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The Urgent Need for Relational Intelligence in Today's Workplace

A client recently described this situation. She said, ‘Jane, I have a young woman in the office next to me- NEXT TO ME – two pieces of door molding between us. She put a meeting on my calendar and marked it URGENT. When it was time for the meeting, she FaceTimed me from her office next door.’

It’s OK. You can chuckle – I did.

Has something like this happened to you? Are you noticing that these kinds of communication ‘misses’ are happening more and more? They are. 80% of hiring executives say that they have trouble finding employees with soft skills. The truth is these skills aren’t soft at all. These are the skills we use to build relationships.

A Hay Group survey found that 69 percent of graduates claim soft skills “get in the way of getting the job done”; they’re confident in their ability to succeed without them. But, technical skills, your IQ and your MBA won’t be hiring differentiators in the next decade. A study of recent MBA’s showed that they were fantastic at analysis, quantitative expertise and information gathering, but completely lacking in areas like oral communication, adaptability, leadership and strategic thinking. As the cost of these skill deficits becomes higher and higher, hiring executives are waking up quickly.

Since 2000, the ability of college students to empathize has dropped 40%. And younger workers are missing other key skills they need to be successful in business – situational awareness, contextualizing, learning agility, dealing with conflict and understanding the rules of business engagement.

Organizations are quick to Millennial “shame and blame”, but slow to realize that younger workers depend on their employers to help them fill these skill gaps.

How has relationship building, a need that we are fundamentally wired for, has become such a deficiency in business?  Technology is no longer a servant; it has become our master. We’ve become convinced that having the patience to communicate in full sentences rather than emojis is too much effort; that walking to the office next door to have an URGENT conversation is too exhausting or just not worth it.  The cost is too high. We must recalibrate. We need to be more intentional in building cultures, business processes and skill-building programs that promote relationship building and Relational Intelligence.

How do you know if relationships are key to your business? I’d posit that if your business involves people, and those people either work for you or buy from you, then relationships are important.

What are the symptoms of a culture of poor relationship developers?

• Time is squandered because poor communication takes longer to process and untangle misunderstandings.
• Trust and loyalty are eroding because of lack of clarity.
• Conflicts are unaddressed leading to low engagement, low productivity and low morale and client mistrust.
• Low morale is increasing because of insensitive, ineffective, and inadequate communication.
• Employee turnover is costing your organization. (This is sometimes as high as three times the person's annual salary)
• You are losing revenue from misalignment with customers

These issues cost organizations billions of dollars a year.

You can begin to operationalize Relational Intelligence with:

Intention

Identify the value of great internal and external relationships to your organization. Determine skill gaps and craft development plans to close the gaps. Build consensus in your organization.

• When will we choose F2F over other methods of communication?
• Can we find sacred times/spaces where devices aren’t allowed?
• How will RI make our meetings different?
• What processes do we regularly use? Can we build in RI best practices?
• Decide where RI processes might fit into your client engagements

Application

Build Relational Intelligence into your cultural norms and business processes. Articulate your organizations unwritten rules of engagement. How would your team answer these questions?

• Would I be able to share the unwritten rules of our organization with a new hire?
• 90% of our success at work is based on our ability to influence others. Do I know the best way is to influence people in my organization? My peers, your managers, executives?
• Do I know the norms around getting promoted within your organization?
• Can I Identify rules of engagement for difficult conversations/conflict?

Engagement

Nothing happens without manager engagement. Managers must demonstrate the behaviors of Relational Intelligence.  

• Visibly demonstrate the behavior that you want
• Ask for feedback on your Relational Intelligence
• Plan for Face-to-Face meetings as part of your cadence
• Be curious and non-judgmental
• Be a radical listener

Measurement

Determine what ‘moving the needle’ looks like for your organization.

• Improved engagement numbers
• Employees are giving more discretionary effort in their jobs
• Improved conflict management/conflict isn’t getting escalated as much to senior management (internal and external)
• Fewer client complaints
• More Face-to-Face conversations
• More Sales!

Our relationships won’t happen exclusively online – ever – we are fundamentally wired to connect.

It is a matter of biology. And, technical skills are valuable, clearly. But technology is no help to business without a balance of human skills.

The way we do business is changing. That is a true statement. It is also true that we’ll always have relationships in business. They won’t all be online. In fact, the most important interactions won’t be online. Start now to fill the relationship building gaps in your organization. Your bottom line will reward you.