Making Relationships Work

I was recently on a Panel and was asked what did I consider one of the most important professional skills that any manager could have? Without hesitation I said ‘knowing how to make relationships work.’  Why? Because ultimately, being a manager is about managing people. The same applies to leaders. The most effective leaders know how to engage people and that means knowing how to have a relationship with them.

 So there is a real question here for anybody who wants to progress professionally, namely, do you know how to make relationships work with peers, subordinates and with those above you? They’re all relationships but often people are better at doing one of these than the others.

Even if they are good at all of them, I have yet to meet someone who couldn’t be better. And how about taking these skills home too? Why leave them at the office?  Your family might appreciate them!

Being able to start and maintain good relationships is obviously one of the keys to professional success. If you can’t do that that then you just get peoples’ backs up and it’s very hard for them to take you seriously. It also makes it hard for them to collaborate with you. But it is also really important for your personal happiness. Why? Because when we relate well we feel real, we feel valued and we feel understood. We also act differently – we are more ourselves.

When this is not happening all sorts of things begin to unravel. In the case of professionals if you don’t relate well you can pay dearly for it through lost credibility and lost promotion. I’ve worked with many people who had great technical expertise but were seen as a liability when it came to customer relations. Kept in the back room their careers were suffering and they would have stayed there if not for the coaching we did.

In our personal lives being able to relate authentically is obviously important. And it’s not just about being with someone. You can be living with someone but that doesn’t mean you’re relating well to them. I’ve certainly worked with people who describe feeling pretty lonely as they look across at ‘the stranger at the breakfast table’.

For me, one of the pleasures of working with people has been developing the tools to start and maintain great relationships because there are real things you can do.

Pretty much any relationship can be enhanced. I have worked with couples where things are actually pretty good and they want them to be great. Now that is of a different order. Can you make a good relationship great? Yes you can!

What about future relationships? Can you prepare now to make them work? Of course!

Knowing how to do these things is a practical skill. There are some very important how tos that go with knowing how to make relationships work.

Because of this I’ve decided to commit to doing a day in the autumn to share with people some of the tools I use which help ensure relationships work. So if you’re interested for yourself or for others in  ‘How to Make Relationships Work’ I’ll look forward to seeing you then.

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Excellence – Walking the Talk

You know one of the most common words I hear banded about when I’m talking with consultants and when I’m consulting myself in organisations is the word ‘excellence’. And invariably people say that they want it or that they would like to see more of it. But what I don’t hear so often is people talking about how they would ensure that within their own organisation and within their own practice they would make certain that their excellence was consistently being achieved. That I think is rather more challenging and in a way excellence is a bit like charity, you know, it begins at home. 

So it is all very well talking about achieving an excellent product or an excellent service but who’s to say it is excellent and would you be willing to submit yourself to the scrutiny of assessors who would determine on a comparative basis how excellent is your excellence? This was a process that many years ago set us thinking about how we might ensure that we really did walk our talk. I am mindful of this today especially because a little why ago I had a call from the ITS office telling us that for the 9^th consecutive year we have just been awarded our IS0 9001 badge because of outstanding organisational excellence. What that means is that the ISO inspector has been on the premises for much of the day looking at the way we do things and determining do these work to the benefit of our clients and customers and do we have practices in place that ensure that pretty much whatever happens we have a consistent way of working which delivers. 

While we might like to think we do, the real test is when somebody from outside, who is passionate about this kind of excellence subjects us to scrutiny and tells us yay or nay. And actually here we are as I say for the ninth consecutive year, ITS has just been given a big thumbs up with compliments to the team regarding the quality of those processes and how they have improved over time and every year rather than us being told well you’re nearly there instead we pass with flying colours. There might be some little tweak that can be offered which is actually very valuable where we learn other processes which we can add to what we do.

So this set me thinking, much talk about excellence but I don’t know how many organisations are willing to subject themselves to this kind of scrutiny, to really do what it takes to say ‘Yes, we want to know’ and ‘Yes, we want the feedback’. It is only when you are willing to do that can you get an external view on ‘where are we?’ and ‘what might we do to enhance performance?’. So this is just by way of course congratulations to the team doing an absolutely outstanding job and frankly for doing it whilst carrying on with business as usual. It is now at the point where the structures are so robust that it is not some frantic last minute preparation before an examiner comes in, it is just a way of doing business. I think that there is a lesson here in terms of creating structures that allow excellence to just bubble forth and to be the norm.

So, another year and I have no doubt that we will be enjoying our tenth year, a year from now because we will be putting our minds to it and making sure that we don’t just talk about excellence we really do it. Congratulations to the team and all this in the hope that we can better serve those who are our clients and whose lives we seek to benefit by offering the kind of experiences that are part of the parcel of what makes us who we are.

Until the next time. 

Also listen to Ian's blog here:

listen to ‘Excellence - Walking the Talk’ on Audioboo