The traits that create a good personal life are equally important to create thriving businesses. What is good for an individual personally also becomes good for businesses since both are about connections between people. At enreap, we consider our organization to be a living entity that is comprised of multiple collective parts which create the whole. The organization exists within a sphere of relationships – just like how we exist in our individual life.
As such, holding relationships as one of our core values and as a part of our company culture is a no-brainer!
Relationships Matter -Here’s Why?
Corporate outlooks have created certain firewalls around the term ‘relationships.’ However, we believe that building healthy relationships is crucial to navigating this new, complex, and constantly shifting world of work. The way we engage with employees and customers has evolved dramatically over the years. Today we need to build environments that move away from controlling and directional approaches towards one that produces sustained engagement and collaboration, productivity, and consequently, success.
This becomes essential because research suggests that 70% of employees derive a sense of purpose from work. To get purpose right, organizations must identify how to not only create purpose but also conceive how people relate to it. Forming deep relationships within the workplace thus becomes critical for building connections and forming trust bridges where people feel safe, encouraged, enabled, and motivated to work.
The approach not only impacts employee engagement and experience positively within our organization but also influences the customer experience. Motivated and engaged teams are more invested, productive, and innovative. They automatically put the customer first and employ a solution-driven mindset to solve challenges and customer issues.
Problem-solving is proactive and ownership-based. There’s no passing the buck around. Communication flows within the organization, and everyone operates with honesty, authenticity, and transparency since people value their relationships!
A high-trust environment leads to greater acceptance of people, irrespective of their differences. People within the organization believe that each one is an important cog in the wheel and hence pivotal to the success of every project.
However, just like personal relationships, relationships in the workplace are based on some key actions. These are:
Honesty
Honesty in the workplace builds trust among the employees and the organization. It is a broader concept than just speaking the truth. It is a paradigm that dictates actions to be rooted in integrity, trust, and well-being.
Honesty is all about doing the right thing and making the right choice even when no one is looking. Clarity and openness, a non-judgmental environment, and pathways that provide help honesty thrive in our organization.
Authenticity
Encouraging authenticity in the workplace and driving it as a core value helps us foster deeper and more meaningful relationships with our employees and customers. Authentic behavior fosters trust, builds psychological safety, and is crucial for developing belonging in the workplace.
Authenticity at work demands people to become more self-aware and more accepting of differences between themselves and others. It requires a growth mindset that allows you to accept mistakes and challenges without shame. Authenticity is not about connecting with everyone at a deep level or sharing unfiltered opinions, perspectives, or comments, especially hurtful ones.
Our people, employees, and leadership are deeply rooted in authentic behavior. Authenticity removes a lot of guesswork from conversations since it is highly dependent on being transparent. As such, our teams have high levels of physiological safety and elevated trust across the organization. This also drives up customer satisfaction as everyone works towards elevating the customer experience.
Respect
Treating everyone with kindness and respect, irrespective of their designation or job role, is critical for any forward-thinking organization. We believe that respect has to be grounded in humility. It is about recognizing individuality and the fact that everyone we work with has feelings and is more than what shows up on the surface.
We believe that people are bringing different talents, skills, and experiences to the table and all these assorted combinations fuel our success. The CEO of our company, for example, enjoys the same level of respect as our office boy!
We value everyone for their hard work and contributions and demonstrate high levels of empathy towards our co-workers, colleagues, and clients always.
Trustworthiness
Our entire workforce is anchored in the core value of trust. Trust for us means the comfort of expressing vulnerabilities and challenges. It means that we have healthy discussions without fear. Here, managers and employees are comfortable giving each other goals and feedback. This is a space where co-workers support each other, help each other reach their common goals, and remain committed to their work and goals without supervision.
Creating this high-trust environment requires our workforce and leadership to be emotionally intelligent, deliver enablement when required, and provide growth pathways. It is also about building a nurturing environment where work is valued over tenure, and people are naturally responsible and ownership-driven and willing to work on feedback to deliver great results.
Humility
Humility is a crucial action needed for the success of any relationship. Its presence makes the relationship harmonious. It encourages collaboration and fosters well-being. Humility is important for our workplace because it shows that everyone has equal value, that there is always space for learning, and that to reach success, we have to let go of our job insecurities, work pressures, and egos.
Humility breeds creativity by allowing people to make intelligent mistakes. Intelligent mistakes, you see, are integral to innovation. Creating an environment steeped in humility gives people the freedom to fail and hence to try new things. It cultivates healthy risk-taking, augments transparency and honesty, and creates more openness across employees, teams, and leadership. It also transforms client relationships and customer experience.
Humility also prompts us to prioritize employee development and continuous learning through formal training, mentoring, etc., to create open environments that are conducive to growth. It enables us to focus more on achievements rather than on tenure and allows us to draw connections between the personal actions of employees and the success of the company.
Conclusion
The focus on relationships and the actions that influence them allows us to avoid actions and behaviors that limit success through overconfidence, unnecessary secrecy, petty politics, or hubris. It, instead, helps us create an environment that is focused on well-being, trust, and confidence. Whether it is short-term projects or long-term alliances, we ensure that we focus on building partnerships with our employees that lead to unceasing success for our clients.
