We spend eight hours a day or more at work. The relationships that we choose to build here can impact our careers and our growth trajectory. If our work environment is more can also make us more productive at the office, as well as improve overall mood and health. Interactions with colleagues and peers will lay the foundation for what kind of relationship we want to forge with them. Women in the workplace often drop out due to a lack of comfort and support systems. World Bank data shows that female labour participation fell from 32 per cent in 2005 to 19 per cent in 2021. This problem can be alleviated through building solid workplace relationships, which will make you feel good personally and enable your dreams professionally. Here are some of the relationships that women should work towards.
Finding A Mentor
Everyone woman needs a good female mentor! Even Oprah, at one point. Author, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou took a young Oprah under her wing, enabling her superstardom. “Mentors are important and I don’t think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship,” said Oprah. HR Consultant Suresh Kamath says that a mentor-mentee relationship is often confused for a manager-subordinate relationship, which is not usually the case. “Some managers can also be mentors, but the role of a mentor is quite different. A mentor is someone with experience, who understands what it is like to be in your shoes and is willing to impart the knowledge and guidance it takes to keep you on the path to career success. Find someone whose journey or career graph you admire and reach out to them with a formal letter, or request for a meeting. Mentorship requires trust, so it might take a few meetings for you to get comfortable with one. Stay honest with your mentor about your career goals and how you want to progress.”
Creating Reliable Partnerships
This is applicable to both women entrepreneurs and those who are employees. If you’re looking to build a successful partnership with someone, choose a person with complementary skills and learn from each other. This way, you offset each other’s weaknesses and strengths and also have clear-cut roles to fulfill. Have straightforward conversations where you discuss and decide everything beforehand, to avoid conflict later. Do your due diligence before you get involved with someone, especially if you’re in an entrepreneurship role. Put everything in writing, and also provide for contingency if something goes wrong. Plan your financials in advance. Schedule regular meetings to review how things go, be honest, and stay objective even if things get personal. Stay upbeat and proactive, setting the tone for a positive partnership.
Team Members
A study by Gallup found that the relationship between a team leader and their team can account for around 70 per cent of engagement. This is a very significant number. Supraja Parthasarathy, who was a team leader with Cognizant Technologies for over four years says, “When you’d like to build a team, there are a few thumb rules to keep in mind. The first is fair play. You may like someone personally, but that isn’t grounds for playing favourites. Always reward merit and hard work for the best results. Show appreciation and encouragement to those who deserve it. The second factor is to avoid politics and gossip. There is nothing worse than someone who’s either trying to collect information from their team members, or set them off against one another by saying negative things. Keep your thoughts to yourself, and more importantly, keep your private life to yourself. Be politically correct and keep your company’s work culture and DEI policies in mind before you make statements. Thirdly, listen instead of forcing your ideas down in your team. Work with mutual respect for each other’s opinions. There is something to collective insights and wisdom, which provides better solutions in the long run and also enhances your team’s performance. Keep lines of communication open always. Lastly, remember you’re the team leader and the buck stops with you. You have to take responsibility for your actions instead of throwing your team under the bus.”
Nurturing A Mentee
According to the Pew Research Center, 63 per cent of women have never had a formal mentor. Suresh Kamath says, “Just as you may have liked to be mentored, it is always nice for women in a senior position to mentor another woman. Women encounter more roadblocks than men in their careers, and tend to drop out of the workforce when challenges arise since they don’t have the right advice or mentorship to overcome them. Interestingly it is not intent that gets in the way of women mentoring others. It is actually the paucity of time and the fact that woman are constantly juggling their jobs with unpaid labour at home. Approach your HR department, and say you would like to offer mentorship and advice to those whose purpose matches yours. There is no point for either of you if the synergy is not matching. Mentorship can cut across different generations, walks of life, or even completely outside your sphere of work, depending on what the purpose is. So keep an open mind when someone approaches you. Stay in touch with younger people, to find what they require from the workforce, to truly be an effective mentor. It is important to relate to generations that need it. Rather than giving advice, your role should be to help them arrive at their own solutions.”
For all these relationships, fostering healthy and open communication that are both task-related and social. The two are not mutually exclusive and go hand-in-hand with one another. It is also important to build relationships based on trust, to truly create successful partnerships in the workplace.