Having beneficial professional relationships with your peers requires more than simply doing your jobs side by side in the same office. A level of trust and communication has to be established before you can make social trades with people who can help you achieve your goals. In terms of advancing in your career, building strategic relationships with key peers ranks alongside expertise and experience in importance.
A key requirement for building strategic peer relationships is that you exercise emotional intelligence when communicating.
Emotional intelligence refers to your awareness of emotions – your own and those of others – and your ability to control your behavior in response to these. Emotional intelligence can help you build strong relationships with key peers. It enables you to develop and demonstrate a genuine interest in others so that an emotional connection is formed.
To develop emotional intelligence, you have to improve your awareness of emotions, which means you monitor your own feelings as well as those of others. Once you recognize your emotional triggers, you can learn to control your emotions so you aren't locked into learned negative behavior patterns. In other words, stepping back from your emotions gives you a chance to analyze the situation and react appropriately – instead of instinctively.
Demonstrating emotional intelligence in your work relationships can have several benefits. It equips you with the information and understanding you need to build a rapport with others, and so influence others to help you. And it generally results in a better work experience.
Emotionally intelligent people display a genuine interest in others and can modify their behavior based on context. They're sensitive to other people's feelings and generally have an understanding of the reasons why they behave in the ways they do. This helps them build rapport and establish mutually beneficial relationships. In these types of relationships, social trades take place more readily. People are driven to help one another – to give favors and reciprocate by returning those received. If you don't demonstrate emotional intelligence, your attempts to establish relationships with key peers are likely to come across as insincere and manipulative.
Studies have shown that emotional intelligence results in a better work experience. Employees with higher emotional intelligence perform better than others who have similar skill levels, and get along better with other people. This translates into better job satisfaction and performance.
It's important not to mistake emotional intelligence for simply getting along easily with people, and being generally happy or self-motivated. These are all positive traits, but have little to do with the ability to analyze and control emotions using emotional intelligence. You can establish collaboration with key peers, help your peers with their goals, offer favors, and demonstrate mutual respect.
Maintaining peer relationships
Every relationship needs work – it's a growing entity that responds to influence, not a product bought off the shelf. Relationships can fade if untended, or grow in counterproductive directions, with the result that you lose your allies and the respect you've worked hard to build.
Although it's good to help your key peers and offer them favors to establish relationships, it's possible to cross the line and be too consistently obliging. You should be helpful, but you should avoid being taken advantage of. You don't want to become the person who agrees to do all the unpleasant tasks. Allowing this to happen will ultimately lose you the respect of your peers.
Unless a key peer really needs your support or help, or you hope to achieve a specific goal, making yourself the go-to-person for every problem or unwanted task will only give people the expectation that you can handle this at all times.
If you feel as though peers are taking advantage of you, it's vital to push back and put a stop to the situation. If you find yourself in this position, you need to be as positive as possible. Avoid any disagreements that could alienate you from your peers. Also make sure you're entirely aware of all factors in the situation so you can deflect any challenges. You can provide a good business reason why you can't accept specific work, give an example of a similar situation that didn't work, or call on a senior ally to state your case.
Other ways to maintain strong relationships with key peers are to distance yourself from the office "kicker" – or troublemaker – and to accept blame and share credit with peers whenever possible.
Establishing beneficial relationships with key peers can help ensure you achieve your work goals. Strategies for doing this include demonstrating emotional intelligence, establishing collaboration, helping peers achieve their goals, offering favors, and showing respect. Once you've established strategic relationships with key peers, it's vital to maintain them. However, you should avoid becoming a doormat. You should distance yourself from those known as troublemakers in the office, and accept blame for your mistakes while sharing credit for successes.