People with strong, trust-based relationships at work are healthier, happier, and more likely to perform at their peak to earn more money and achieve greater success in business and life. More importantly, relationship building—or connecting—is a skilled activity that anyone with a growth mindset can learn, practice, and perfect.
With this in mind, think about your own relationship-building style. Does relationship building come easy to you, or do you find it difficult to reach out and connect with others? Perhaps you find yourself somewhere in the middle.
Dealing with the opportunities and challenges of the workplace starts with an understanding that everything in business is connected to other people. Not even the most technical, data-driven workforce operates in a vacuum—making relationship building integral to the success of individuals and teams across all levels of an organization.
By developing a deeper understanding of your relationship-building style, you learn the competencies that you need to develop to boost your workplace effectiveness. You also gain a better sense of how to accommodate the styles of others and facilitate a more communicative and collaborative work environment.
Assess Your Relationship-Building Style
Developed by The Galvanizing Group through its work with high-performance companies and teams, the free online Business Relationship Builder Assessment is a simple 10-question tool that takes most people about five minutes to complete. It evaluates the six key relationship-building competencies illustrated in the graphic below.
As you evaluate your effectiveness as a relationship builder, consider the following questions:
- Do I approach relationship building with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?
- Do I align my relationship-building activities with my goals and objectives?
- Do I demonstrate credibility, reliability, and low self-orientation?
- Do I plan, manage, and measure my relationship-building activities?
- Do I understand, interact, & communicate well with others?
- Do I cultivate relationship-building opportunities that benefit others?
Ready to identify your Business Relationship Builder Type? Click here to take the five-minute assessment and receive a detailed assessment report.
Next Steps
The Business Relationship Builder Assessment is a first step toward understanding your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges as a relationship builder. You might also meet with a trusted mentor, boss, colleague, or friend—someone who will review your results and offer an honest assessment of your capabilities.
Next, identify the specific areas in which you’d like to grow and improve. You may need to adjust your mindset, evaluate the quality of your connections, or restructure the way that you work. Perhaps it’s a combination of all three. Then ask yourself, “What can I start doing right now to cultivate stronger connections?”
Finally, it is not enough to want to be a better relationship builder. Instead, think critically about the relationships you need to cultivate to meet your goals and objectives. Then create a structured framework for analyzing your connections, identifying opportunities and gaps, and mapping out a plan of action. Keep in mind that your plan will need to evolve as you shift priorities, meet milestones, and build new and strong relationships.
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About the Author
Patrick Galvin is a professional speaker, TEDx presenter, and author of The Way series of business parables. He is also the chief galvanizer of The Galvanizing Group, a learning and development company offering coaching, training, and online courses to high-performance companies and teams who seek a systematic and measurable approach to trust-based business relationship building.
Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash