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“What do your people say motivates them?”

Find out by asking them and when you know, build on it, big time!

Why Workplace Relationships Are So Valuable

Management is the art of getting the very best from your people.

It is essentially a people skill that many managers have, yet struggle to make the best of. The workplace relationships you form are most likely the major critical factor in your success.

The purpose of creating effective relationships with each and every one of your employees has many aspects. And every single one of them adds value to your proposition as a manager.

That’s why building relationships adds much more value than having a buddy or two in the team.

Here are a few reasons that give purpose to relationship building – reminding us that every minute we spend getting to know our people well, is a great minute’s work!

• Power of More than One – When we synergize our efforts, using the great interactions we have with our people, it is incredibly productive
• Openness – workplace relationships worked well, offer the opportunity to share more; explain more; create more, in an environment where trust is strong
• Hopes and Fears – as trust builds, each and every partner will feel able to expand their thinking – their personal thinking sometimes – and share with others, who will help
• Better Understanding – avoiding miscommunication, because the relationship is strong enough to ask if not sure, means we become more effective & efficient
• Feel Good – good relationships foster a general feeling of goodwill around the place, limiting politics and gossip, because ‘we just don’t do that round here’
• Unexpected Positives – the best relationships add fun into the mix, where we can share laughter and enjoy each other’s company
• Intuition – as our relationships build with our people, we are able to sense more, giving us the benefit of an ‘early warning system’ to catch problems early
• Getting Support – where we support and help our people, they realize that we have needs too and offer help where you might need it
• Hidden Talents and Skills – knowing our people well from the close interactions we have with them, means we get to know them well, uncovering the possibilities
• Problem Shared – is a problem halved – at least! When we trust and others trust us, we have a reservoir of talent to supplement our own. Sometimes, others really do have better solutions
• Bottom Line – the ultimate goal, providing focus and purpose to the work we do. Adding value to the results we seek is far, far easier when we have good working relationships with others in our teams

So, the purpose of building relationships in the workplace is many fold for anyone managing others.

From the purely business focused results to the emotional personal sense of success and belonging that it can create.

The time investment is minimal, because relationship building is best done in the moment, informally, so there are no excuses.

What are you waiting for – there’s no time like the present to make this your immediate goal.

Customer Complaints – Who Will Gather The Intelligence?

Complaints are a valuable asset to any organization, once you can ensure that your people are willing to play. And to get them with you, they need to know that it’s not personal.

There is no greater value than that to be gleaned from your customers and clients who are prepared to take the time to give you feedback – which is a much more constructive way to describe a complaint.

These gold nuggets are literally worth their weight, when you are able to capture, dissect and respond positively to what you find out. Yet many organizations revel in low complaint rates!

The key to this is your people – all of them. It’s about turning them from being fearful of when a complaint comes in, to positively gleeful, because of the enormous opportunity it presents.

By ensuring that every one of them is geared up to sense when things aren’t going well, you will create an army of willing volunteers who are ready for action. Their job is to seek out and get to the bottom of any dissatisfaction they perceive.

This has to happen in the moment, all the time, or it will have passed and the opportunity will have disappeared into the anonymity of an ended phone call; a person now back out on the street; or the lost data storage of an online interaction that never sees the light of day.

It needs to be pro-actively sought, not passively responded to – or worse, swept under the carpet with the hope it will go away.

By encouraging your people to engage and interact with their clients, in any way at all, they will be able to get under the tough skin of a dissatisfied customer ‘not wanting to make a fuss’. They have to smell it out or it will slink away, unspoken, which is of no use at all to you.

They will probably capture more customer dissatisfaction, than you expect, especially to start with.

And when they do, it’s to be applauded. It’s to be celebrated.

Working as a team to find out critical information from those who have it, is a tactic any manager can adopt to ensure that customer service progresses, whilst also building the team togetherness ethic in a constructive, value-creating way.

By encouraging each and every one of them to engage their clients in any way they can, will make the conversation much more open and relaxed – and valuable.

Because, with this in place, many of your customers can easily be asked what they would love changed if they had the choice in the experience they have most recently had.

And that gives you – and your team – the vital intelligence to make your offer even better than it already is.

(c) 2010 Martin Haworth. This is a short excerpt from one of 52 lessons in management development at Super Successful Manager!, an easy to use, step-by-step weekly development program for managers of EVERY skill level. Find out more at http://www.SuperSuccessfulManager.com.