Whether you realize it or not, all great businesses have one thing in common. Business owners know how to build and maintain respectful, fulfilling and mutually beneficial relationships with their employees, their customers, their suppliers, and sometimes, even their competitors.

Great business and professional relationships don’t happen overnight. They take time to grow and result to fragile little things that have to constantly be nurtured.  A slight slip or a small misstep, might mean the beginning of the end of a business or professional relationship.

We learn to build strong relationships overtime. Like a building a fort, we assess the weak areas and reinforce them to build a strong, solid structure. Business and professional relationships are the same. Those in a business and professional relationship try to learn as much as they can from one another in order to fortify their strengths and reinforce their weaknesses in order to build a strong and solid alliance.

Here are a few tips on Building Business and Professional Relationship Based on Mutual Trust and Growth:

Be honest:

Be transparent. Let all your stakeholders know what you can and cannot deliver. Trust is a two way street, you can’t give it if you don’t have it. Earn trust and it will be reciprocated. Make all efforts to make good on your promises and prove that you are trustworthy.

Give what you expect.

If you expect quality service from your people, give them quality service. Let them know how their work impacts the organization as a whole. Make them feel that they are not just some cog in a wheel but a very important part of the business. If you expect return business from your clients, give them an excellent reason to return. It is better to under promise and over deliver than to over promise and under deliver. Always go the extra mile and add a personal touch. Make them feel that their business is important and you will forever have their loyalty.

Be familiar:

A budding relationship is fragile. Learn to grow with your stakeholders. Create a history, a relationship. Get to know each other and you will quickly learn how you can benefit from your business and professional relationship. If you are visible, you create familiarity.

Always welcome feedback:

This is how you grow. This is how you can improve. The best businesses are those who are able to respond to the needs of their stakeholders. So listen, listen, and listen some more. Take complaints and unwelcome suggestions with a grain of salt. There are usually a lot of hidden truths and gems to unsolicited advice. Be sure keep all avenues for feedback open and keep an eye out for opportunities and areas for improvement.

Be reliable:

Reliability is golden. It is what keeps customers loyal to businesses. If you follow the tips above and discount this last tip, all of it will be for naught. So be reliable. Let your employees, your customers, and your suppliers – hell, even your competitors – know that you are reliable. Show them that you are reliable and that you expect nothing less but the same from them. Trust me, they will follow your lead.

Growth entails change, but with a solid foundation of trust you can grow your business and professional relationships and take it towards where you see a mutually beneficial end goal for you and all your stakeholders.

 Written by Jaie T.-  The Help

Remember being bright eyed and optimistic after graduation? Remember feeling that you couldn’t wait to start working and see if you can make a difference in the world? Remember thinking that you’re going to make a truckload of money? I know. That’s what all of us were thinking after we tossed our caps into the air.

After months of job hunting though, we got to weed out the “frivolous” reasons why we wanted to work and got down to what we really wanted to know. We all get jobs to see what we are capable of. We go to work in order to test our wings and see if what we’ve learned in theory, we could execute flawlessly in practice. And once we get that job, we test out the waters to see what our strengths are and where we can improve. With bright eyed optimism, we keep on adjusting and learning until hopefully, one day, we get it right.

No one wants to stay stagnant in their careers, This is why we need to be constantly challenged in our careers because the key to being great at what you do is to zoom in on your strengths and develop them. You alone can correctly identify your areas of competence. That’s not to say that employers should leave all the work to their employees with regard to developing competencies.

Outstanding teams are driven by the desire to learn and improve. Employees do not want to sit back and watch life pass them by. They want to be able to say they are good at what they do. They relish the opportunity to develop and maintain their competence. Employees must take advantage of this innate drive. All employers have to do is show the path and their team will follow their lead.

Here are some ways to develop and maintain staff’s competence:

Align company core values:

I cannot stress this enough. You have to get people who share the same core values as you do. Your staff has to have principles in line with yours and what your vision of the company is. This, essentially, is the foundation of a strong team – a common core that promotes an inclusive work atmosphere. It makes everyone feel that they are important and that they are working towards a common goal. It makes it easier to communicate your purpose and your targets.

Provide tailored training and be clear about roles:

There’s this Einstein quote that goes “Everybody’s a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” Be fair. Do not expect your computer wiz to be able to take care of creative design or vice versa. Identify your employees strengths and be sure to provide tailored training for each one. Nothing says care as much as personalizing their individual career training paths. It makes them feel that you care enough to layout a long term career plan for them and that you are willing to invest in them and their personal growth. You get to help them develop and maintain their competence, plus you get happy employees as well. It’s a win-win!

Be open to ideas:

While we’re on the subject of tailored training, keep an open mind about how you can improve your training and instructional resources as well. Communicate with your employees. After all, they are the end users and will most likely be able to provide the most useful feedback on how you can simplify and/or improve staff competence. Allow them to guide the process. Adjust enough to include their relevant suggestions while staying true to your vision and ultimate targets.

Set expectations:

You cannot measure your progress unless you set a bar to measure your expectations against. Set measurable goals and sit back and watch as your superstars exceed them and blow your targets out of the water. Don’t let it be too absurd and unreachable, like a dangling carrot, that your employees have them just within their grasp but can never reach them. They will get tired and lose motivation quickly. Don’t let it be too easy that your employees don’t rise up to the challenge and never get to learn just how far they can go.

Praise and Motivate:

Give them enough praise and motivation for being good at what they do. Never be stingy with recognition. In the end, the recognition for a job well done is enough for most people to have a sense of fulfillment.

If you are willing to put in the work to develop and maintain your staff’s competence, the rewards for you and your company will be tenfold.

 Written by Jaie T.-  The Help

Once more, it is made clear to us that we live in a small world. Twelve innocent persons died in Paris, a tragedy that touched lives everywhere.  We mourn and try to face the loss and the divide, fast becoming an abyss. We can only hope that soon we can find solutions to close the gap that’s staring us in the face.

***

Sometimes in the professional world, when we are bypassed for a promotion, our sights tend to focus on the outside, blaming the manager who could not see our value, skills and accomplishments. And so a wedge is unwittingly created. At home, a child gets failing marks; a spouse joins friends instead of returning home to family. Perplexed, we lash out and put the blame on work demands that’s taking over our lives.

But in the equation of human relationships, we consistently forget that we also bring something to the table. We are participants thus have responsibility as well for the child’s low marks and a spouse’s loss of interest in family life.

Lives do not fall apart overnight. A stone will not erode with a single rainstorm. Marriages crumble over time. What happens is that hurt and resentment begin to accumulate, dialogue, a key to building relationships in the professional or personal realm, is forgotten.

Perhaps taking the first step towards that all-important conversation is nerve wracking. “What can I say? How do I start? Will I be respected after this? Am I not being a dummy for bringing it up?” We all have had these thoughts at some point when facing a discussion over a sensitive issue.

“It takes courage not to be defeated by one’s own weaknesses and negativity, courage to be happy,” Daisaku Ikeda, a Buddhist leader in Japan, said. These are words that are worth their weight in gold, words to live by.

Written by Yoli P.- The Help

The year 2014 is about to end.

It is that time of the year when everyone looks back on accomplishments. It is also when the future beckons, to look forward to. For some, it is time to seriously think about dreams that have been on the back burner for many years. Keeping in mind that pursuing one’s dreams is not the same as being self-centered, it is important to take some small steps to achieve one or two of those dreams in 2015. But how to do exactly that? Following are some suggestions that can make dreams within touching distance.

1)    Have a vision of your dream. For example, if the dream is to spend a month in Milan, Italy, mixing with the locals, then learning Italian is the first step. See yourself in a classroom or with a tutor, keeping this in mind as you save up for a beginner’s course. With determination and discipline, one can also begin learning about its culture by going online to sites that offer information and even language podcasts.

2)    While you’re online, some checking on what it will take to live in Italy for a month. For instance, find an estimate of daily expenses; cost of staying at a bed and breakfast compared to rooming with a family. Know everything there is to know about living abroad, in particular Italy.

3)    Be flexible in making your plans. Challenges and disappointments will come up. Adjust accordingly but hold on to that dream. Make certain that family and friends support you. As we’ve often heard from successful people “Quitting is not an option” in any endeavor especially when it comes to you dreams.

4)    Be on the lookout for negative thoughts that come your way. When it does happen, think about the plans towards achieving your dreams and the completed steps.

More important, continue to visualize yourself in that dream. Whether it’s a trip, getting courses to learn new skills, or going back to school, experience them and sense them as if it is already happening. Remember that dreams are alive because we hold on to them.

Best wishes for a happy 2015!

Written by Yoli P.- The Help