Are You Spending Time with the Right People at Work?

Now that the end of the year is in sight, it’s a good time to take a step back and assess how we are progressing.  Usually, when we do this type of assessment, we look at progress against our business plan, project timelines or other priorities we’ve identified.

I suggest we all take a look at our key work relationships and assess how those are going.  We all know that our work relationships are important for a wide variety of reasons.  We also know that these relationships shift over time.  Someone who it wasn’t important to have a good working relationship with in the past is now an important partner.  Someone who we worked closely with in the past moved to a new role or division and we don’t really work together anymore.  And sometimes, there are people we need to build relationships with that we don’t spend the time on because they are difficult or building a new relationship is outside of our comfort zone.

I suggest you assess the balance in your network of work relationships and ask:

• Who are you spending a great deal of time with?  Why do you spend that much time with them –familiarity?  The ease of the relationships?  Because you need them to get work done? It could be a combination of reasons.
• Based on what you want to achieve, is that the right amount of time to be spending with them?
• Who are you spending less time with but should spend more because they are important to success?  What needs to happen for you to be able to spend more time building the relationship?  Do you need to spend less time on those relationships that are comfortable
  but not as important to the work?  Do you need to force yourself out of you comfort zone?
• What’s your plan for building or expanding the relationships you need to work on?  Set 2 or 3 goals for making the necessary changes to re-balance your relationships and put them into action now.

About Edith Onderick-Harvey

Edith Onderick-Harvey is a highly regarded consultant, leadership and talent expert, and speaker. Edith is frequently quoted in the media including The New York Times, CNN.com, HR Executive, and American Executive. As the President of Factor In Talent, Edith works with leaders to take performance — their own, their team’s and their organization’s — to the next level.