Building better relationships

Unravelling the mask people wear

Building Great Relationships

The ability to create and sustain quality relationships is a fundamental success skill for employees in any business. In fact, the quality of the relationships employees have with their peers, team leaders, suppliers and both internal and external customers has a huge impact on the productivity and profitability of the business. More important than that is a valid point that Anthony Robbins makes in his seminars “the quality of the relationships in our life determines the quality of our life”.

So how do we go about building strong relationships?

Strong relationships are created around the cornerstone of trust where both parties in a relationship feel that they can rely on the other party to operate in accordance with their desires and best interests. And because the visceral nature of trust itself is based on an interpretation of the other parties competence levels and intentions, we can only increase trust by increasing our knowledge and understanding of someone.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to building trust is the “mask” that people wear in order to establish an identity in a particular environment. Because the drive to “belong” and “fit in” to a group is so strongly embedded in human nature, many people project an image of how they think they “should be” rather than how they “really are” in order to satisfy their own perceptions of what other members of the group expect. Some people have very thin masks and are much easier to understand and trust, because what you see is what you get. But there are also lots of people in the business world who wear thick masks and it is a lot harder to understand what makes these people tick.

Having said that, I’ve facilitated corporate team and leadership workshops over the past 7 years, and my experience tells me that even people who wear thick masks will open themselves to others who are prepared to listen, show respect and be empathetic in a non-threatening environment.

Using events like corporate hospitality as a conduit to achieve improved understanding and inter-personal trust levels is a smart and powerful way to get to know the person behind the mask which helps improve trust and enhance relationships.

Yours in business,

Wayne Pearce

Wayne Pearce runs corporate team and leadership workshops for a wide range of companies and is also a Legends Club ambassador. For more information on having Wayne run a workshop for your organization, or to have Wayne attend your next corporate event, please contact Peter Gibson at the Legends Club on 02 8484 7777

Contact Wayne Pearce