Building relationships part of the job description?

By Ximena Reyes

In some countries there is a clear and rigid separation of personal and professional, these two areas are not supposed to be blurred since it would imply that someone is unable to be objective and rational when having to make decisions. Any decisions that have included a gut feeling or an emotional based starting point are not supposed to be trusted.

Trust, what people trust changes across cultures, if there is a culture that is relationship oriented, like Romania the trust will be put on the person that leads a project not on the project itself. Knowing people becomes an important factor when wanting to get things done. Because if you know people it means you are good, you can be trusted.

So to aghast of many professionals coming from other parts of the world, work is about doing the work and not about getting to know people.

However, their missing an opportunity to create pillars that will later on become useful when needing something. When needing your team to go the extra mile, and this is how the two worlds meet.

If you haven’t done your job of dedicating time to build those relationships then you won’t have anyone running with you the extra mile. Because you may be thinking task, they are thinking trust.

So if you include the building relationships as part of your planning and job description, then it will be easier to get things done and lead your team.

Most of the time people reject this idea because it just conflict with everything that they have learned and considered valuable, but don’t forget that every place has a different set of rules and that it does pay to invest time knowing and sharing, including time to build those relationships.

If you want to know more about this, contact [email protected]

Ximena Reyes is the Partner and Director for Intercultural Consulting