How to Engage People and Build Relationships

As the saying goes: No man is an island. It’s true in life, and it’s true in business. Therefore, good relationships are critical, from the peers you collaborate with on work projects to the connections that help you take the next step in your career.

So, how can you begin building relationships with other people in business? How can you cultivate them to be valuable and beneficial?

The Importance of Strong Business Relationships

Building solid relationships in business applies to many different scenarios. Each is important. However, what should be familiar to all of them is a foundation of trust and mutual respect.

Employees and Managers

Building a solid relationship with your line manager provides many benefits. First, it makes your day-to-day working life less stressful. Second, it ensures you have someone in your corner during difficult situations. With a strong relationship, they’ll also provide you with valuable, constructive feedback to help you develop in your current role and prepare you for your next one.

Meanwhile, the performance of your employees is a direct reflection of your performance as a leader. Building employee engagement requires the cultivation of open and honest cooperation between you and your team.

Peers

Whether they exist within your current organization or not, your peer group—those who operate at the same seniority level—contains the people who may be able to help you out through knowledge and resource sharing or simply by lending a sympathetic ear.

Clients and Vendors

At best, poor relationship management with clients and vendors can result in slow response times and inefficiencies on both sides. At worst, it can mean lost revenue for your organization. On the other hand, building lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with clients and suppliers can directly impact your business’s bottom line.

Tips for Engaging and Developing Connections

Understand Where People Are Coming From

It’s essential to understand what the other person gets out of your relationship. The relationship must be mutually beneficial for it to work. To do this, make sure you know what the other person needs from you too.

Reap What You Sow

Going first and leading the way leads to the concept of reaping what you sow. Don’t begin a relationship by asking for something if you can help it. Instead, be the one who initially brings value to the table—doing a favor for someone or providing a teammate with a valuable resource is a powerful team unifier.

Cultivate High-Value Relationships

Building strong business relationships isn’t just about engaging people with whom you get along in a social sense. While it always helps to personalize a business relationship, some will naturally be more valuable to you than others, and those are the ones you want to spend quality time on.

Focus on Quality Not Quantity

It’s easy to build up thousands of connections on social media. However, it’s far better to have a smaller group of high-value relationships than many low-value business acquaintances.

Leverage Social Media

Community building on social media can be a powerful tool. Whether it’s after an important face-to-face business meeting or you have made a connection at a conference or an event, spending time connecting with that person frequently on social media can turn it from a one-off encounter into a lasting relationship.

How to Build Teamwork Within Your Organization

Fostering mutually beneficial working relationships could be the key to success for your business. When teams work well together and departments can effectively interlink, your organization is more agile and productive.

Promote Open and Honest Communication

Open and honest communication is all about feedback. It should be shared openly and frequently in a respectful manner and with a listening ear. When co-workers and employees feel that their feedback is heard and valued, it creates a trickle effect. The team gets to the best and brightest ideas much quicker, and it’s all reflected in the quality of your organization’s product.

Encourage Knowledge and Resource Sharing

All too often, people feel they need to hoard their knowledge. Yet sharing expertise and resources helps to cultivate teamwork and a sense of shared responsibility. Developing a learning organization that openly shares knowledge helps to build a sense of teamwork and shared vision.

Lead by Example

The best way to start implementing any team-building initiative is to lead by example. Make sure that everything you do in your day-to-day work and through your relationships with others is built on a foundation of teamwork and mutual trust, and you’ll soon see it reflected in your organization’s overall culture.

Building valuable business relationships takes time and effort. Sometimes, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming, especially when cultivating that culture among your employees. However, with a group workshop session with Tom Flick Leadership, you and your employees or teammates can re-join together, build trust between each other, and reach your shared goals. Get in touch today to learn more about booking a motivational learning group workshop session or inspirational keynote speech to help people build relationships within your organization.