BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH…

• Direct Reports

• Upwards

• Customers and Suppliers

• Across the Organization with Peers

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH DIRECT REPORTS

4 KEY SKILLS TO STRENGTHEN RELATIONSHIPS WITH DIRECT REPORTS:• Building Trust

• Listening

• Delivering Effective Feedback

• Managing Challenging Conversations

• Building Stronger Work Relationships

SOME COMMON MISTAKES IN BUILDING RELATIONSHIP AT WORK:• Taking before giving.

• Being an opportunistic relationship builder.

• Seeing relationship building as playing office politics.

• Forgetting about results.

• Limiting your relationship circle.

• It helps if manager and direct report can make a mutual choice when entering into their formal relationship.

• General manager should provide challenging tasks, set high standards, and enforce accountability.

• General manager needs to show an interest in the personal and professional development of subordinates.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

UPWARD

Key distinction between

middle level managers and

CEO’s

MIDDLE LEVEL MANAGER’S (DIVISION MANAGER)• Always concerned with line superiors

• Corporate staff groups

CEO’S

• Have their board of directors

• Major stockholders

• regulators

ASPECTS OF HOW DIVISION MANAGERS RELATE TO THEIR VARIOUS SUPERIORS ARE

ALWAYS IMPORTANT ASSETS., ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT ARE:

• An ability to persuade higher level managers to endorse division proposals for resources to support research, new products, capital pro- grams, shift in strategy or organization

• An ability to secure from superiors rewards and other signs of recognition for the division’s achievements

• A protégé-mentor relationship that provides coaching and other support

HOW TO BUILD BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

• Listen More Than You Talk

• Make A Routine

• Be Honest

• Take Notes

• Give More than You Receive

• Be Proactive

• Be Real

• Turn Blunders into Opportunities

• Make it Personal

• Meet Face-to-Face

BUILDING RELATIONS WITH CUSTOMERS AND SUPPLIERS

PARTNERSHIPS• People are key.

– Build and develop relationships.

• Relationships between customer and supplier need to be collaborative, not necessarily contractual:– Open; trust; win-win; communication.

• Customers and suppliers should be treated as partners in the activity:

– Focused on outcome; some contact with target customers; shared responsibility.

• Fit with the organisational culture:

– Level of formality; sponsorship from senior management; style.

THE LAPSES AND DIVERSIONS ON THE PART OF THE SUPPLIERS THAT CAN AFFECT THE RELATIONSHIP:

• Satisfaction: The customer expects overall attention and convenience in all departments to ensure smooth fulfillment of his needs. This includes quality, timeliness, ease of access and commitment of conditions.

• Competitiveness: Customers assess the supplier through competition based on the pricing and quality of their products, its reliability, its technological background and industry trends.

• Innovation:  Customer knows and lives the products more than the supplier does, as he is working on them and is in a position to suggest innovation and development for the products.

• Finance: Suppliers have to be ready for providing financial advantages as loan, extended terms on purchases and postponement of debt when demanded by their loyal customers particularly at their growth stage or when they are into a financial crisis.

Essential factors for the customers to create and maintain a healthy relationship with the suppliers.• Payments always on time

• Provide adequate flexibility

• Personalize the relationship

• Share information

• Be a demanding but a valued customer

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION

WITH PEERS

STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP FORMS:• Forming basic research relationships with other companies,

focused on new materials and manufacturing methods

• Developing new sales channels in foreign markets

• Developing joint ventures to develop new markets

• Many large companies have found it necessary and desirable to provide quality-related training to consultation to their suppliers-especially small suppliers who do not have their own training staff

• Many companies have formed industry consortia to fund research and development activities that they cannot afford to do alone

• Other companies have formed university-based consortia to fund research into future management, information technology, engineering, or manufacturing technologies and practices

Almost every high potential leaders believed that the leader of the future

would need to be far more skilled than the leader of the past.

In many ways, the old world was simpler:

• Telling direct reports what to do is a lot simpler than developing relationships with partners

• Being able to work in a “silo” is a lot simpler than having to build relationship with peers across the organization

• Selling a product to customer is a lot simpler than providing an integrated solution

• Getting the lowest price from suppliers is a lot simpler than understanding their complex business needs

• Competing with customers is a lot simpler than having to develop a complex customer-supplier-competitor relationship

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