5 Ways to Develop More Meaningful Relationships at Work

Happy Monday. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another episode of Green Apple Slices. I’ve got my fingers crossed. I just got back from Texas and let’s see if Rachel picks up. The account’s group leader of the world for Sage is Rachel Fisch, yes.

Rachel: I just love how every week I get a promotion. That’s fantastic.

John: Right, right. You’re the Oprah of Sage. Every week, we always get together and talk through an article about culture, engagement and things like that, how people can make work a little bit better. This one was on inc.com and it was 5 Ways to Develop More Meaningful Relationships at Work, an article by Beth Fisher-Yoshida. I thought this was interesting and something that maybe I could have benefited from when I worked because I clearly do not get along with anyone.

Rachel: I know.

John: I thought it was good. I thought it was interesting. There were the five different ways and one was fostering open communication. Two, was building trust. Three, was managing the pace, four was controlling your emotions and five was creating mutually beneficial outcomes. All different and a couple of things that we haven’t really talked about before in relationship building as well.

Rachel: Overall it was a good article. I just felt that, that was like okay so we’re back to the five steps to whatever. Now, it is a good read. It is short read but it is a little lighter.

John: It’s quick to read though, people are busy.

Rachel: It is good and it talks about these five components of collaborative relationships. I think that these are things that come naturally to a lot of people. Where it doesn’t come naturally to you, you can certainly take advantage of that. The one that actually stuck out for me wasn’t some of the obvious ones because I feel like building trust — those are things that good leaders naturally do. But one of the things that I found the most interesting at least was number three which was managing the pace, because I hadn’t ever seen that concept in terms of communication.

So I thought that was pretty interesting. It’s basically talking about relationships take time. And so there’s a window in which you’re going to feel comfortable to pace and establish these other things that you’re working on. And so by keeping in mind that you can have short term goals and long term goals within collaborative communication to keep what the pace of those things will need to be to achieve those goals. I thought that was kind of an interesting concept.

John: Yeah. That is interesting because I mean it prevents me from being a stalker.

Rachel: I don’t know if anything would prevent you from being a stalker. But we’ve got guidelines. We at least, we’ve got the guidelines and you can read the article, John.

John: There it is, everybody. Everybody, I just call up everybody all the time. Hey, what are you doing now? How about now?

Rachel: Come on.

John: Okay. What about now? But I do think it is interesting that people don’t always think about the relationships because they’re just trying to get the work done. The research that I’ve done, there’s the big green button at greenapplepodcast.com people can do. But from asking people, why don’t you share hobbies and passions and interests. There isn’t charge code to build relationships. We don’t get paid to build relationships. We get paid for output. But the problem is, is that without those relationships, the output doesn’t happen as well or as efficiently. It’s something that I think people forget about. You kind of have to make a conscious effort to make it a priority.

Rachel: Well, I was just going to say, people don’t naturally come to the conclusion that connecting better with my colleagues and my peers are going to help me deliver these outcomes better. I just don’t think that, that’s a natural — it seems like these are two completely unrelated things that put together, do a great job at — we’ve talked about productivity and profitability and all these other things. But it’s those two elements actually coming together that enables all of that.

John: Right absolutely. Yeah. I would like to say if it wasn’t for this relationship and you being on this podcast, you would not be the opera of Sage of the world. See how relationships work there, Rachel.

Rachel: Sure. Should we talk about number five, creating mutually beneficial outcomes?

John: Yeah, exactly. Where is my benefit here?

Rachel: Wait a minute.

John: Oh, I got to talk to Rachel. There it is.

Rachel: That’s right.

John: Absolutely. But if you want to read the article, go to greenapplepodcast.com and I made a mention there of the research that I’m doing. It’s the green button there, take 60 seconds. It’s super quick. But yeah, that’d be very cool and follow us on Twitter at GreenApplePod or I’m at RecoveringCPA, Rachel is at FischBooks. Don’t forget to hit subscribe, so you don’t miss any other future episodes. On Wednesdays, I do one-on-one interviews. And on Monday’s, Rachel is crazy enough to talk with me.

Rachel: Every Monday.

John: There you go. There you go, everybody. Have a great week, Rachel.

Rachel: You too, John.