6 Practical Ways of Building Meaningful Relationships with Former Colleagues

To me, the most critical part of any business is its people. Building meaningful relationships is, therefore, one of the most essential skills in business – and in life.

Strong relationships make you happier, help you get to know other people, and – in a business context – they can lead to promotions, new clients and other exciting opportunities. But keeping in contact with people isn’t always easy. Especially after moving on from a company, people who you once saw every day can so easily fall off your radar.

So, in this article, I’ll share my top 6 practical ways of building meaningful relationships with your former colleagues.

1. Invite Them to Events

Every company hosts events, whether they are professional or purely social, formal or informal. Use these opportunities as a means of keeping in touch with former colleagues. Whenever possible, invite your former colleagues. Especially if they’re in the same industry, they and the people at your company will benefit from getting to know one another.

2. Have a Coffee Catch-up

Even a quick coffee now and then can make the difference between a good relationship and lost contact. How is the business doing? How are friends and colleagues? How’s my old line manager? It should be easy because you genuinely care about what’s going on with them, but it’s also easy to get swept up in other things and let these catch-ups slide.

If you can only catch-up now and then, it’s still worth it. There are many people I see just once every few months, but because we have that in-person contact, however brief, it means that they and I are comfortable getting in touch with one another if we ever need a favour or an introduction, or we simply fancy a longer chat.

3. Make Recommendations

Recommending close friends to former employers is a great way to keep in contact with multiple people at once. If the person you’re recommending is good at what they do, it’s a win-win situation for everybody: your friend lands a new job offer, the company has a fantastic new employee, and you’ve done everyone a favour that – chances are – took very little time. If you end up needing a favour from either party, they’ll likely be happy to help.

4. Go to Their Events

If you see that a former colleague’s company is hosting an open event, why not go along? Perhaps they’ve invited you personally, in which case there is all the more reason to show up. Merely showing your face shows that you care, whereas if you continually ignore or decline invitations, you may stop receiving them altogether!

5. Send Catch-up Emails

Sometimes, distance makes it difficult or even impossible to keep in touch in person. If getting a face-to-face meeting proves tricky, there are several tools in your arsenal: email, telephone, Skype, FaceTime, Zoom – the list goes on. Though it’s great to use these tools to share personal news, people will always appreciate it the most if you ask questions about their lives: what they’re doing, how they’re progressing in their current career, and so on. For many people, it’s much more enticing to respond if they get the chance to talk a bit about themselves!

6. Comment on LinkedIn Posts

LinkedIn has established itself as the de facto online business network around the world, and so there are a lot of great benefits to being active and engaged on the platform. First and foremost, make sure to engage with your former colleagues’ posts, news and other content. Liking works fine but commenting is a better way to have a more personal input. Even engaging with other parts of LinkedIn can help. Your former colleagues will see what you’re engaging with on their timeline and, if you come across something they could find interesting, why not tag them? It might just be the start of a great conversation.

Conclusion

The ability to build good relationships is one of the most important, but often one of the most undervalued, skills in business. I have been rewarded time and again thanks to having a strong network of former colleagues. Sometimes, these are even people who used to work for me. Instead of leaving on bad terms, we both find value in staying in touch and enjoy hearing about one another’s news.

I hope you enjoyed reading these tips, and let me know what you think about the best ways to stay in touch with former colleagues.

James Caan CBE

www.james-caan.com