Achieving high performance through better relationships at work

Read Time: 5 mins

What is relationship intelligence?

One of the key characteristics of people who excel at work is their relationship intelligence (RQ). It’s a type of emotional intelligence focused on building strong workplace relationships.

People with high RQ are shown to have a better time at work; higher performance; and more positive experiences with colleagues, team members, direct reports and superiors. They are more optimistic about the workplace and get promoted more often.

Collaboration and diversity

The rise of the digital workplace means that there is less need for the rote ‘doing’ work and more of the strategic thinking work to do. As Dr Tim Scudder says, collaboration is more important than ever for high-performance teams. However, with collaboration comes different perspectives, different ways of working and sometimes conflict.

Lynda Gratton, the creator of Hotspots, identifies four fundamentals for high performance: energy, focus, coordination, collaboration. The latter two are dependent on the quality of relationships, especially when working in diverse teams.

According to Juliet Bourke, in her book Which two heads are better than one? diversity is fundamental to better problem solving and decision making. Linda Hill refers to ‘creative abrasion’ in which the most innovative companies amplify difference and diversity not minimise it.

Workplaces with fair diversity hiring will expose you to a variety of people with different skills and backgrounds. It will be a rich environment to make and grow new relationships with people like you and who are different from you.

All this collaboration with diverse people means you need the interpersonal skills to manage the differences. People who can understand how other people approach a task, who can know that everyone has different strengths, and who can adapt their style to suit different interactions outshine everyone else in the new collaborative workplace.

Building collaborative teams

When managers build teams, they use their networks. They remember people they have had good relationships with in the past and want to work with them again. They pull them forward and upward.

Team builders collect networks of people they know can deliver outcomes while maintaining relationships within a team.

Recently I heard a senior executive say: “When it’s all said and done, what do you remember from your time at this company? You remember the relationships; you remember the people, you remember how you were treated. And you take these memories into the next place you go, and when you want to recruit someone or recommend someone, this is what goes with you.” How wise are these words!

Good people know good people, as the saying goes.

RQ and health

On a more personal note, positive relationships also improve your health, increase morale, improve engagement, increase retention rates and reduce stress. On the flip side, poor connections are known risk factors for poor health. A study looking at interactions on Twitter found that negative social relationships, disengagement, and negative emotions (especially anger) were risk factors for heart disease. In contrast, positive emotions and engagement were found to be preventative factors.

Improving relationship skills

Like anything, some people have naturally high RQ, but relationship skills can be learnt to make your experience at work, and outside work, more fulfilling. You can learn how to improve your own RQ to build better relationships with others, and you can learn how to facilitate RQ in your team, so it is more productive and high performing.

Here are some tips for improving your RQ in the workplace:

1. Understand your own relationship needs

Hugh Mackay, in his new book The Inner Self: The joy of discovering who we really are, says you can become aware of your relationships and how you interact with others by looking into the faces of the people you work with, thinking about the people who will put up with you and most notably the people who rely on you.

If we were just a little more aware of our tendencies and attitudes, we would be more open to change.

Think about:

• What are your motives and values?
• Do you know what you need from others?
• What is your preferred form of communication: email, phone call, team meeting?
• What motivates you and how does this impact on the way you communicate. WHY do you do what you do and understand and HOW do you relate to others.

2. Understand other people’s relationship needs

It is easier to communicate with, and influence, someone when you understand what’s important to them. You are then able to choose the best approach for engaging people whose thinking and behaviour might be different from your own.

If you have a stakeholder who is systematic, organised and likes following processes, you will get the best outcome if you can present information in a logical, ordered way, with ideas backed up by facts. Communicate with them calmly and methodically, and in a way they will be receptive to.

Think about:

• Do you know what others need from you?
• What motivates the other person?
• What is their preferred form of communication: email, phone call, team meeting?
• What has worked well for you in the past when working with this person and what is best avoided?

3. Make the time to build relationships

We often take our everyday social interactions for granted, but each interaction we have with someone is a product of and builds on the next. The accumulation of everyday interactions is at the heart of the nature and quality of our relationships, which can influence both physical and mental health. We need to take deliberate time to build good relationships.

Think about:

• How can you dedicate some time in your day to relationship building? Even if it’s just a 10-minute conversation, replying to a post on LinkedIn or a coffee catch up
• Even short interactions help build the foundation of a good relationship, especially if they’re face-to-face
• Building relationships is a two-way process, so show appreciation whenever someone helps you and accept a compliment when it’s given. Everyone wants to feel that their work is appreciated.
• If you find yourself in conflict, take some time to think about how you can restore the relationship to a place of harmony

4. Develop your emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognise your own emotions, and clearly understand what they’re telling you.

Notice what happens in your head and your body when you are in conflict. These are early warning signs that a conversation or relationship is heading into negative territory. Be aware of your’ conflict triggers’ – what presses your buttons and how do you react. Awareness is the first step in managing your reaction.

High EQ also helps you to understand the emotions and needs of others.

Daniel Goleman has identified 4 four distinct areas of emotional intelligence to work on to improve our emotional reactions to others:

• Self-awareness—how we label, recognise, and understand our own emotions
• Self-management—how we apply self-awareness to self-regulate and respond without being impulsive or destructive
• Social awareness—how we understand the feelings and actions of others in the context of their environment
• Relationship management—how we apply social understanding to interact with others more positively and constructively.

If you want to learn how to grow your relationship intelligence and improve your high-performance skills, please get in touch.