How To: Relationships

Relationships are a part of life. Whether you’re in a healthy or toxic relationship, they tend to affect your everyday life in some way. Being able to measure your relationships can help guide them in a better direction, thus resulting in a healthier environment for you and your relationships. Just like your personal relationships, relationships in the workplace can benefit or infringe on your experiences as well. Good relationships take time, so pay close attention.

Knowing the dimensions of a relationship can help achieve a mutually beneficial exchange for both parties. According to Hon and Grunig’s Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in Public Relations, “when public relations helps the organization build relationships with key constituencies, it saves the organization money by reducing the costs of litigation, regulation, legislation, pressure campaigns, boycotts, or lost revenue that result from bad relationships,”. Their research focused on six dimensions of a relationship: control mutuality, trust, satisfaction, commitment, exchange relationship, and communal relationships.

• Control mutuality refers to when both parties has equal influence or control over the other in almost every situation.
• Trust, unlike control mutuality, is a party's willingness to be open. Trust focuses on three dimensions: integrity, which is the belief that a party is fair and just, dependability, the belief that a party will keep their word and do what they say they will do, and competence, the belief that a party has the ability to follow through with their word.
• Satisfaction refers to when both parties are favorable towards each other because positive expectations about the relationship is constantly reinforced. These relationships show the benefits outweighing the cost.
• Commitment is when both parties believe and feel that the relationship is worth spending time and energy to maintain and promote the relationship. Commitment focuses on two dimensions: continuance commitment, which refers to a certain line of action, and affective commitment, which is a more emotional attachment.
• Exchange relationship is when one party gives benefits to the other because the other party has already provided benefits in the past or is going to in the future.
• Communal relationship refers to when both parties provide benefits because they are both concerned for the welfare of the other party--- even when they get nothing in return.

These dimensions entail specific qualities of relationships that could mend or guide a relationship to success. Learn about your current relationships and the relationships you aspire to experience to ensure a healthy work environment and lifestyle. Building good long-term relationships can be tough and take time, but they are worth it!