When you’re tasked to accomplish something important at work; the task that you have been given will usually involve someone out of your department. Tasks will often involve people who you have no authority over which means they don’t need to help you if they don’t want to. In order to be successful it’s important that you are able to get support from other parts of the organization in order to complete your task.
Communication is key to working with everyone, especially people across the organization. In order to have successful communication you must know how people in other departments prefer to communicate. This means you should know a bit of their schedule and if they like meetings/phone/text/email. Knowing how people like to communicate enables you to effectively connect with them in much less time.
When you do connect with people you need to know what information to give them. If you are talking to someone who is providing a service you may need to have all of the details ready and written down.
Hiding nothing is key when you are working with other people. If you hide information it will end up biting you in the future. As you hide nothing from other departments they are able to understand WHY you are doing what it is you are doing. Being open with your motives makes you trusted.
Being competent in what you do makes you easy to help. It’s easiest to work with people who now how to do their job well. If you are extremely competent and know what other people need in order to be successful, this will make you easy to work with. When you hand someone exactly what they need and you THINK about them… this works for them. Having this competence makes you a pleasure to work with.
Build relationships with other people so they want to help you. If you have relationships; people will work with you. If you don’t have relationships; people won’t work with you. Do beware of building relationships to get something. Never do that. Instead, build relationships because it makes work a whole lot more fun.
Can you think of someone who you look forward to completing a task for? Maybe you’d rather help them than do what your boss asked you to do? This is your goal. Be that person that your co-workers are excited to work with.
Nice post. Not to nitpick, but at face value the first sentence of your second to last paragraph seems to contradict with the last couple.
I meant to say…
By building relationships with other people they will want to help you.
instead of…
Build relationships with other people so they want to help you.