Getting on with everyone
Getting on with people at work is paramount. It allows you to get the job done
You will almost certainly know someone who is brilliant with people; someone who gets on with everyone they meet – a colleague, a teacher, your old boss.
They have the talent to win over absolutely anybody.
But here’s the question – how do they do it? What specific things do they do to get on with and influence others successfully?
Chances are you’ll come up with a good list, but producing the definitive list that always works isn’t easy. But I believe I know the answer.
I believe there is a specific set of six skills/qualities/attributes, used by those who are the best at personal interactions to oil the wheels of work and get the job done.
And I believe this because I was taught these six skills/qualities/attributes by a highly successful man who was simply brilliant at getting on with everyone he came into contact with.
In fact, he turned these skills into a six step model – the Six Steps to Success – and I saw how he employed the model over the years and how it worked time and time again.
This man was, in fact, my father.
The good news is the Six Steps to Success (aka Relationships to Results™ model) are simple, powerful and you almost certainly know them already. But knowing them is pointless if you don’t use them to good effect. They require application and hard work.
When I go into businesses, organisations, charities or schools, I show people how to use the six steps that enable them to work together better and get teams functioning more effectively.
And I see that when people embrace the six steps and use them, the results are always the same: better relationships, better teamwork, better cooperation, better collaboration – all of which lead to better performance and increased profits.
The Six Steps to Success turn relationships into results.
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring,
close-knit family… in another city.”
George Burns
I believe workplaces are like families.
They are both made up of different personalities with different needs and different priorities. Most of the time, we get on fine with our colleagues and our families.
But obviously things can get a bit testing, a bit challenging, a bit demanding, both at home and at work. Sometimes we’ll have people telling us what to do, not listening to us, being uncooperative, difficult, doing things their way, not our way.
In these situations, especially when we’re forced together over a period of time, such as families at Christmas, or work colleagues toiling eight to ten hours a day under pressure to deliver results, friction can surface.
And that’s when we can fall out.
The Cost of Conflict
If this kind of conflict is allowed to build up it can lead to damaging relationships.
At work, friction can cause hundreds, even thousands of problems – 30,614 problems, to be exact.
A 2014 report by Oxford Economics* revealed that on average, replacing an employee costs £30,614 in terms of advertising, lost output, agency fees and so on.
Losing a member of staff because of conflict is expensive.
*Oxford Economics is a venture set up with Oxford University’s business college to provide economic forecasting and modelling to UK companies.
Conflict at work not only impacts individual companies, it also has a huge impact on the British economy.
The same report by Oxford Economics cited that poor personal interactions cost the UK economy 40 million days in 2014.
To put this figure into context, in the 1970s (the decade of strikes and the three-day week, when electricity would cut off suddenly and we’d sit around candles in the dark), the economy lost only 12.9 million days.
A report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) published in 2015 looked at interpersonal friction at work and how this impacts on employees. It found that conflict was most common with line managers.
Leading with empathy
The world of business demands that we work together seamlessly.
All of us need to be able to get on with, relate to, connect with and engage with people, especially if we are in a position of influence. Especially if we are in a position of leadership.
The more senior you are, the more important it is to appreciate the impact your communication style can have on others.
A leader’s primary function is to get work done through people. You might think, then, that the higher the position a person holds, the better their people skills. But it appears the opposite is true.
Too many leaders are promoted because of what they know or how long they have worked in an organisation, rather than for their skill in managing others.
And once they reach the top, they actually spend less time interacting with staff.
Heartless Bosses
A 2005 Harvard Business Review article, ‘Heartless Bosses’, measured the emotional intelligence (EQ) of half a million senior executives, managers and employees across industries on six continents with fascinating results.
Those who had the highest EQ scores were the best performers. The research found that EQ skills were more important to job performance than any other leadership skill. And the fascinating bit was the higher the position a person held, the lower their EQ.
Of course, I’m not suggesting all bosses lack these skills.
However, in my experience, bosses with a low EQ damage relationships rather than build them.
The worst type of boss can have a number of damaging behaviours, such as a tendency to discredit colleagues and their ideas, purporting to be more knowledgeable than others, avoiding blame and/or pinning blame on others, and ignoring feedback.
All of these contribute to conflict at work.
The best Leaders have high EQ
Having worked with many leaders from businesses around the world, I’ve observed that being extremely intelligent is not enough.
Yes, the best leaders do have a high IQ, but they also have a high EQ and the ability to empathise with anyone.
Sky CEO, Jeremy Darroch, says that empathy has overtaken more traditional business skills to become the most important requirement for leadership success.
“A lot of the old skills of leadership aren’t fit for the future. The idea that I can sit in the corner office and call the shots is long gone. Empathy is now the single most important skill when you get to the top of an organisation. It means you can frame opportunity and challenge in the right way”.
Jeremy Darroch
Darroch insisted all Sky’s senior leaders undergo a year-long development programme centred around emotional intelligence.
“It starts with me. When you’re at the top you realise how vital you are to people. How I act, my mental state, my level of optimism, how I deal with stress and challenge, is fundamentally important to people”.
Jeremy Darroch
The Science bit
People who exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods literally effect both their own brain chemistry and that of people around them.
Winning people over is less about mastering situations or social skills, and more about developing a genuine interest in fostering positive feelings in them.
The idea that leaders need to have social skills is not new. In 1920, psychologist Edward Thorndike said, ‘The best mechanic in a factory may fail as a foreman for lack of social skills.’
Mirroing Emotions
Neuroscientists have identified mirror neurons in the brain.
When we consciously or unconsciously detect someone else’s emotions through their actions, our mirror neurons reproduce those emotions.
In a study conducted by Professor Marie Dasborough, one group of individuals received negative feedback accompanied with positive signals – nods and smiles. A second group received positive feedback delivered critically with frowns and narrowed eyes.
It was proved that the first group felt much more positive on receiving good natured negative feedback than the second group, who had received positive feedback delivered negatively.
Therefore, the delivery was more important than the message itself.
It has also been shown that there’s a subset of mirror neurons whose only job is to detect other people’s smiles and laughter, prompting smiles and laughter in return.
A boss who is self-controlled and humourless will rarely engage those neurons, but a boss with an easy-going nature and sense of humour will trigger similar reactions in others, resulting in people taking in information more effectively and responding quickly and creatively.
Herb Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Southwest Airlines in the USA, would wander around Dallas Airport offering beaming smiles, shaking hands with customers and saying how he appreciated their business.
He also made the effort to thank employees for their hard work personally. He got back what he gave – his staff loved him.
The business was known to have extremely high morale and low staff turnover.
That is the power of high EQ.
