You Need to Maintain Positive Relationships at Work

According to a poll by Gallup, if you have a best friend at work, you are likely to be engaged at your work. It doesn’t have to be a best friend at work; a good friend will make you love your job the more. As humans, we are not just biological beings that crave food and water; we are also social beings in need of friendship and positive interaction. 

Theodore Roosevelt once said that getting along with people is the single most vital ingredient to achieve success. Positive relationships at work breed honesty and trust in the work environment. This helps the achievement of organizational goals. Through a positive and supportive relationship at work, you can do your work in a happy, healthy, and fulfilling work environment. 

Maintaining a positive relationship at work starts with you. When it comes to the performance of tasks, don’t let your specific responsibility affect others. Be conscious of the time and pace of work. Make yourself available to help others if they need your help. In communicating with your peers, maintain transparency as the opposite breeds distrust and bad blood. 

More importantly, maintain eye contact with your colleagues and never stop using typical day courtesies; it will go a long way to build positive relationships

Building Skills Needed To Succeed as a Manager of People and Resources

If you desire to succeed as a manager you need to pay attention to several aspects of leadership, management and learning within your work-space. Thus it is difficult to successfully enumerate and say the following 5 items are the skills needed to succeed as a manager. Different articles are doled out daily with variations on the same theme but the following as the basic skills you require to successfully harness people and resources.

Effective and responsive interpersonal relationship is integral as a manager. Your subordinates will appreciate your ability to demonstrate attentiveness, care, respect and trust without compromising your professional boundaries. You also need to master proper communication skills, including oral, written and good listening skills.

As a manager, you are the liaison between the senior management and the front line staffs so you need to communicate ideas with total clarity. You also need to make yourself available and accessible to your staff where necessary.  Organization and delegation is also a major key. You’ll need to organize, delegate and joggle things up on a daily basis. Contemporaneously, you need to manage your workload, oversee employees and feed the board back without any slacks.

Getting Noticed and Getting Ahead

There’s nothing as harmful to your career than getting lost in the crowd of other performers. Yes, you have the skills to deliver, but what’s taking the shine away from you? You don’t have an idea, that’s precisely the first reason. You are lost in your self-consciousness, unable to locate your unique selling points. If you are never noticed, it will become a hassle to forge ahead. 

Remember you are competing against other high flyers who come to work early, deliver before deadlines, and display professionalism on every task. That means you have to do more and be different. Offer to help on new projects in your own free time, that’s after you have delivered excellently. Offer to help, in the process; you will learn new skills and gather experience. 

Every time you are engaging your boss or a colleague on an idea, back it up with specific and related examples. This will show that much thought has gone into the concept. At company meetings and events, speak up and offer your opinions. If you don’t have a new line of thought, back up existing ones. Please don’t overdo it, don’t be seen as an attention seeker. 

More importantly, avoid the murky waters of office politics. If you have to choose a clique, make sure it’s the winning side.

Dealing with Hostility Among Your Employees

Hostility among your employees creates a toxic work environment that doesn’t bode well for interpersonal relations and hinders the overall growth of the organization. You do not need employees who are disrespectful, uncooperative, abusive or downright rude so you cannot just ignore them you have to deal with them.

As hostility reduces productivity, one good way of dealing with a hostile employee is by discussing it with them. Don’t just assume they are aware that what they are doing is wrong and should change. Communicate with them, listen actively and never raise your voice. Be calm and collected but ensure you get your message across to them.

Give employees a chance to defend themselves fairly. Ensure that employees are aware of what the disciplinary actions for different misconducts are and follow through with the punishment without bias or favoritism.

Never judge an employee’s general behavior base on specific actions. Just because an employee was late in submitting his last week’s report does not make him a slow person. Attacking the personality of an employee will do nothing short of causing resentment and escalating the situation.

How to deal with a hostile work environment

A hostile work environment is usually created by a boss or colleague whose actions, behavior or character makes you professionally uncomfortable. Their behaviors often negate the conditions necessary for a good working atmosphere. Firstly, you’ll need to call out the offender and air your views. This is quite difficult for many as they will rather keep bottling up and avoiding face offs. It’s very adequate to communicate directly with your offender, give specific examples of issues where necessary. Choose your words carefully and make your points without raising your voice.

Don’t do it alone, find allies. Amidst the excessive toxicity of your working ambiance, chances are that there are a few good colleagues around. Involve the good guys and share your burdens. Discuss viable solutions and act accordingly. Talking to like minded people eases a lot of tension. The last resort will be to talk to the management. That’s if your workplace doesn’t have HR department, then you can always talk to your boss. The idea is to keep them apprised of the situation without sounding petty or projecting yourself as a bad team player