wanted with his two boys and wife, because he was constantly being drawn into work issues. His eldest son was due to graduate high school this summer, and John wanted to spend more than three days away from work so that he and his family could spend quality time together on a special vacation. He also wanted to celebrate this big family milestone. He felt like he was missing out on important life events and that time was slipping away. He was not being the father he wanted to be.

After conducting a time inventory, John realized that he wanted to reprioritize his professional and personal relationships and be intentional about how he structured his time. He has started spending an hour every Monday with his staff to review their shared calendars, successes, priorities, deliverables, challenges, and support needed for the next four weeks. “If what is there does not align with people, purpose, or passion, it gets moved, delegated, or deleted. I know where my values and priorities are, and how I want each of my 24 hours to be spent. The quality of my days is more important to me – how I feel at the end and start of each day is critical information I use to prime for meaningful success,” he says.

Despite a full professional schedule, John also has strengthened ties to his family and church community to keep him humble and grounded outside of work. He and his wife regularly evaluate whether they are spending their time on the people and activities that matter most. By intentionally managing his time and proactively nurturing key relationships, John now feels more satisfied in his life and career. He has since been promoted into an executive role.

What Managers Can Do to Foster Connections at Work
Nurture our shared humanity.

Lead through your values. Humble leaders who are compassionate, generous, forgiving, and ethical do better. They lead with kindness and keep their employees’ well-being in mind. They create positive workplaces that yield superior financial performance, customer satisfaction, productivity, and employee engagement. When teams share work values, use shared working frameworks, and approach projects with the same sets of expectations and priorities, they perform better.

Leaders who can communicate vision, direction, and goals clearly with employees, who seek diverse perspectives, and respect differences in how to approach work, are able to forge stronger commitment, alignment, and implement strategic deliverables at an operational level.
Feeling connected to others requires being on the same page emotionally as well as intellectually. It requires being guided by values.

Communicate and model taking care of yourself. Self-care is a strategic necessity. Learn which mental states burn you out faster. Take your vacations and make the most of short breaks. Learn recovery techniques and build your stress resilience to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Breathing techniques, taking breaks in nature, and quiet time are just a few examples. Encourage your employees to do the same (and make sure it’s not just lip service). Set aside time just to focus on rejuvenating your own energy. Put your oxygen mask on first.

Tap into human skills, such as being present with each other without distractions, deep listening, empathy, authenticity, and communication. Listen for the emotional tone beneath the words and in the body language, tune-in to one another, and have follow-up conversations to check-in. Connection is a “neural balm” and an antidote to disconnection.

Our sense of connection to others doesn’t just impact mental health, it directly influences motivation.

Motivation at work is largely impacted by our feelings of connection to others. We feel inspired when we’re reminded that we’re not alone in our endeavors and that our experiences are not ours alone to struggle through. One of the things that makes burnout particularly detrimental is its link to loneliness.

Inspire. When someone sees the best in us, it motivates and inspires us to become better. The same holds true for employee-supervisor relationships. Research also shows that when we feel inspired by someone’s positive perspective of us it inspires us to improve. Whether it’s an employee or a friend, we feel valued when others acknowledge and celebrate our strengths. This kind of interaction is deeply energizing, which further enhances productivity. Everyone wants to feel respected and appreciated for their unique strengths.

Use technology with intentionality to strengthen relationships, while breaking the negative habits technology fosters.

Authors Jen Fisher and Anh Phillips explain how our increasing connection to technology is decreasing our connection to people. In their book, Work Better Together, they discuss why human skills like relationship-building, empathy, and emotional intelligence, are essential to the future of work and how remote work and our "24/7" society is increasing isolation and burnout that is negatively impacting staff happiness and engagement. Armed with this knowledge, managers can co-generate team norms around hours of work availability, sacrosanct downtime, and what constitutes reasons to “flex the norms” on a rare occasion.

Managers can also seek input and guidance from their staff, ensuring that they hear the diverse and valuable perspectives of younger team members, more senior team members, culturally-diverse, and neuro-divergent team members. Yes, it may take a little more time and be a little more work, but the benefits for all are worthwhile.

Manage workplace relationships, whether you’re in the office every day or telecommuting—or something in between. What are the in-person meaningful social or collaboration touchpoints that work for your team and your business? Put those in place. Keep things fresh. Check that they are working. Re-design when something new is needed. Let others be part of the new “social design.”

Develop a culture of strong relationships that drives quality collaboration throughout the organization. Define what this really means to your team. Embed relationship building into your weeks without adding to the time burden. Getting to know each other, group outings, team retreats, challenges, competitions, book groups, games, sing alongs – are all ways to bond. Design meetings to strengthen skills by working through challenges, differing opinions, making tough decisions together. Even remotely being online with each other at the same time while working on your individual projects, but being able to ask questions or chat, can bring collegiality into a day.

What Individuals Can Do to Build Strong Connections
Invest in meaningful relationships outside of work. Invest time and energy at least once a week to call a friend, talk about a topic that interests you both, go and do something you enjoy together. Those who work through the discomfort and time investment of nurturing their friendships reap the rewards of being understood and supported by friends, especially during tough times.

Buffer your time against draining interactions. You can create rules for when you check email or make phone calls. Block time in your calendar for breaks or energizing projects. Create hard stops at the end of the day. One leader who thrived, even during his busiest times, would change his clothes after finishing his work day so that he could get into the mindset of stopping work to enjoy time with family and friends.

Develop emotional and social intelligence. How you handle emotions (especially “big ones”) is critical to your ability to navigate inevitable conflicts and challenges. Are you self-aware? Can you name your emotions? Do you know your triggers? Can you regulate your emotions? One of the fastest and most efficient ways to regulate your emotions is through breathing. Taking that pause with a few deep breaths can be the difference between reaction versus considered response. It can be the difference between being a draining, toxic presence, and being the person with whom people feel psychologically safe to navigate troubled waters.

Social attunement helps you relate to others. Can you read others’ voice tone, emotional tone, and body language? Can you discern cultural context? Do you know how to show compassion toward others? These social skills are crucial to enjoyable group interactions.

Conclusion
Healthy work relationships – be they at an individual or organizational level - benefit more people, and everyone experiences moments of genuine happiness and satisfaction. Businesses thrive under such leadership. Leaders can carry forward positive energy and empathy in a team’s days. When your team feels inspired and cared for, they bring their best selves to work and increase their discretionary effort. Individuals, too, can develop their relationship skills. They help you have a satisfying life outside of work, and the same skills boost your impact at work.

​What’s good for individuals, is good for businesses, and is good for communities. Thrive.

Thank you for reading!

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