Relationships

In Chapter Three of my upcoming book, Influence: What’s the Missing Piece, we discuss the organizational culture and the landscape for high return on investment. One of these cultures is connectedness that results in friendships.

In Part One of our previous post on friendship and connection at work, we talked about the importance of having workplace friendships.

Today, we turn to how to actually build healthy friendships at work.

In Chapter Three of my upcoming book Influence: What’s the Missing Piece?, we discuss the organizational culture and the landscape for high return on investment. In today’s article, I want to dig deeper into one facet of something covered in that chapter.

One of the key aspects of a healthy organizational culture is that people need to foster strong relationships at work. Let’s call this the connection factor.

We are human. Thus, we are fallible. Sooner or later, we will make a mistake. Maybe that mistake will be an unintentional slight, stinging words, or an action more malevolently motivated.

When that happens, if we value relationships, we must apologize to bring reconciliation, to restore peace, and to continue to influence in a healthy manner. No one will be positively influenced by someone with whom they are in a damaged relationship.

But what does a proper apology look like? We’ve all received a half-hearted apology and as we are receiving it, we wonder, “Is this person truly sincere? Do they really realize the damage they have done?” Then we start to guess at the person’s motivation. “Are they simply trying to get me back in their corner?” “Do they really even care they offended me?”

Let’s look at how to offer a proper apology. This isn’t a simple formula that magically fixes damage. If used as such without genuine empathy for the hurt caused, it can actually do more damage than good. You have to get into the shoes of those you are giving the apology to before giving it.

The proper apology has four components.

In every successful organization, two structural pictures must be in the front of our minds to create a healthy and functional team. The two pictures are “family” and “body.” Sometimes an organization gets unhealthy and dysfunctional and needs an influencer to pull them back to center. Here are the family and body word pictures that will allow you to be such an influencer.