It has been my expe­ri­ence that peo­ple make a huge dif­fer­ence in busi­ness. Their  atti­tude, their under­stand­ing of where you want to go, and their will­ing­ness to help you get there can be your great­est assets. As a man­ager and leader, build­ing strong rela­tion­ships with your team is critical.

I recently was asked to share my thoughts on deep­en­ing rela­tion­ships with the Build­ing Cham­pi­ons team. Here are the prin­ci­ples I passed along to them:

Treat Every­one Individually

Coaches know the impor­tance of under­stand­ing the behav­ioral dif­fer­ences between peo­ple. Build­ing Cham­pi­ons uses DISC assess­ments for this pur­pose. But long before I knew about DISC, it was appar­ent to me that dif­fer­ent peo­ple were moti­vated by dif­fer­ent things.

As a leader, you must under­stand those dif­fer­ences not just by their DISC assess­ment results or a “one size fits all” com­mu­ni­ca­tions approach, but by talk­ing to each per­son. Every­thing should be as indi­vid­ual as pos­si­ble. There’s no text­book book way or sin­gle, uni­ver­sal approach.

You can­not be who you are not, so be true to your­self, too. Under­stand your own com­mu­ni­ca­tion style and how you can best con­nect with others.

Be Con­sis­tent

It’s impos­si­ble to deepen a rela­tion­ship if the other per­son never knows what to expect from you, because there can­not be any real trust. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Always strive to do the right thing. And if you find your­self in a posi­tion where you do need to change direc­tion, explain why.

Add Value With­out Regard to Yourself

Some peo­ple may assume that the leader is always look­ing out for #1, and it may be up to you to change that assump­tion. Do what’s best for them, even if it is not best for you. Eval­u­ate and make rec­om­men­da­tions objec­tively and that are in the other person’s best inter­ests. Help them see what they may have missed.

Stay Con­nected

Take the respon­si­bil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate and stay con­nected, even if it is not rec­i­p­ro­cated. The more per­sonal and direct the com­mu­ni­ca­tions are, the bet­ter. Some tools include:

• Cards – to cel­e­brate birth­days and anniver­saries or acknowl­edge a loss
• Hand­writ­ten Notes – use per­sonal notes to observe some­thing positive
• E-mails – watch for oppor­tu­ni­ties to help, offer new ideas, or share arti­cles they may have missed
• Phone Calls – unex­pected calls can make a big difference
• Social Media – Face­book, LinkedIn and other tools can be use­ful for some. The goal here is to meet the needs of each unique individual.

Fol­low Up Meet­ings in Writing

When it comes to meet­ings, what was meant is not nec­es­sar­ily what was heard. Two peo­ple can walk away from the same meet­ing with very dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions. To avoid con­fu­sion and an ero­sion of trust, fol­low up in writ­ing on what was decided and clar­ify any direc­tions given.

Peo­ple mat­ter. The more you deepen those rela­tion­ships, the far­ther you can go together as a team. Relate to each per­son indi­vid­u­ally and it will make a huge dif­fer­ence in the per­for­mance of all.

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Tags: Communication, Performance, Relationships, Team

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