Having healthy relationships with co-workers can increase job satisfaction and help boost morale in the office.  Here are ten ways to build rapport with co-workers.

1. Show empathy.  Demonstrate you understand how the other person feels and can see things from their point of view.
2. Openly share when you agree with the other person, and say why.
3. Ask open questions.  Open questions require more than a yes or no answer.
4. Use feedback to reflect and clarify back to the other person what you think they have said.  This gives opportunity for any misunderstandings to be rectified quickly.
5. Find links between common experiences. Talk about things that refer back to what the other person has said.
6. Let go of stereotypes and any preconceived ideas you may have about the person. Be non-judgmental towards the other person.
7. Admit when have made a mistake or you don’t know the answer.  Acknowledging mistakes will help to build trust.
8. When you disagree with someone, give the reason first then say you disagree.
9. Use the other person’s name early in the conversation. This will help you remember their name and it shows you hear them.
10. Smile!

A good project manager does more than simply delegate and track tasks, they must possess some true leadership skills to be successful.  Here are four skills to think about when hiring a project manager or anyone in a leadership role.

1. Filtering Skills
   Knowing what is important and what to ignore comes from experience. Even without direct experience in a specific expertise, it is important to have trusted advisors that can be relied upon to identify priorities and those things that are time wasters.

2. Consensus-building Skills

Knowing how to lobby and campaign for new ideas is a sign of a true leader.  A true leader is not interested in getting credit of the idea, they are interested in getting things done.  They plant seeds, they create a buzz about their ideas – their ideas catch on and are presented by other people and groups.  They are able to work through objections and navigate through obstacles along the way.

3. Listening and Questioning Skills

Leading a team requires you to understand the value of each team member and the contributions of their team and stakeholders. They take the time to listen to alternate ideas, to the objections and concerns.  Taking the objections and concerns seriously and make sure that all of the voices are heard.

4. Relationship Cultivating Skills

Having an extensive network inside and outside the organization is critical to a leader’s success.  Gaining consensus is sometimes a matter of knowing the right person to ask or the right way to present it.  A leader relies on their resources; formal and informal – it is not possible to know everything.

Years ago I was told to prop up a small mirror on my desk and to look in the mirror when I talked with people on the phone.  The thought was; you are more likely to smile at your own reflection and when smiling the happy and pleasant tone could be heard on the other end of the phone.    I still keep a mirror by my phone, research that indicates happy workers are more productive, engaged, loyal and creative.

A study by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organization indicated that disengaged workers had 60% more errors and 37% higher absenteeism.   Conversely, Shawn Anchor, author of The Happiness Advantage, found that the brain works better when a person is feeling positive.  And positive individuals tend to be better at solving problems and more creative.

Learning how to create a pleasant working environment that will encourage productivity is critical to your success as a leader.  People are likely to work harder when they enjoy what they do and when they like their team members, including their leader.

In the Journal of Business Ethics Rosa Chun defines 6 Positive Practices Dimensions, these characteristics have been found to have a direct link between virtue character and organizational performance, financial or otherwise

1. Caring  People care for, are interested in, and maintain responsibility for one another as friends.
2. Compassionate Support  People provide support for one another including kindness and compassion when others are struggling.
3. Forgiveness People avoid blame and forgive mistakes.
4. Inspiration  People inspire one another at work.
5. Meaning  The meaningfulness of the work is emphasized, and people are elevated and renewed by the work.
6. Respect, Integrity, and Gratitude  People treat one another with respect and express appreciation for one another. They trust one another and maintain integrity.

How can you cultivate these principles within your team?

Connect with their goals

1. Take the time to learn what your team members want individually. Take time to understand their professional goals are professionally and what it means to them personally.  Then show them you are committed to helping them get to where they want to go.  The University of Michigan’s CompassionLab with Jane Dutton found that demonstrating compassion toward employees fosters individual and collective resilience in challenging times.

How?

• Identify tasks and project that you can assign them that match and support their goals. Discuss how these assignments are supportive of their personal goals
• During performance reviews discus their skills and strengths and how they are moving forward toward their professional goals.

Self-Sacrificing

True teams foster each other’s strengths and compensate for each other’s weaknesses.  Demonstrate your commitment to their success by stepping outside your role and do something just for them. When you are self-sacrificing your staff will in turn be inspired to more loyal and committed themselves and will likely to go out of their way to be helpful and friendly to other employees. Daan Van Knippenberg of Rotterdam School of Management has shown that employees of self-sacrificing leaders trust their leaders more and are more cooperative.

How?

• Before your team will openly discuss their weaknesses with you, you will need to acknowledge your own. Let them know that your only successful when they are; and that you value and need their contributions to be successful.
• Openly share areas where you lean on their expertise.

Inspire, notice their abilities

Even when they can’t see them – be observant. Once you notice an individual’s talent or strength, let them know and be specific.  Then find ways to bring out that talent by providing opportunities and training to support it.   Stay positive and encouraging, emotions are contagious – they need to be genuine to catch on.

How?

• Looks for soft skills such as staying cool under pressure or their patience helping a co-worker, let them know you notice and appreciate their abilities.

According to Alexander Kjerulf, founder of Woohoo Inc. and the organization’s “chief happiness officer,” happiness is the “ultimate productivity booster.” In his view, happy employees excel at managing their time, make better decisions, and possess other leadership skills.

A smile can go a long way!  A positive workplace improves people’s relationships with each other, brings out their strengths and amplifies their creativity.  Developing a positive, healthy culture will result in higher levels of effectiveness — including productivity, employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

All good things!

Small business owners, students, and working professionals, often play the role of a project manager, even when they are completely untrained.

For all you poor souls thrown into managing projects, I’ve got a few tips to help you stay on track.

Know your goal. 

All projects by definition have an end goal.  A project is something that has a start and end.  A project has an objective.  To be successful you must clearly understand your goal and everyone involved must share that understanding.  Many project are perceived to fail simply because someone was expecting something else.  Communicate your objective clearly, communicate it often.  It should be your mantra.

Keep your eye on the ball.

Hold regularly scheduled meetings, whether it’s a weekly status meeting or a daily call.  Hold the meeting even if there is nothing to report.  Share what you know, say everything is on target and open it up for feedback.  These meetings are not just for you to check status or share progress, they are an important part of the communication process.  Regular meetings provide a forum for discussions about small obstacles or other issues.

Ask questions, lots of questions.

When you ask if their deliverable is on-track, most folks will say yes, even if there is an issue.  So ask questions.  “Anything that might get in the way of delivering on time?”  “Can we do anything to make it easier?”  Ask about the process for completing the task.  I find that having the individual step me through their process will prompt questions and often uncovers potential road blocks and concerns.  Some folks don’t like to have you dig into their process, try talking about it in terms of reporting their progress.  Something that takes more than a day to complete, you might want to show percent complete or where you are in the process.

You can manage what you can’t see.

Remain calm.

When things go wrong, and they will, no one wants to deliver the bad news.  Stay positive.  Thank whoever shared the issue with you.  Now you know.  You want to hear bad news before someone else does.  You want the opportunity to address it.  And you want to report it to your management – they should not be telling you of issue.  That’s your job.

Stay calm and positive.  You got this.