Struggling to get on with people at work? Top tips for a reboot.

Most of your work challenges are likely to be related to other people, whether that be a personality clash, misunderstandings, struggling to get people to see your point of view or just general apathy. Whilst realising the benefits of more frequent working from home, the danger is that you avoid people and the challenges you have with them. This will rarely be beneficial in the medium to long term.

If you are struggling with professional relationships, here are 3 short tips to help you give your work relationships a reboot!

1. Consider what impact you have on others. It is very easy to consider how you have been wronged, not listened to, passed over. Start by thinking about how you have impacted the relationship, could the other person have misinterpreted your behaviour? How might others perceive you? What do your appearance, body language and voice communicate in even the smallest interactions?
2. Have empathy. It's really easy to become task focused, especially if that is your more natural way of being (rather than being relational) and/or when you are really busy. However, as with non working life, people are human and need to feel understood and valued. Without this, they are rarely likely to be at their best and interact with you positively.
3. Show vulnerability and humility. You will make mistakes, you will have occasions when you don't know (even related to your area of expertise) - being honest about these times will make you far more credible for when you have been right and did know, as well as help people to build more genuine relationships with you. Many of my clients in Professional & Financial Services find this one very difficult but it is absolutely vital, particularly in leadership roles.

My biggest recommendation is to take some time to think about your professional relationships, focus on the key ones to start with and assess what you might need to work on and how to get started.?

To help you with this, you can download my free resource, Relationship Status Sheet.

You'll find more on relationship skills to add to this list of three and many more topics to help you navigate the workplace and progress your career in my book Getting On: Making work work - available from anywhere that sells books - for ease here is the Amazon link and the link for a signed copy.