3 tips to Build Effective Working Relationships to Avoid Micromanagement

Are You building effective working relationships – unable to delegate effectively – resorting to micromanagement?

5 minute read.

Very few business owners know or have been taught how to delegate. The primary reason for this is we were never taught how to create effective working relationships with our team members, we have just left it to chance.

Being able to consciously and intentionally create effective working relationships with your colleagues, suppliers, contractors and customers is a skill that will pay dividends for the rest of time. Sadly it is one that is rare.

Without that relationship, it becomes difficult to delegate effectively and you then fall back into the micromanagement trap.

in my view, the whole point of building a business is to create a working environment where you get to deliver your best version of you that empowers everyone who works for you to do the same.

Unfortunately, so many managers end up running around dealing with everybody else’s problems and never getting enough time to do what they love or only they can do.

Mastering the skill of effective relationship building and delegation are probably the two most powerful skills any business owners could learn and master.

Tips for building powerful working relationships and effective delegation

1. Understand the purpose of your relationship with each individual and what their purpose of having a relationship with you is.
2. When you are clear that the purposes align, work out the actions you need to take to fulfil both your and their purpose.
3. Delegation is the art of getting someone to contribute their best efforts in service of a specific goal. Explain to the individual what outcome you expect them to achieve and then ASK them how they will achieve it. They may surprise you with a very different solution that works really well.

Barriers to building effective relationships and so prevent effective delegation.

The greatest misconception about relationships is that they are about whether you like someone or not. This is not true even for personal relationships. Every relationship you have must have a clear specific purpose which is then supported by a specific dynamic. The advantage of relationships for work is that it is easier to understand this structure and thereby it is easier to intentionally create a relationship for that specific purpose.

Friendship is an outcome of a relationship not the cause of it.

The next barrier is all about the fear of rejection, what if they don’t like me, etc. This fear is abolished when the relationship is grounded in a specific purpose that is clearly understood by both parties. This dynamic is most obvious in crisis situations where individuals put aside their personal feeling to work together to save the day.  You need to have that focus and clarity of the ‘save the day’ purpose for your business and build relationships for it.