Making New Relationships

There is the organizational chart, and then there are the ways things REALLY get done, and the two might not even be remotely similar in your organization. Whether it’s the case that roles are clearly defined, or instead that you have to know someone who knows someone in order to get anything done, your employees need relationships throughout the organization. Do they have them?

By the time you rise to a leadership role you may have been around long enough to know how things work, but don’t assume your employees — especially your new ones — have the same knowledge. If you want to be helpful, let them know who they should be talking to. If you want to really boost their capability, help them with the introductions.

Help your employees understand the informal relationships they need to make, and don’t feel like there is something wrong with your organization when you do that. It is common to have the “informal organizational chart” coexist alongside the one that’s on paper. Changes happen over time, and your employees need to know with whom they should be collaborating and to whom they should turn for assistance. Someone in a role now may be more or less knowledgeable than the last person. Maybe a position is unfilled, or perhaps there have been organizational changes such as flattening of the management levels, and everyone is still trying to figure out how things will work. Most organizations seem to constantly be undergoing some form of change, so it’s perfectly natural to use the informal relationships along with the formal ones. Don’t hurt your team’s effectiveness by pretending the need for informal relationships doesn’t exist.

In addition to helping people understand what relationships to build, perhaps you can help them to build them. Take your new people around to meet the folks they should know, send an introductory email to the overseas office with whom they need to be working, do whatever you need to do to connect the people who need to be connected. Let your folks know who can be helpful and when they should reach out to them, and also make sure they understand whom they should expect to be helping. It takes time for a relationship to start creating value, and you can speed up that process by helping with the introductions rather than waiting for your new employees to figure it all out on their own.

As collaboration becomes more important, as organizations continue to grow internationally, and as regular change becomes the norm, you will find informal relationships complementing, not replacing, the solid and dotted lines on the organizational chart. Rather than denying it, or leaving your team to figure things out by themselves, try to help build those informal networks that help you get your job done.