How would your professional life change if 100% of the relationships involved were positive, productive and profitable? Although this sounds a bit idealistic, you can strive for great workplace relations by using some of the tips and techniques described throughout this article.

Positive workplace relations rely on three skills:

1. Having a good understanding of the person (people) that you have relations with;
2. Seeking first to understand others and then to be understood (Empathetic Listening); and 
3. Using positive communication strategies.

Good Understanding

Having a good understanding of others helps us adjust our behaviour to be able to get along well with them, thereby building good rapport. Understanding someone’s uniqueness can be accomplished by having an awareness that people have different personality behavioral styles. Each of these styles has distinct, predictable and observable behaviour patterns. Once you understand these personality styles, you will have the ability to get along with almost anyone. Personality style studies have been around for years. There are several modalities, however the one I personally choose to share with my audiences is that of Dr. Tony Alessandra, where four dominant behavioral styles are Director, Socializer, Thinker or Relator¹. If we take the advice of Dr. Alessandra, we can adopt a rule more superior to the old golden rule, namely the Platinum Rule. It says, “Do Unto Others As They Would Have You Do Unto Them”, or more simply stated “Treat Others As They Wish To Be Treated”.

Once you learn about the characteristics of each dominant personality style, you can quickly learn to read the person with whom you are dealing, and make minor adjustments to your own behaviour to relate better with that person. For example, a Director style is very direct and to the point in their communication. Their key desire is results. So if I am approaching a Director in a conversation to request money for my budget, I would use a strategy of being direct and showing them how giving me the money would benefit the bottom line results. I.e. “Bob, I need another $5,000 by Friday to ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to accommodate the large volume of sales projected by our sales department.” Short, sweet, and to the point, indicating the results with the request – just as a Director wants to hear it. I am in a much better opportunity of being successful with my request if I meet my audience on their personality style turf, even though I may be of a different personality style. This is more positive, more productive and much more profitable. Try it! First you will need to learn more about personality styles, however as you learn to listen for clues from other people, the better trained you will become at reading people before engaging in conversation. This leads us into the next step to good relations – Empathic Listening.

Empathetic Listening

“The dialogue of the deaf”, as described by Dr. Stephen Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, indicates that most of the time we don’t communicate, we just take turns talking. Since the basic need of a human being is the need to be understood, listening is more important than talking when in conversation with someone. Real empathic listening means that you are doing more than hearing someone’s words. It means that you seek to understand what they are saying and will provide feedback once you have heard what they are telling you. This ensures that you understand what has been said and that the person speaking feels like they have been understood. When we feel that we have been understood, we are likely to feel better about the relationship, resulting in more productive relations. The next time you have an opportunity to communicate with someone, tell him or her that you would like to listen to them first, giving you the opportunity to gain a good understanding of what they are communicating to you. Once you offer feedback to what you have heard, and the speaker feels that they have been understood, you will be in a good position to begin the final step of building strong and positive relations – Positive Communication.

Positive Communication

Positive communication is productive because it fosters some of the key fundamentals of successful workplace relations including, trust, honesty, integrity, nurturing, productivity, and satisfaction. At this point in your communication with someone you would have an understanding of their personality style, and have empathically listened to them making them feel that they have been understood. Forming positive messages is more attainable when you can ‘begin with the end in mind’, meaning you have an idea in your mind of what the positive relationship would look like. Once you have this goal of the communication in mind you are in a better opportunity to attain that goal. Strategies recommended for positive relations include making the other person feel good about themselves and their contribution. People feel good about their employment when they are recognized in a positive and genuine way. Therefore, positive communication can start with a genuine compliment and carry forward from there. I like to use the “sandwich technique” when communicating something that is constructive, which sandwiches the constructive criticism between two genuine positive statements. See an explanation of ‘The Sandwich Technique’ in my article “It’s what you Say and How You Say it”².

To recap, these positive workplace relations techniques – understanding who it is you are communicating with, empathically listening to them first, and returning some positive communication – your relations are sure to be more positive, productive and profitable. Although these points are pretty much common sense, they are not necessarily common practice. Make a conscious effort to put them into play in your workplace and your personal life, and reap the benefits that strong and positive relationships have to offer.