Relationship-Building Skills
Do you need relationship building skills to function well in your job role? This article provides a guide on how you can develop the skills and include them on your resume.
What Are Relationship Building Skills
Relationship building is the process of interacting constantly, paying a good listening ear, and always making out time for others to develop and maintain relationships. It requires commitment and sincerity. Everyone benefits from relationship building, regardless of their particular career. Honest communication, transparency, and attentive listening are the foundations of healthy relationships. Relationships are built when one person is open to learning about another and expressing themselves.
Relationship building is essential for long-term goals and sustainable success. You will have more rewarding and fruitful personal and professional interactions if you know how to create bonds with people. Relationship-building skills are a combination of soft skills which are applied to connect with people and form positive relationships. Relationship-building skills are crucial for working well with coworkers, contributing to a team, and creating a mutual understanding with others. Workplace relationships can greatly enhance your ability to succeed in your profession.
The development of your current skills as well as the acquisition of new ones can all be facilitated by building solid professional relationships. Because effective relationship-building can require a combination of different soft skills, it is essential to improve these skill areas to help you develop in your career. Relationship-building skills typically include a variety of soft skills that influence how you connect with others. A skill like a relationship building is definitely worth the effort it takes to master and put into practice. Relationship-building skills include verbal communication, active listening, empathy, questioning, reflective responses, building rapport, managing emotions, conflict resolution, negotiation, networking, persuasion, influencing, and team-building skills.
Importance of Relationship-Building Skills
Enhance collaboration: When working on a project together, coworkers who get along well with one another are more likely to produce quality work. Respected coworkers can inspire you to work at the top of your game, and open channels of communication can make all of your tasks run more smoothly. When team members collaborate, there is often less uncertainty in communication and everyone is more certain of exactly what their responsibilities are.
Improve productivity: Great relationship-building skills in the workplace not only help increase team productivity by ensuring that members communicate well, but also enhance individual productivity and job-related skills. People who love working with their coworkers tend to put in more effort both consciously and unconsciously because they like where they are currently and want to see their company succeed in the future.
Boost employee morale: Employees’ total productivity is typically correlated with their psychological well-being. Your morale can be raised by having good relationships with the people you spend several hours with each workday, which can help you perform better on the job.
Improve employee retention rates: Given that everyone is accustomed to their coworkers’ professional demeanours and working habits, teams that retain their essential members typically provide better long-term achievements. Because they are satisfied professionally and because it may be challenging to rebuild the personal relationships they have with their coworkers elsewhere, employees who have a sense of belonging to the company and each other are less likely to look for jobs elsewhere.
Enhance the transfer of skills and knowledge: If a team’s senior and junior members get along well with one another, that team is more likely to produce successful long-term outcomes. The more experienced workers and the less experienced ones can transfer skills in collaborative team environments. In the end, both the company and the employees may gain from this.
Improve creativity: The ability to think creatively can be stimulated by having positive interactions with your coworkers. You can find the inspiration and support you need to generate original ideas and concepts that can result in more effective methods of doing things by working in an environment where you feel comfortable expressing yourself.
How to Improve your Relationship-Building Skills
Develop effective communication skills: Communication is one of the most crucial soft skills for building productive professional relationships. You may have a beneficial impact on how you connect with others by improving your communication skills. You can hone your communication skills by participating in conversations and contributing to team meetings, as well as by practising active listening and interpreting non-verbal cues like body language.
Practice empathy always: Empathy is another important element in successful business relationships. By demonstrating empathy to your colleagues, you convey to them your concern, your comprehension of their thoughts and points of view, and your regard for the opinions and feelings of others. You can have a good effect on how you get along with your teammates and other coworkers by practising empathy.
Develop emotional intelligence: Another effective approach to help ensure you are building outstanding professional relationships is to increase your emotional intelligence. By exercising empathy, becoming more sensitive to your coworkers’ emotions, and keeping a careful eye on the dynamics at work, you can improve your emotional intelligence. By doing this, you can improve your emotional awareness of both your own and your coworkers’ feelings.
Demand for feedback: Your professional development can be greatly aided by seeking out feedback. You can tell that you are driven to succeed in your position by expressing your intention to employ recommendations for professional progress. Additionally, it demonstrates your receptivity to fresh perspectives and your willingness to learn and improve. Your interpersonal skills may benefit from this.
Go for mentorship: Asking for advice and mentorship on how to develop your relationship skills and advance professionally from someone you respect, admire, and trust may be a very effective learning strategy.
Jobs that Require Relationship Building Skills
Broadcast Journalists: Broadcast journalists need to have great relationship-building skills to get information from the subjects they also interview off camera, even though most people only see them on TV. They must be experts at interpreting nonverbal cues, interpreting body language, and getting their visitors to divulge information that they might not divulge to other journalists. Additionally, they must collaborate with colleagues daily to coordinate reporting tasks and listen as stylists get them ready for the camera.
Medical Doctors: Some patients stick with their doctors because of their bedside manner, while others could choose a doctor who is exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable but has a poor bedside manner. Regardless of the patient’s choice, doctors need to be excellent communicators since they also need to work well with others. Private practice doctors must also uphold positive working relationships with their staff members. Hospital doctors must build positive workplace relationships with other doctors, staff nurses, pharmacists, pathologists, unit secretaries, and other coworkers.
Esthetician: Although estheticians may occasionally have walk-in clients, building a loyal clientele is crucial for success in this career field. Even though estheticians must be skilled in the aesthetic services they offer, they should also have a personable demeanour that puts clients at ease. It’s crucial to be able to converse with clients and to remember their demands and needs in between sessions. A client is more likely to return and recommend an esthetician if they can build a rapport with them. Although the exact requirements can change based on the services an esthetician offers, all estheticians are required to complete a certificate program.
Sales Representative: To effectively sell your company’s product to other individuals or organizations over the phone, in person, or via email, you must possess excellent communication skills. You must be approachable enough to cultivate a close network of potential clients, but self-assured enough to ensure that these clients firmly believe in all you’re offering. And when you’re not attempting to sell a good or service, you’re interviewing clients to learn more about their interests and issues. When your team returns to the drawing board, you’ll help them as you share your findings with them.
Human Resources Managers: Managers of human resources are responsible for hiring employees and handling employee work-related issues. They need relationship-building skills to arbitrate disputes between coworkers or between employees and management as part of their tasks. They may be personally involved in fostering relationships at work if they choose to establish policies or initiatives that are intended to strengthen relationships among employees.
Social Worker: A social worker’s job requires them to engage in in-depth conversations that go much beyond standard business dialogue. Your employment as a social worker would need you to sympathize with those who have experienced abuse, neglect, or mental illness rather than meeting with clients to discuss a financial plan or the introduction of a product. Long, confidential interactions with customers would be required to accurately assess their living circumstances and make thorough recommendations based on their needs. Even though you would be speaking with individuals directly for the majority of the day, you must also be able to maintain composure under pressure.
How to Include Relationship-Building Skills on Your Resume
Match your current skill set to the job requirements: You will have to consider connecting your present skill sets to those listed in the job requirements to promote your relationship-building skills on your resume. Your communication, teamwork, and networking skills may be included if the position you’re looking for involves collaboration. You could also give instances of how your previous roles have benefited from these skills.
Demonstrate relationship-building skills in the resume summary section: Three to four sentences are required to make up your resume summary. Your resume summary is the ideal opportunity to showcase your best qualities, such as your capacity for building reliable relationships. Remember that your summary section is the part your hiring managers will notice first in the resume.
Show your relationship-building skills in your ‘accomplishment’ section: Your chances of getting an interview will increase if you relate your best accomplishments to your interpersonal skills. A simple approach to achieve this is by including a section on your resume labeled “Achievements.” By doing this, you would make sure the hiring manager won’t miss anything crucial about your experience.
Examples of How to Include Relationship-Building Skills on Your Resume
- Aided all project management teams in developing projects that matched the partner-attraction plan.
- Arranged eight networking events in 2021 that boosted attendees’ professional connections by up to 90%.
- Supported 10-man customer service teams in building customer relationships which increased sales and patronage by over 45%.
- Achieved a 150% increase in corporate partners in just one year.
- Established strong ties with new clients which brought about several repeated businesses.
How to Demonstrate Relationship-Building Skills in an Interview
Give instances of the relationship-building skills you used in your previous job: You can be questioned in an interview about your ability to work well with others, your communication skills, or how your skill sets contributed to the success of your previous company. Be careful to give instances in your response of how your skill sets helped you accomplish a task or attain a goal.
Demonstrate you can exceed expectations to help others: It works well to respond to interview questions on your relationship-building skills by saying that you can go above and beyond. This response demonstrates your willingness to build relationships by volunteering your time to assist others with their work. This is something that all employers want to see in every employee. Being an employee that consistently goes above and beyond will make you an irresistible hire.
Demonstrate confidence and comfort in the topic: When answering interview questions, it’s crucial to project confidence and the impression that you’ve built successful relationships frequently in the past and won’t have any difficulty doing so in your new position. An interviewer isn’t only listening to the things you say; they are also assessing your confidence and how much you seem to like the job you are interviewing for. You have to demonstrate confidence in the notion that building relationship is a rewarding aspect of your job.
Examples of Interview Questions to Test Relationship-Building Skills
- How can you build trust when working with a new team?
- What are some ways to develop strong relationships with colleagues who work remotely?
- Is there any type of person you find it hard to work with or build a relationship with?
- How do you establish rapport with stakeholders to resolve issues quickly?
- Tell us about the time you successfully communicated with multiple audiences at the same time.