Written By Max Hoffenheins
Think about this for a sec: As an employer, which would you rather have; a positive work environment or an average environment?
Most employers would want a positive environment for their employees. The reasons are simple. It makes for more vital collaboration between colleagues and better output of work.
When you have a positive work environment, there will be continued growth in your organization.
Part of creating a positive work environment is fostering healthy professional relationships with your employees. This will give your employees the sense that you genuinely care for them and their well-being.
People will add value to organizations where they feel valued.
Let’s define healthy professional relationship
A healthy professional relationship is one that is built on mutual trust and respect, in this case, between an employer and an employee.
Apart from mutual trust and respect, we also see mindfulness, open communication, and acceptance of diversity and differences.
A healthy professional relationship is paramount to building a lasting organizational culture. It helps to foster bonding between employees and also with their employer.
How do you foster healthy professional relationships with your employees?
The extent of your relationship with your employees depends on how much effort you put into creating it. The more work you, as an employer, put into creating these healthy relationships, the better they will be.
However, healthy relationships have to be created in the right way.
When relationships aren’t created in a healthy way and with good intentions, they tend to come off as manipulative. So how do you create healthy relationships with your employees?
Start with these four easy steps:
1. Show Interest
In showing interest with your employees, you want to learn how they work best. Learn what makes them work better. You also want to discover their strengths and weaknesses.
When you learn these things, you can help them grow and progress within your organization.
Say you’ve got an employee called Kyle. Kyle is a content writer at your organization. Kyle does well enough at his work.
However, you also realize through conversations and watching him during marketing events, that Kyle can talk customers into buying anything. You know that his strength lies in sales more than in writing.
A good employer will have an open conversation with Kyle about changing departments from content writing to a sales position.
What this does is that it helps to align your employee to a better career path. Showing interest is a great way to foster health professional relationships with your employees.
2. Appreciate their efforts
As an employer, when your employee performs excellently at a given task, you want to commend their efforts.
This helps your employers gain confidence in their abilities. It also creates a feeling of satisfaction for a job well done.
Appreciating their efforts allows you to see the good things that your employees have done.
It also helps you to create a lively atmosphere for work. Commending employees allows you to gain a positive outlook on your work and gives the motivation to create more value.
3. Develop Emotional Intelligence
One of the skills you should develop as an employer is emotional intelligence. What this means is that you must learn how to navigate the different personalities of your employees. You must also manage your emotional response to the varying personalities around you.
Simply put, emotional intelligence is the ability to know your emotions, understand what you are feeling, and realize how your emotions affect others around you.
It also teaches you to view others and understand how they feel. This helps you then create and manage the relationships with them effectively.
4. Respect Boundaries
In building healthy professional relationships, it is essential to respect the boundaries of others. You’ll need to put in a conscious effort to be careful not to cross them.
You must be respectful and understanding of your employees’ boundaries. This will help build trust and respect between you and your employees. It also helps them to understand and manage your limitations as well.
An understanding employer makes for more empathic and understanding employees.
In building your company work culture and atmosphere, you want to always build healthy professional relationships with and among your employees. These points are a great place to begin building these relationships.
While there are many things you can do in addition to this, these give you an added advantage. Implement these points, and your professional relationships are off to a great start.
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