Building Bridges of Collaboration
SUMMARY
Do you still have relationships that are still carrying the damage of unhealthy communication and conflict?
Well, stick with me because, in this episode, I'm not only going to show you how to repair those relationships, but how to build relationships moving forward.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year, and Master Coach Trainer. Today, I want to continue our conversation around the competency of communication by helping you to build bridges of collaboration.
What I want to do today is just finish off this month-long conversation on communication by giving you six principles that are vital so that we can have a collaborative relationship with others, build a bridge between our differences, repair relationships and build even greater mutually beneficial ones moving forward.
Let's have a look at them now. When you take these and use them, I'd love to hear how they made a difference in the style and health of your communication and your relationships.
Number one is to show tolerance and respect.
Number two is to earn and then nurture trust.
Number three is to listen below the surface.
That's where number four comes in: seek unity through understanding.
Number five is to value opinions and feedback.
Number six is to move forward through forgiveness.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you still have relationships that are still carrying the damage of unhealthy communication and conflict?
Well, stick with me because, in this episode, I'm not only going to show you how to repair those relationships, but how to build relationships moving forward.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year, and Master Coach Trainer. Today, I want to continue our conversation around the competency of communication by helping you to build bridges of collaboration.
A lot of communication nowadays is built on differences in beliefs, opinions, and even the style of communication that people like to use. These differences create a lot of division because it's all about a dichotomy of black and white and right or wrong. And there's a lot of arguments and conflict.
However, you can shift the way you communicate to have a much different result.
To do this, communication needs to be founded on principles such as empathy and mutual understanding, and collaboration — working together in harmony.
What I want to do today is just finish off this month-long conversation on communication by giving you six principles that are vital so that we can have a collaborative relationship with others, build a bridge between our differences, repair relationships and build even greater mutually beneficial ones moving forward.
Let's have a look at them now. When you take these and use them, I'd love to hear how they made a difference in the style and health of your communication and your relationships.
Number one is to show tolerance and respect.
Yes, there are differences that we have. All of us, including yourself, have differences in our beliefs and how we see things.
We have different experiences.
We navigate our lives through a different lens than others.
So, the first key principle that we need to adopt so that we can collaborate and have these beautiful relationships that are our bond is to make sure that we show tolerance to others that they even have a different opinion.
To do this, we show respect.
Just like that old school characteristic of going:
“I might have a different opinion than you, but I respect that you're allowed to have one. And I respect you as a person. I'm focusing on our differences from a logical perspective in the issue that we're talking about, but not from a position of making it personal about you or me.”
So, the first key element is to be tolerant and allow others to have a perspective and respect the fact that even though it might be different from yours, it's still a perspective.
Number two is to earn and then nurture trust.
One of the most significant elements of a relationship is trust. Trust in each other— trust that you can rely on what the other person says.
Trust that when you say you're going to do something, that will be done.
That trust is not a given; that trust is earned.
It's not about position.
It's not about proximity.
It's about consistency in being a certain way when working with others.
It takes a while to earn that trust, but it can break in a heartbeat.
Therefore, that trust needs to be nurtured.
Over a period of time, even though there might be a few steps forward and occasionally one going back (because we're all human), we continue to bring all the elements that I'm talking about today into the relationship, and we nurture, grow, develop and build a level of trust.
See, we're talking about building a bond here through great communication and collaboration. A bond means that we are meeting each other's needs at a very deeper level. It's not about just a friendship or an acquaintance or a relationship. To do that, we must have trust.
Number three is to listen below the surface.
A lot of communication in relationships is very surface level. It's about listening for the differences so that we can come back and retaliate.
However, to build a relationship of collaboration and trust, we need to make time to go deeper. We need to listen and ask more questions, be curious and show that we value the person we speak to. We need to make sure that we understand some of the beliefs and where they've come from, rather than just hearing what we don't like then, having a counter-argument that we go back with.
So, building a relationship, a bond of collaboration, is about (over a period of time) allowing yourself to be open and vulnerable, and then entice that in other people so that you can little by little, incrementally, let more of you be known to the other person and vice-versa. So that there's a deeper level of understanding.
That's where number four comes in: seek unity through understanding.
The opposite of division is unity. Unity is coming together where you are looking for a common cause — something that you agree on.
We talked about that over the weeks previously, where instead of finding something that's different, let's find common ground. By giving that time and going deeper, we can better understand. It’s been said: “Before we can be understood, it’s best that we seek understanding and to understand others.”
To employ the skills of active listening, being curious, and asking great questions, we can understand the context of their point of view rather than just the framework of the words that we're hearing.
So, seeking unity (something that we can work on together as a team, whether that be two people or 200) says that we can move forward on.
Number five is to value opinions and feedback.
I remember many years ago, being with someone on an overseas trip, and we were having a heart-to-heart talk, and we were getting a deeper level of conversation (this was before I learned the things that I'm teaching you now.) And I remember being asked what I didn't particularly like about this person.
I remember saying to them, “well, you allow people to have an opinion so long it's the same as yours.”
Now, let me tell you that that conversation didn't go well from there.
But what it did teach me was to make sure that I want to achieve that myself. Because what I had seen in that other person was in me, and that's why I could see it so openly.
Now I like to value the fact that they have an opinion, even though it may be different from mine.
Even in that word itself, it's just an opinion. It's a perspective. It's a way of looking at something. Just because someone else has an opinion, it doesn't mean that I need to de-value it, and it also doesn't mean that they are de-valuing mine.
Feedback is so crucial. To be open to that and do it in a way that it's not just: “Yes, give me some feedback." And then rebutting the first thing that's said because it doesn't actually work well for you or rubbed you the wrong way. It's being open and allowing people to give you that feedback. You taking it on in a logical way as an information gathering rather than taking it personally (taking it to heart and thinking that they're having an attack on you.)
Feedback for me these days is something that I love. Give it to me. I love it because it allows me to grow. Whereas, I used to see it as degrading to my identity because I took it personally.
Being able to value everyone's opinions, allow them to have one, and then take feedback even from those opinions and from their point of view allows me now to have a lot better conversations with people that are mutually beneficial. And you can do the same thing.
Number six is to move forward through forgiveness.
Today, I started talking about the fact that you might have relationships that still damage unhealthy communication and conflict.
Is it time to draw a line in the sand today and forgive not just the other person, but to forgive yourself for your part in that conflict you are still holding on to?
To go back and reverse engineer using the things that I'm teaching you over this month and go, “How can I look at that situation differently?”
And if there's still any hurt that you're carrying because you have taken it personally, to be able to shift that thinking and to be able to have a conversation with someone who that might have curd with and clear the air. Because unforgiveness is the root of unhappiness.
To carry that around every time you hear about that person, or see that person, or every time there's a situation that is similar to something that makes you think about that person, the amygdala and the hippocampus work well together, to be able to paint a picture that changes your state. You relive that over and over again.
So, to grow, build and have relationships that are greater moving forward, we need to be able to repair (through forgiveness) any that are still holding us back.
Building bridges of collaboration is the greatest way of having mutually beneficial conversations and relationships with the people around us.
Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue our conversation in the Relationship Management quadrant of Social and Emotional Intelligence by starting a conversation around Interpersonal Effectiveness,
I'll see you then.
