10x Authentic Relationships
How to build authentic relationships at the workplace?
As a people's manager it’s imperative to build a trusting, emphatic and a lasting relationship with your direct and cross-functional team(s).
Human beings are social creatures
The great philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Man is by nature a social animal.” Humans are wired to connect and have the most interesting social behavior of all the creatures. Our social interactions and connections are not just limited to our homes as we spend more time at work with our co-workers, building authentic social relationships should be an essential part of a managers' toolkit.
Human beings share mirror neurons that allow us to match each other’s emotions unconsciously and immediately, we anticipate and mirror each other’s movements when we’re in sympathy or agreement with one another, we mirror each other’s brain activity when we’re engaged in storytelling and listening.
What’s an authentic relationship?
An authentic relationship is based on truth, respect and mutual trust. In the workplace, these qualities are essential for effective teamwork and healthy, professional relationships. Authenticity is also about being appreciated and valued for the true self you show up as. And beyond being embraced for who they are by their team, employees want to feel that their contributions, ideas, and opinions are valued. Vulnerability is an important tenet of authenticity. As a manager, you’re expected to believe in a brighter future, but that shouldn’t degenerate to toxic positivity. You also need to lead by example and admit your mistakes openly. This allows the team members to perceive your human side of it without filters, and it often is the source of deeper engagement and inspiration. Bottom line, people want to feel respected for who they are.
Building authentic relationships at work
As with building any relationship, establishing authentic relationships takes time and patience as well and there is no magic bullet or a well known recipe to achieve this as every individual is different in their social interactions. In some few independent studies it was seen that it might take up to 3 months for people to share their real emotions at their workplace.
In my experience I have seen people open up more in less formal settings. I tend to have my interactions over a walk or a cup of coffee or during a lunch break when we have lunch together. The key thing to remember when establishing these relationships is to not show-up half present, conflicted, distracted that will not let you hold the attention of your listener and not have any expectations from the conversation.
During these casual discussions, my team gets to see my human side as well, I think it's important to convey that managers are normal beings with emotions that have a family and a social life, I have been in situations where managers tend to build a wall between their professional and social life creating a mechanistic relationship, while this might work to achieve the defined tasks for teams, this relationship feels transactional and as a result it might not last for a long time.
I remember a situation where few team members had just landed in the US and didn’t have a car or a license to drive for their essential grocery shopping, I got to know this during my discussion with them, I was able to drive them, it did take some time and effort for me but the team was so thankful for my gesture, small acts like this go a long way in establishing a human connection and building lasting relationships.
Importance of building authentic relationships
People leaders should possess the innate ability to read other people reliably and quickly and have the skills to connect with them at important moments and situations to build an emphatic and trusting relationship.
It’s important to genuinely recognize, appreciate and celebrate individual achievements as it helps build a trusting and a positive work environment. It’s equally important to provide candid and honest feedback on areas they need to improve.
All of this preparation and hard work empowers leaders to share their vision across to teams in powerful and persuasive ways and build strong relationships that enable them to deliver successful outcomes for their teams.
In today’s work atmosphere where human interactions have become minimal due to remote/hybrid work settings, it becomes imperative for a leader to possess and enhance the skills of building strong and authentic relationships at work. It can be fun, interesting, exciting and these relationships often last for a lifetime.
By no means I am advocating that as part of building these relationships there shouldn’t be any boundaries, I wouldn't share any confidential information that my team members shouldn’t have access to or not supposed to be aware of at the same time, I try to be as transparent as I can be.
Authentic relationships help foster, open, honest communications within teams and make your teams feel their opinions valued. Authenticity cannot be faked and comes naturally for leaders with good emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
Drawbacks of authenticity
Interestingly too much authenticity has some drawbacks as it encourages people to stay in their comfort zone and put less effort as they potentially can and push themselves to do better and also can lead to pushing back on their managers and lead to cases where authenticity can be used to exhibit other personality traits that are not appreciated at workplace, leaders with good emotional intelligence can inhibit these behaviors by emphasizing on ability to show emotion in a healthy manner and not create an uncomfortable work environment.
As a leader if you are genuinely authentic and your team reciprocates this care and respect, you can motivate teams to move forward and push them to work harder during rough patches, which often there will be and make changes to improve productivity and performance, this enables us to become an effective advocate and a strong leader.
Summary
Building authentic relationships takes time and effort for managers, building genuine relationships are not all about business, they are personal and doesn’t necessarily mean you are socializing with that person but you seek to understand who they are outside of a business setting, trying to understand what they are passionate about and what motivates them to do what they do and create the common ground you have with your team resulting in fruitful relationships. Authentic relationships add value to the business and your life and we should look to add value to relationships with time, resources and connections.
10xManager