Making healthy connections

I recently finished a work contract with a large complex organisation. I really enjoyed working with them and particularly enjoyed building relationships with the people I worked with.

The project was related to culture transformation therefore the focus had to be very much on getting people from all over the organisation actively involved in making decisions, planning and delivering the programme of work. This enabled getting feedback from some of those who would be responsible for delivering the new ways of working operationally before they were widely implemented.

The team who were leading the work was going through a restructure, which brought challenges in the form of uncertainty for individuals and a little anxiety, however I have to say on the whole this didn’t affect delivery of the project.

As an outsider coming into the organisation I wanted to build good strong connections with people, mainly because I’m a people person and I wanted people to feel they could be open and honest during the life span of the project.   

I found some key things helped me to build relationships and really connect with people early on, namely:

• I was genuinely interested in people, I looked beyond the job role they had and found out about them as a human. I did this by listening to the way they spoke, the words they used to really understand what they were passionate about and what we had in common that would be useful in making a connection.

• Through questioning I tried to understand any challenges they faced in their wider work. By being curious I was able to identify where there might be aspects of the project that could ‘fix’ or improve an existing problem for them. This created a win/win situation that gained their trust and therefore they were more motivated to engage in the project.

• I offered a listening ear without judgment, informally coaching people so they could think through their scenario and feel that they had options to their problems.

• I noticed individual’s strengths and worked with these by suggesting who delivers various aspects of the project. This meant that people got to focus on the things they do well and therefore would be likely to success with them.

• I was extremely grateful for everybody’s input and made it a habit of saying thank you. This way people felt appreciated for their individual contribution on the project.

I hope you find this useful, please share if you do!