9 Tips for Building Relationship Management Skills in Teams
Top relationship management skills are necessary for any managerial position. It can be a tedious task to manage relations with your stakeholders. It is an essential skill to help you to run a business well.
Leaders who have identified the value of building relationship management skills within their companies have set a class apart from the rest of the competitors in their business.
Here are ten relationship management skills you need to have if you want to advance in your career.
Communication Skills
Relationships swing a lot on communication. Also, it is probably the most important skill to achieve and manage good relationships. It doesn’t mean that you need to be a good speaker. Communication possesses not just words but also facial expressions, tone of voice, and definitely body language. It helps in building client relationships.
Negotiation Skills
Negotiation skills are very useful in the field of sales. Striking business deals, forming partnerships, making agreements, and closing sales are things that require extensive negotiation.
There are micro-instances where the recommendation to use negotiation skills in order to achieve our work goals.
Negotiating your salary is one important instance where this skill comes in. Along with that, advocating for yourself in terms of workload and work environment is a way of negotiation that can impact your work in the long term perspective.
Teamwork
One of the important relationship management skills that you will need every time is teamwork. This is your ability to engage and collaborate with people within your space to reach your goals.
Even if you are a one-man team, or a specialist or consultant or freelancer working alone in most of your tasks, there would still be instances where you have to deal with other people to get things done. It can be budgeting, management approval, or even quality checks.
Leadership Skills
Leadership is linked with relationship management. There are many reasons why you must have leadership skills even as a non-manager. One of them is self-stewardship.
If you don’t get the opportunity to lead your peers or spearhead a project, you still need to be able to lead yourself. This shows that you need to take the initiative when required and check when you need to take action without any supervision.
Marketing Skills
When you are in marketing a product or a brand, you’re not just trying to get people to buy your product but also to form a customer relationship so that they admire and remember you.
They need to relate and connect with you as you market your product. You need to reflect on other people’s needs and show your enthusiasm to resolve their concerns through your product. It shouldn’t just be something that you earn from but rather something that gives meaning and practical solutions to others.
Customer Service
The most obvious application of relationship management skills is in customer service. You might encounter important clients of the business in your line of work. You must know how to deal with customers so that they appreciate the company more and bring in more to the business.
Excellent customer service reveals that you have given the best response to the customer. You also have to resolve those problems if any as best as you can. Customer relationship is at the heart of every company’s efforts in sustaining customer loyalty.
Connecting with strangers
Networking or marketing turns total strangers into acquaintances. The acquaintances you make during your marketing and networking efforts will flourish into good friendships or business relationships if done correctly. To assure that it happens, you have to be able to create connections that are more than superficial.
Getting someone to know by name and occupation is the first step. If you want a good relationship with someone, you have to learn more about them like what they have as individuals, and how you may help their careers.
Being friendly and approachable
Many times managing relationships just boil down to being more amicable. However if other people find you friendly and approachable, you wouldn’t need to do much to make good relationships.
Also, if you are not the most sociable person out there, there are many ways you can practice to achieve this. All you need to do is to be kind and generous to everyone you meet.
You don’t really need to create a big image or be loud to be noticeable. Doing so can also make you less likeable.
It is possible and important that people perceive you as someone who would listen and won’t pass harsh judgments on them.
Self-awareness
The above relationship skills are nothing if you don’t have self-awareness. It all commences with this.
Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses is a very important step to personal development to achieve goals and have the best relationship management skills. It helps to improve relationships at every stage of life.
Read Also: