5 Ways To Deepen Working Relationships

Janine: [00:00:00] I've been asked quite a lot recently via emails and thank you so much for all of the feedback, all of the fabulous feedback and all of the questions that you're sending me. There's a key question that keeps coming up again and again and again and it Relates to this concept of connection, this concept of deepening our working relationships and the question has been, Janine, how do I do that?

Now, there's something that I've been noticing quite recently in business. And it is our tendency to get so wrapped up in the everyday tasks, in the things that we are doing every day, in our own self interests, that the risk is we actually become very disconnected from the people around us. The risk is, is that we live in a world of spreadsheets.

So hitting KPIs of project plans of meeting those sales targets that we actually forget to look up [00:01:00] and truly connect with those people that we work with, those people that sit to the left or the right of us, there's people that above or below us, and what happens is we become blind to all those people around us, the people that we're trying to work with.

Right. Genuine engagement is a powerful tool. Genuine and intentional connection is something that we need to work on. It's something that we actually need to cultivate in all areas of our life if we are truly wanting to create influence and if we truly want to create impact through our work and in this lifetime.

It involves creating space for others to be themselves. It involves embracing your imperfections and really putting in that effort, going that extra mile foster and develop those meaningful relationships, those meaningful connections that you want to help you both now and into tomorrow. It's about taking the [00:02:00] time fundamentally to understand and be curious about the passions and the dreams and the lives of our colleagues, our loved ones, and the people around us.

I need to think for a second about when was the last time that you actually paused? When was the last time that you stopped and you paused and you had this genuine conversation to actually connect on a deeper level? Maybe ask yourself, what do you really know about the people that you're working with?

What do you really know about your clients? Do you actually know anything apart from the day to day requirements of the job. Have you actually got to know them? It's so essential to shift our focus from calendar commitments and project plans to the people. At the end of the day, people buy people. People want to work with people.

It's the people that make up our lives. It's the people that make work worth doing. It's the people that give us purpose. It's the people that actually give us the energy to keep going every day. [00:03:00] To deepen relationships and to enhance engagement. I've got a couple of thoughts that I want you to think about over the course of this coming week.

The first one is around initiating meaningful conversations. Maybe take a moment to engage with your team, Or even engage with someone in your family, a loved one, on a more personal level. Ask about their interests. Maybe ask them what they dream of. Ask them, you know, what do they want to feel like when they complete that project, when they achieve that goal.

Really try and show a genuine interest over and above Work related matters. It's about being interested in them, not just being interested in the work. It's about being interested in them because these conversations are the very ones that will build trust and will foster stronger connections. And it reminds me of, um, I was working [00:04:00] with a client.

A few years ago, she headed up a property company and she was getting increasingly frustrated because her team weren't delivering through on the sales targets. And I asked her, well, what's going on? And she actually couldn't answer it. I then said to her, Do you know anything about your team? And the challenge that I set her was for two weeks to have meetings with her team, not to talk about work, but to actually get curious about their lives.

At the end of that two weeks, we reconnected and it was just fabulous what she'd learned. She learned about a member of her team that was looking after an aged parent. She learned, learned about their hobbies. learned about the things that were firing them up, the things that interested them, and I then asked her, what are you going to do with this information?

And what was fascinating for me was. That's how much deeper she then thought about how she was going to inspire, how she was going to reward, how she [00:05:00] was going to implement team activities that were going to bring that team together. Now, those things wouldn't have happened if she hadn't have initiated those meaningful connections.

I want you to think about that. So that's number one. Number two, maybe consider how you can create space for more vulnerability, for more honest conversation. It's about encouraging an environment where people do feel comfortable, where they feel like it's okay to be their authentic selves, where it's okay to be brave enough to share their goals and their dreams and how they feel, where it's okay to be brave enough to have the conversations that they want to have, where it's okay to ask for help.

All of those things. Have a think about how you're going to create that space for your team, for your loved ones, for your clients, what do you need to do? Because I think we've got to create this space [00:06:00] to enable ourselves, as well as the people around us, to embrace their imperfections and their mistakes, to openly have a conversation about it, to be courageous enough to not just share what they.

don't know and to ask for help, but to also genuinely and generously share what they know. To, understand that it's okay to talk through mistakes, to talk through what they do differently, to understand that these vulnerable conversations, these real conversations are a huge opportunity for growth.

And when we create that space, when we create that space for vulnerability, what you do is you allow others to bring their whole selves To the table, to the conversation and actually have this incredible ability to meet them where they're at, to engage in the work that needs to be done and to unlock other people's true potential.

And that's exactly what we want, isn't it? We want to unlock their potential to enable the ideas and the innovations that all of us are [00:07:00] seeking to take our businesses into the future. So think about how you can create a vulnerable place for sharing. Now, the third one is to practice active listening.

This is harder than it sounds. Now, when was the last time that you truly listened? You didn't listen to respond, but you actually listened to understand. You listened to ask the next question, you listen to go deeper on the conversation. awesome thought leader in this space, my very good friend, Oscar Trimboli has written a great book called Deep Listening.

And he, in that book shares various frameworks that actually do take a lot of practice to be able to shut down your head, shut down your mouth, and actually listen really carefully. Truly listening is a powerful tool for engagement. When someone speaks, it's about being really present. It's about [00:08:00] being attentive.

It's making sure that you are avoiding distractions and that you're actively listening to their words. You're picking up on the emotion behind their words. You're picking up on any concerns they have. To some extent, you're truly listening for the thing that they're not saying. And that's where I Talk about going deeper on that questioning.

And what are you, tell me more about that. Can you explain to me why you've said that? I'm really curious to understand what makes you think that. Tell me more. So these questions that you can layer into the conversation to allow that conversation to go deeper, this active listening piece demonstrates.

An incredible respect and genuine interest in the person that you're talking to and a genuine interest and respect for their perspective. It's exactly what we need right now in this world that we're living in, where the reality is we're all trying to find ways to innovate, to ideate, to sense [00:09:00] make, to become better tomorrow than we are today, both personally and in our businesses.

So that's number three, active listening. The fourth thing to consider is strategic partnerships. You know, if you're looking at creating more impact, in your business through your work, both for your clients, your team and for yourself, then strategic partnerships may be a way to do it. Engaging with external stakeholders, such as suppliers and industry experts and influencers often opens up these doors for strategic partnerships and collaborations to happen. And when we build these authentic connections, when we're curious about how we can help each other, when we're listening deeply for the problems that other people have, and we're curiously connecting dots as to how we may help, that is where you're able to gain valuable resources and knowledge and open up opportunities where you can [00:10:00] potentially propel your business forward, together and in partnership. These partnerships can lead to new markets, increased visibility, higher revenue streams, all of that stuff. But it requires you to have a conversation that isn't one of transferring information, that isn't one of telling, that isn't one of shouting from the rooftops, how awesome you are, but is more one of curiously understanding what their challenges are, what their problems are, what their measures of success are, and then connecting the dots to see if there is an opportunity so to work together so that there is that mutual value exchange. And with that comes my final point. I think when we build better relationships, when we connect deeper, we have this incredible opportunity to unlock new ideas and thinking.

So that's my fifth point. We unlock new ideas and thinking. Without realizing it, the risk for so many of us is that we can get stuck in a rut. We can get stuck in a [00:11:00] loop of doing the same thing day after day. We can actually get stuck. stuck in our comfort zone without even realizing it. when I was in New York, I was listening to an incredible, futurist called Edie Weiner.

She's the founder and CEO of a company called the Future Hunters. And she was sharing that her view on us being future ready is it's really challenging because every single one of us, she argues, is stuck in this space of educationally incapacitated, and we are not willing to unlearn what we know. We're stuck in that loop. We're stuck in the zone of what we know.

If we're going to navigate this adaptive challenge that we're in, if we're going to build effective working relationships, if we're going to nurture and be much more intentional about our connections, we've got to get out of our own way and we've got to get curious about where our own habits and routines, where we've got so comfortable that they're [00:12:00] starting to impact our thinking.

and so, If we're too busy ticking off our to do list, if we're too busy transactionally, um, having conversations, if we're too busy hustling, our risk is that we're going to become very robotic in how we're going to problem solve and how we're going to find solutions to our problems. And yet the challenges that we're facing right now require all of us to get new thinking.

We've got to get out of our own way. as Edie shared, we've got to get out of that that space of educationally incapacitated and actually get more curious about what we don't know, what perspective we haven't thought of, what ideas are out there. We've got to go deeper on this intentional connection to unlock more opportunities.

It requires us to be very intentional about creating the space for debate, for curious questioning, for respectfully challenging each other, for inviting new ideas into our everyday life, our everyday business. It requires us to embrace [00:13:00] a different perspective and, and be brave enough to hear different opinions, some of which you might not even agree with, some of which may even make you feel uncomfortable, but to do this and to To create the space for these conversations.

That's where we always have the magical aha moments that are actually going to be incredibly critical as we navigate, continue to navigate this very complex, challenging and competitive market space that we're all trying to operate in. Fundamentally engaging with others on this deeper level, brings about positive change, both personally and professionally.

It allows us to harness the collective power of our relationships, of our thinking and drive meaningful connections together, because honestly, if we can't do it, we can't do it on our own if we're not careful, we allow ourselves to get buried in work. We allow ourselves to come blind to those in your field of influence.

And that can only lead you [00:14:00] towards disaster. Thank you. If you want to welcome greater profits, if you want to welcome more clients into your business, if you want to start creating more engagement and influence, if you want to build your competitive advantage, it starts with understanding that people have to be at the center of how you make decisions.

It starts with being intentional about how you connect and how you build these deeper relationships. So this week I want to challenge you to go beyond the surface. I want you to Think about taking a little bit more time to connect with the people that you work with and those in your personal life.

Maybe ask questions that go beyond work related topics and show genuine curiosity. Actively listen and embrace that richness that does exist. Of human connection, of embracing diversity of thinking, of having a curious conversation and debate, knowing that at the end of it, you're going to be much more [00:15:00] clear about the direction you want to take and the next conversation you want to have.

Have an awesome week and I'll see you next week.