How to Develop Effective Work Relationships

Effective Interpersonal Relationships Are Key to Success

You can damage your career and work relationships by the actions you take and the behaviors you exhibit with coworkers at work. No matter your education, your experience, your personality, or your title, if you can’t play well with others, you will never accomplish your work mission. And, what is your key desire at work? To accomplish your work mission.

Effective interpersonal work relationships form the cornerstone for success and satisfaction with your job and your career.

How important are effective work relationships?

They form the basis for promotional opportunities, pay increases, goal accomplishment, and job satisfaction.

The Gallup organization studied indicators of work satisfaction. They found that whether you have a best friend at work was one of the twelve key questions asked of employees that predicted job satisfaction. Without a friend at work, work satisfaction deteriorates.

What Happens When You Don’t Play Well With Others?

A supervisor who worked in a several-hundred-person company quickly earned a reputation for not playing well with others. He collected data and used the data to find fault, place blame, and make other employees look bad. He enjoyed identifying problems and problem patterns, but he rarely suggested solutions.

He bugged his supervisor weekly for a bigger title and more money so that he could tell the other employees what to do. When he announced that he was job hunting, not a single employee suggested that the company take action to convince him to stay.

He had burned his bridges all along the way. And no one will have a good word to say about him when an employer who is checking references comes their way.