3 min to read

How to improve relationships at work

Regular informal chats

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A good way to improve relationships at work is to foster informal conversation between coworkers. If your company is spread out across multiple offices you may never had the opportunity to talk to some people aside from email and Slack. Despite digital advances humans still require face-to-face contact. One way out of this mess is to regularly host informal 30m conversations between 4-5 members of your team.

The topic is not fixed but it’s useful to have some ice-breaker questions on hand in case the conversation goes stale. Here are some I found useful:

  1. What was the worst style choice you ever made?
  2. If you were a wrestler what would be your entrance theme song?
  3. Have you ever been told you look like someone famous, who was it?
  4. If you could bring back any fashion trend what would it be?
  5. If a movie was made of your life what genre would it be, who would play you?
  6. If you were famous, what would you be famous for?
  7. If you had to eat one meal everyday for the rest of your life what would it be?
  8. If you were left on a deserted island with either your worst enemy or no one, which would you choose? Why?
  9. Say you’re independently wealthy and don’t have to work, what would you do with your time?
  10. If you had to delete all but 3 apps from your smartphone, which ones would you keep?
  11. What was the worst job you ever had?
  12. What would your superpower be and why?
  13. What is your favorite time of the day and why?
  14. What is your favorite meal to cook and why?
  15. What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten?
  16. If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be?
  17. If you could choose any two famous people to have dinner with who would they be?
  18. If you could have someone follow you around all the time, like a personal assistant, what would you have them do?
  19. If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?
  20. If you had to teach a class on one thing, what would you teach?
  21. If you could be immortal, what age would you choose to stop aging at and why?
  22. If you could eliminate one thing from your daily routine, what would it be and why?

Another method I advocate is using the email from Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. This email is meant to be sent out to your friends and family to help you improve your performance but I’ve adapted it for the workplace:

Thank you so much for reading this email. This isn’t an easy one for me to send, but it is extremely important to me, so I sincerely appreciate you investing your valuable time reading and hopefully responding to it.  This email is going to only a select group of people. Each of you knows me well, and I’m hoping will give me honest feedback about my strengths and more importantly my weakness.  I’ve never done anything like this before, but I feel that for me to grow and improve as a person, I need to get a more accurate picture of how I’m showing up to other people. In order to become the person I need to be to create the life and contribute to others at the levels that I want, I need your feedback. So, all I’m asking is that you take just a few minutes to email me back with what you honestly think are my top 2-3 “areas of improvement.” If it will make you feel better to also list my top 2-3 “strengths”, you are definitely welcome to. That’s it. And please don’t sugarcoat it or hold anything back. I will not be offended by anything that you share. In fact, the more “brutally” honest you are, the more leverage it will give me to make positive changes in my life.  Thank you again

Send it out to a select few workmates and implement the feedback they suggest.