How to Improve Relationships at Work

A few metaphors for thinking about these different techniques is to think of them as a set of tools in a toolbox, a collection of healing plants in a garden, or a selection of software for carry out different tasks. Whatever the metaphor, these are basically a repertoire of techniques you can draw on separately or together to help you better understand what's going on and what to do about it. The tools in this repertoire include:

Visualizing Possible Options and Outcomes

Visualization or mental imaging is an extremely powerful way of looking at a situation. Essentially, you see it like a series of photos or a film or stage play occurring in your mind's eye. You get a clear picture of what is happening now and then visualize what might happen in the future, based on what actions you take now. As you do, you can either see the situation play out in one or more ways, based on the different actions you take, or you can skip ahead in your mind to the last frame and see the result of each approach.

You can also combine this visualization with other techniques, such as doing a cost–benefits or pro–con analysis to choose what you want to do. Such visualizing works well for problem-solving generally, as well as for thinking about relationships and how to improve them.

Generally, I go through the whole process very quickly in my head and quickly imagine what seems to be the best alternative under the circumstances. But some people, especially when first starting to use visualization, prefer to write down the different alternatives as they envision them or soon after concluding the process. Then, the take some time to do a more detailed cost–benefits or pro–con analysis, before deciding which alternative to choose. Alternatively, you can start by doing a more detailed analysis; then as you become more familiar with the process, let the alternatives and your choices play out in your head.

Using Visualization for Goal Setting, Preparation, and Planning

Here visualization is used not so much to think of alternatives, but to imagine what you want for an outcome. Then, with this desired end clearly in mind, you think about what steps you need to take to get there—say to develop a better relationship with your boss or to plot out your next steps along a career path.

One way to use this approach is to visualize a linear outline of steps to take in your mind or perhaps see a single path to your goal with a series of stops along the way. Alternatively, you can't create an even more dramatic and dynamic mental visualization, such as seeing the goal you have set for yourself on a mountaintop with a series of places along the path where you can go for insights and information.

Whatever imagery you prefer to use, you can combine it with symbols, affirmations, self-talk, and reinforcements to help you feel more powerful and confident in making and implementing your choices. For instance, to have an effective real-time meeting with your boss to ask for a promotion or new project assignment, visualize and practice the meeting in your mind; make affirming statements about how you will get the project; and experience the symbol of fire or see a powerful animal giving you a surge of energy and power. Then, you bring the actual approach imagined in your visualization and the sense of power it gives you to the meeting you have in reality.

Since different styles of visualizing to set goals, prepare, and plan appeal to different people, it's best to find your own style that feels most comfortable for you.

Doing What's Practical Through Weighing the Positives and Negatives

In making any decision or setting any goal and trying to achieve it, you also have to consider what's practical—essentially by doing a positive– negative, cost–benefit, or pro–con analysis. You can do such an analysis in a more organized, analytical way, such as taking listing the pros and cons for each of the alternative scenarios you choose, using weighted numbers to compare and contrast them. However, another method is to do a weighted comparison in a more holistic way, using a more intuitive, instant analysis process. In this case, the assessment of what's practical simply appears in your mind, as if you are letting your unconscious sort through the information and come up with the answer for you.

Such an instant intuitive analysis may seem difficult at first if you are new to visualizing. But this processing method can develop over time, and works well when combined with visualizing different possibilities. You start with imagining all that might be desirable. Then you add a consideration of what's most practical to the mix.

Using the E-R-I Model for Resolving Conflicts

Another method I use for resolving conflicts is the "E-R-I" Model, in which the "E-R-I" stands for the Emotions, Reasons, and Intuition. This method is based on first getting the emotions out of the way—whether your own or someone else's. Then, use your reason to understand the reasons for the conflict by recognizing the different views, interest, personalities, and positions involved. In addition, use your reason to understand the different styles of resolving a conflict that you or the other parties to the conflict might use. These five styles are:

• Confrontation, where you exercise your power to seek what you want;

• Collaboration, where you and other parties to the conflict take time to consider the different issues and resolve them together;

• Compromise, where you each give a little;

• Accommodation, where you basically give in to what someone else wants because he or she has more power or the issue isn't that important to you;

• Avoidance, where you essentially don't deal with the conflict by leaving, not thinking about it, or delaying any action.

In the last step of the model, you use your intuition to brainstorm different alternatives and chose among them.

This approach also works well with visualization, in that you can visualize using different conflict resolution approaches and imagining different outcomes. Then, if you apply the cost–benefits approach, you can assess which of these outcomes might be best to use under the circumstances. Or you can let your intuition give you a quick answer of what feels like the best approach to adopt right now.

Considering Differing Ethical Approaches to Resolve Ethical Issues

If a conflict involves ethical questions, I additionally draw on an Ethical Choices Model for understanding the ethical approaches of different people to help make choices that best fit with their own ethical values. This approach can also help to resolve any misunderstandings that occur when people have different ethical approaches.

A first step to using this ethical analysis is to understand the four major dimensions that shape each person's approach to ethics. These are whether a person is:

• More or less practical or moral in his or her values or philosophy;

• More or less rational or intuitive in his or her style;

• More or less of a follower/conformist or an innovator/rule breaker in his or her attitude toward rules;

• More or less altruistic or self-interested in his or her orientation to others and themselves.

This Ethical Choices Model creates a four-way matrix, much like the approach to personality typing used in the widely known Myers–Briggs Personality-Type Instrument, and it's described in more detail in Making Ethical Choices, Resolving Ethical Dilemmas. The advantage of understanding your own ethical approach and that of others you are interacting with is that you can better recognize different values, attitudes, styles, and orientations in different situations to help decide what to do.

For example, say you know someone is very concerned about doing what's right. You can appeal to them based on emphasizing ideas of fairness or justice. By contrast, if someone is more practically oriented, your appeal will be stronger if you emphasize what works and doesn't and how a proposed action will benefit that person or their organization.

Other Major Considerations: Communications, Assumptions, Personalities, and Politics in the Workplace

Finally, a few issues come up repeatedly in causing misunderstandings, problems, and conflicts in the workplace; many times, addressing these issues will help to resolve other problems. For example, a communications breakdown often occurs because one person doesn't communicate something clearly or someone else misunderstands a message. Sometimes a key to improving a relationship or solving a problem is clarifying that communication or dealing with the fallout that results from the misunderstandings that occur when communications are unclear.

Wrong assumptions are also at the heart of many problems and conflicts, because people don't have the facts, jump to conclusions based on making faulty assumptions, and act accordingly, even if those assumptions are wrong. A key to reducing such problems is to check whether your assumptions are correct or to recognize that someone else is acting on faulty assumptions and correcting this error

Then, too, understanding personalities and special ways of dealing with particular personality types, including people viewed as "difficult people," can help to know what to do. For instance, if you are dealing with a control freak of a boss or colleague, you need to act to help them feel in control in order to defuse the anxieties they may feel in a particular situation. By contrast, when you interact with someone who is very loose and relaxed, you can create better rapport by taking more time to slow down, engage in informal conversation to create a more personal bond, and then deal with the issue at hand.

Further, there are the realities of office politics. To learn what they are, you need to figure out the players and the terrain and rules by which they are operating, so you can better navigate through the political dynamics in that office environment.