Best ways to maintain a healthy professional relationship with co-workers
While its true that any workplace culture is marked by frequent bickering and politics, one cannot deny that it is always more advantageous to rise above the petty politics and learn to establish a healthy professional relationship with their co-workers.
When you have a healthy professional relationship at your workplace, it not only helps to promote the synergy at the company but also aids your personal growth. However, sometimes this can get challenging, making you lose the ground.
Worry not! Here are some simple ways that will help you to build and maintain a healthy professional relationship with your co-workers.
Communicate
One of the essential ways to develop healthy relationships is to learn to communicate effectively. This is the most accepted and known principle, yet in reality, it is the most difficult to practice. People often end up miscommunicating what they really mean, which inevitably results in unnecessary conflicts and confusions.
There may be situations where you witness considerable differences of opinion with your colleagues. Try communicating with them will help you reach fruitful conclusions faster and better. But first, you need to learn how to communicate right without being confrontational or offensive.
There is a fine line between putting your point across and hitting the wrong spot when there are disagreements. Words, tone, body language and your facial expressions—all play a big role in any sort of communication. Usually, when misunderstandings and miscommunication happen, much of it is due to a perplexing combination of confused words, attitude and facial gestures.
Learn to agree to disagree without biting the heads off of your colleagues. This, in my opinion, can only be cultivated by self-educating yourself and by practicing self- restraint. If you are battling with impatience and find it really difficult, reading self - help books, meditation and breathing practices can come to your aid. But, know that only with constant and regular practice you are to see some definite results.
Make small gestures
You can make small gestures like greeting with a genuine smile, paying compliments or occasionally offering homemade sweets and cupcakes. This makes you naturally perceived as a more open-hearted person.
The more authentic and genuine you are with your gestures, the more liked you will be and will have better relationships. Having someone nice around who is also genuine, especially at the workplace is always a treat to life!
Do not become prey to petty talking
As much as you can, stay away from petty conversations that can end up becoming toxic. Sooner or later, gossip mongers are always bound to get noticed and hence despised. If you become a participant to frequent and constant gossiping at your workplace, you will inevitably result in reducing your trust quotient.
Do not get caught up in the high school drama talking and spreading inflammatory and negative information. If you have a co-worker who is shrewd and enjoys petty talking, be quick to judge the person and maintain cordial distance. Becoming friends with such people is like digging your own grave. You may never know when you end up becoming their prey!
Be conscious of the boundaries
Making and respecting certain boundaries is necessary if you intend to maintain healthy, long-lasting professional relationships at your workplace. Do not make personal comments under any circumstances. Personal comments, with what-so-ever intention, are quick to get noticed and harder to forget.
Also, unless asked for or unless you a foresee a major error, do not intervene in the other person’s work and style of working. No one likes interference that is unnecessary and uncalled for.
On the contrary, if you think it is important that you point out to the other person, what you think is wrong, make sure you do this amicably. A tinge of harshness or arrogance will make it difficult for the other person to appreciate your effort. This will consequently make it futile.
Take criticism positively
If at all, your seniors or colleagues are trying to suggest better ways to do a particular task, do not take it negatively. They may not be correct completely and your ways might differ from theirs. However, even if you get to improve by 50 percent in your performance due to a critical comment, take it unquestionably.
Do not let resistance to critical remarks build a wall between you and them. In fact, it will be great if you can make some extra efforts to rectify the issues and learn from the mistakes at the earliest. So as to prevent them from making remarks repeatedly. This wards off any possibility of the professional relationship between you and your co-workers from getting sour needlessly.
De-stress
If you are stressed for personal reasons or work-related pressure, sooner or later it will end up affecting your professional relations. Stress has a spillover effect that ends up sabotaging every area of life. So to avoid this, make conscious endeavors to not let stress and anxiety build up.
Prevention is always better than cure. Take early steps if you notice any stressful event taking a toll on your mind. Irrespective of the paucity of time and a heavy schedule, take out just 15-20 minutes for yourself daily. This is to strengthen your power of resilience.
Maintaining healthy relationships at the workplace has definite perks that one can't oppose. With a bit of an effort, you can give yourself more reasons to ‘want to go' to office than just ‘have to’. Consequently, you will not only just earn, but also learn and grow to the optimum!