Facing the Relationship Crisis in the Workplace

The following is adapted from Solving the People Problem, by Brett Cooper and Evans Kerrigan.

We live in an era of team-based creative work. Gone are the days when most people worked in isolation on individual tasks. Teams working on complex projects have become the standard across the whole economy.

Communication and good relationships are of central importance, yet businesses consistently push these factors aside. The result is a relationship crisis in the workplace — one that businesses are failing to address.

Business leaders are ever more frequently trying to use technical solutions to solve their people problems. They look to data analysis, AI, and specialized apps, but the solutions to the biggest hurdles they face won’t be found on a screen.

Solving the people problem is rooted in building emotionally authentic interactions.

The Challenge of Emotional Intelligence in a Tech-Based World

Emotional intelligence is a challenge in today’s world partly because our genuine, trust-filled work relationships are disappearing. Increasingly, we communicate via screens, instead of through person-to-person conversation. We build our relationships through texts, Facebook, Instagram, email, and other apps.

All of us joke about people sitting together and “talking” through their instant messages instead of engaging in a personal dialogue. How often are we one of the characters in this scene? In the work environment, we put more thought and time into our spreadsheets and reports than in how we communicate with our colleagues.

We look to technology to improve our efficiency, but only true people connection creates the environment we need to get the work done. It’s been proven that a happier worker with strong, positive work relationships is a more productive employee. Our technological tools can create efficiency in our communications, but that speed and simplicity has a price. We need real human connection to make those interactions effective.

The Real Problem Organizations are Facing

For almost ten years, we helped organizations implement process improvement efforts using Lean Six Sigma. Those projects generated hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for our clients. Yet, we could see that we — and the organizations we were serving — were missing something.

We eliminated process inefficiencies and streamlined work procedures, but we came to realize we were not getting to the heart of the real problem these organizations were facing. Because the heart, we discovered, was the problem. Humans are social and emotional creatures by nature, and companies and organizational development efforts have been ignoring that fact for far too long.

The best and brightest in business know this already. In an article from the World Economic Forum, a group of international senior executives were asked to predict the most important skills of tomorrow. Their answers were not a list of technical abilities. Instead, these leaders focused on an increase in what many call soft skills, such as empathy, teamwork, and resilience. In other words, it’s emotion and our ability to work together that matters in the workplace these days.

Many of the major performance issues organizations face these days revolve around a lack of emotional intelligence. Put simply, people just don’t know how to communicate and work together effectively. They don’t know how to accommodate different personalities and get the best out of everyone. In many cases, they are not even aware of how their own thoughts and personality traits contribute to the problems they are experiencing.

Working Toward a Better Future

This is the issue around which we founded our company, Integris. We’ve worked with organizations of every size in many different industries, and we’ve seen the toll that this emotional dysfunction can have on even the best of them. It shows up in every kind of organization, from government agencies, to midsize private companies, to the largest of multinationals.

If you want people you work with to succeed, thrive, and produce great results, you’ve got to create an environment where they can contribute and bring their best to the challenges at hand. That means addressing them as individuals, each with their own personality and set of preferences and talents. It is critical to meet their emotional needs as well as their rational ones.

For more advice on creating better emotional intelligence in the workplace, you can find Solving the People Problem on Amazon.

Brett M. Cooper and Evans Kerrigan help professionals like you build work relationships that really work. Over the last twenty years, they’ve influenced thousands of people in government, non-profits, and corporate America to work together in more productive, more effective, and more human ways. Through Integris Performance Advisors — the firm they co-founded — Brett and Evans have helped clients increase employee engagement, improve efficiency, and generate hundreds of millions in financial benefit. Brett and Evans are frequent speakers on team dynamics, leadership, and operational excellence. To access more great content and resources, and to connect directly with Brett and Evans, visit SolvingThePeopleProblem.com.