3 Tips to Build Better Relationships with Your Employees
When
people feel connected to you, even difficult conversations feel less
threating. Here are three tips to forge stronger bonds with your
employees:
- Relate whenever you can. View every interaction as an opportunity to get to know someone a little better. Make a habit of asking employees one question about their work or their personal lives each time you encounter them.
- Take note of subtleties. People seek emotional connection through countless small “bids” for attention—questions, gestures, or looks. Take stock of how much you notice these cues . You might also solicit some feedback from friends and family on how well you listen and respond to social cues in general.
- Regularly express appreciation. Research shows that the ratio of positive to negative interactions is 5:1 in a successful relationship. You don’t need to pay someone five compliments before offering criticism, but do be mindful of the ratio.
Stop Talking About Yourself When You Apologize
Admitting
a mistake can fall flat if you apologize the wrong way. The victim of
your screw-up does not want to hear about you. Instead ask yourself: Who
am I talking to, and what is he or she looking for in my apology?
- A stranger or mere acquaintance wants you to offer compensation or some redeeming action. Compensation can be tangible, like paying to repair your neighbor's fence when you accidentally back your car into it, or emotional, like being extra thoughtful.
- Your colleague or friend wants empathy. When you recognize and express concern over the suffering you caused, the victim feels understood and valued, and trust is restored.
- Your team wants an acknowledgement of the rules and norms you violated. Basically, you need to admit that you broke the code of behavior of your social group or organization, and that you recognize you let them down.
Help Your Company Cut Back on Email
You
can’t control how many emails you receive, but you can control how many
you send. In a recent study, one firm’s workers followed suit when
their executives reduced overall email output. You can spark a similar
reduction and improve efficiency across your organization by doing the
following:
- Choose the right medium. Consider whether your communication merits a phone call or in-person meeting, where vocal tone and body language provide real-time feedback on how clearly a message is being understood.
- Be deliberate. Don’t forward messages unless strictly necessary, and limit the number of recipients on each outgoing note.
- Make it real. Set a target for reducing the number of messages you send. Include it in your performance goals to keep yourself honest.
A 1-Minute Trick for Better Negotiations
How
do you negotiate better? Simple: Beforehand, take a minute or two to
focus on what you have to gain and what you hope to achieve – and banish
all thoughts of what you might lose. List everything you hope to
accomplish and the ways you will benefit if you are successful. Re-read
this list just before the negotiation begins. Throughout the exercise,
it’s important to try not to focus on what could go wrong. Great
negotiators stay focused on their ideal target, despite the risks they
face. With practice, this focus-training will become easier and,
eventually, automatic.
Where Your Company Shouldn’t Compete
The first step in setting a winning strategy for your company is deciding where you will do business. But you need to be careful in these choices. Here are two places you should avoid:
- Your biggest competitor’s space. It’s tempting to take on your strongest opponent head-to-head. But most often their market will be essentially a walled city. Instead look for competitive areas that enable you to attack from unexpected directions, along the lines of least resistance.
- The white space. Being a first mover in unoccupied territory is an attractive position. But remember that there is only one true first mover, and all too often that space is already occupied by a formidable competitor that you probably don’t see or understand.
Make Good Decisions Faster
A simple approach can help replace your slow deliberations with fast decisions. Try this framework:
- Know your ultimate objective. The biggest hurdle to fast decisions is criteria overload. Of the seven or eight possible objectives you would love to meet, which one or two will make the biggest impact? Consider which stakeholder you least want to disappoint—which goal would they care about most?
- Get a second opinion. Asking one other person can broaden your frame of reference and help eliminate judgment errors. Plus, the act of explaining your situation anew often gives you fresh insights.
- Do something. Select one option while letting go of all the other "good" ones. No amount of deliberation can guarantee that you have identified the "right" option, but remember: The purpose of a decision is not choose perfectly, but to get you to the next decision.
Avoid the Pitfalls of Positive Feedback
Praise
should motivate your employees, but in some cases it does just the
opposite. Here’s how to make sure positive feedback actually works:
- Don’t cushion the blow. Don’t routinely say something “nice” before giving criticism. Doing so conditions people to hear positive feedback as a hollow preamble to your real message. Lead instead with your investment in the relationship and reasons for having the conversation.
- Praise effort, not personal attributes. Intelligence, talent, or abilities are mostly innate and cannot be actively replicated. Instead, compliment effort and explain exactly what actions prompted your approval. If you’re specific, you’ll reinforce the desired behavior.
Build a Climate of Trust
Humans
“read” body language and facial expressions to discern if others are
trustworthy, but some situations – like change or confusion – prime us
for distrust. In the absence of information, the brain works overtime.
After all, we’re programmed to anticipate harm and protect ourselves
from it. But even when your team lacks clarity on a situation, you can
still build a trusting environment. Think about a time when your boss
and a colleague starting meeting regularly and you didn’t know why. You
probably started wondering if you’d been left out of an important
project. Leaders can shift people’s thoughts away from threats by
fostering an open, transparent environment in which everyone shares and
discusses as much as they can about what’s really going on. This sends a
strong signal to everyone’s lower brain that “trust is in the air.”
