Not in a relationship this Valentine’s Day? Focus on these four tricks to create amiable working relationships with your colleagues (even if your receptionist receives delicious chocolates and bouquets from his significant other).
1. Use names when chatting. It must sound sincere! In case you’re blanking on your acquaintance’s name, find something that you can use to make a personal connection. If you’re talking to the blonde guy from accounting, but you talked more with his wife Mindy at your office’s Christmas party for fifteen minutes than you ever had with her husband in five years, drop her name! You might try, “By the way, did you and Mindy ever make it to Joy? I remember she told me you were planning to see it!”
2. Considering you’re trying to promote warmth between you and your coworker, it’s important to keep track of your tone of voice. Speaking too softly is perceived as passive, helpless, or not dynamic. You’re making the other person work too hard to hear you, so your exchange is headed towards the exit. Speaking too loudly, though, comes off as abrasive, brash, and unpleasant. Speaking without any energy or enthusiasm is the biggest no-no. If you sound like a dial tone, or speak in that lazy way we all do when, say, we’ve been in a dead sleep and answer the phone at 2 a.m., the other person might feel a strong urge to check your pulse.
3. No matter whom you are talking to – I don’t care if it’s your boss, your favorite intern, or the woman in the cubicle next to you who just can’t seem to stop pestering you – you must be present. Push all of your mind chatter, your to-dos and worries to the back of your mind, put down your iPhone, and focus on the other person. To remind yourself to keep yourself present, use a trick to do so. Try clasping your hands, planting both your feet on the ground, or crossing your ankles. If the two of you are standing, try not to cross your arms. Crossed arms tell your coworkers that you’re not open to new ideas, criticism, etc.
4. Consider making physical contact on the way out of your colleague’s office or at the conclusion of your exchange. Shake their hand or touch their arm, and smile with your eyes (smize – new internet word if you haven’t heard) and drop an, “It was great catching up with you!”
I’ve found that newscasters are excellent conversational barometers. Turn on any news station, and observe how your newscaster doesn’t move around much. Her stability allows you to count on her as being consistent and reliable. Follow her ways, and your colleagues will view Y-O-U as such!