The Ultimate Plan For Building Better Relationships At Work

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Ora Shtull and I recently interviewed talent development guru Todd Davis, chief people officer and EVP at FranklinCovey. His latest bestseller is Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work. Here are the highlights of our conversation.

Ora Shtull: Tell us a little bit about how you came to write Get Better.

Todd Davis: For the past 30 years, I've observed and coached leaders at all levels. From the hundreds of tools and principles and paradigms contained in FranklinCovey's world-class solutions, over time I identified those specific behaviors or practices that I have seen to be the real catalyst for building effective relationships, as well as those same very practices being stumbling blocks that people, including myself, have tripped over.

William Arruda: What are we doing that will impede career success and reduce an organization's ability to achieve its goals?

Davis: We assume. We assume we understand what someone is struggling with. We assume we understand how to fix something. We assume so much. That's probably the largest stumbling block that I've seen over my career, and it hasn't changed.

A couple of others that come to mind: We have what we call a scarcity mentality versus an abundant mentality. We're human beings, and we're survivalists. So we are naturally thinking, “Me first.” And then “How's this going to make me look?” Or “How is this going to make me excel?” And that can be a real stumbling block if we can't step back and say, “Wait a minute. What's in it for all of us?”

Another one: We all have blind spots, and if we don't make it safe for others to tell us the truth, then we have no idea what those are and therefore, we lose the battle in trying to get better at anything. So those are three of the big ones.

Shtull: Can you give us a brief overview of the 15 practices?

Davis: You bet. Practice 1 I've titled “Wear Glasses That Work.” And it really does tie back to what we were just talking about: assumption. Have you ever discovered that your version of the truth wasn't so true or complete after all? That's what “Wear Glasses” is all about. Seeing things as they really are and not just as we convinced ourselves that they are.

Practice 2 is “Carry Your Own Weather.” This is about whether or not we're going to allow outside people and circumstances to determine the course of our lives and therefore our own happiness. There are a lot of things I can't control, like the weather, the stock market, other people. I can control my response to any situation.

Practice 3 is “Behave your way to credibility.” Credibility takes many things, but they fall into two buckets: character and competence. And an overabundance of one does not make up for a lack of the other.

“Play Your Roles Well” is Practice 4. This is about deciding what are the most important roles in our lives, both personal and professional, and what is the significant contribution we hope to make in each one of those roles. Do we take time to actually map that out so that we can plan and design and then execute our week around that?

Practice 5: “See the Tree, Not Just the Seedling.” This is all about whether or not we have a tendency to see potential in others or whether we discard and write off people before we even have taken the time to understand what their full potential is.

Practice 6: “Avoid the Pinball Syndrome.” How often have I seen people at work, including myself sometimes, who are like the pinball, bouncing around from one thing to the next. They finish the day exhausted, thinking how busy they've been. And really, what of true value have they accomplished? We confuse urgency with importance.

Practice 7: “Think We, Not Me.” I shared this as one of the big stumbling blocks. People who are most effective in their relationships and therefore most effective in their careers and their personal lives have the abundance mentality.

Practice 8: “Take Stock of Your Emotional Bank Account.” In the bestselling book from Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about your EBA, or your emotional bank account. Much like a financial bank account, in our relationships, we make deposits and we take withdrawals. Unlike a financial bank account, in our relationships, we don't make deposits with the intent of ever making a withdrawal. But because we are human beings, we make mistakes, and those withdrawals happen. If we are consistently making strong, sincere deposits over time in the most important relationships in our lives, then when those withdrawals happen, that relationship weathers the storm.

Practice 9: “Examine Your Real Motives.” Only you know what your real motives are. If we take time to understand what our underlying motives are, it helps us become much more effective in our relationships.

Practice 10: “Talk Less, Listen More.” Listen first with the intent to understand. It's counter-intuitive to human beings because we're fixers.

Practice 11: “Get Your Volume Right.” Any strength you have, when dialed up too high, starts to work against you.

Practice 12: “Extend Trust.” This isn't about blind trust or being naïve and taken advantage of. But it's about starting from an area of trust until someone starts to prove you otherwise.

Practice 13: I mentioned this a minute ago, and that is “Make It Safe to Tell the Truth,” whether you're the CEO or the receptionist.

Practice 14: “Align Inputs with Outputs.” I caught myself just a few weeks ago really frustrated in this situation because someone wasn't changing, and I thought, “Todd, what inputs have changed? What lead measures, as I like to call them, have changed? You're expecting things to change when you and the situation are not doing anything differently.”

And then the last practice of the book is ironically titled, “Start with Humility.” While some think of it as a weakness, humility is the greatest strength we can have. We can focus on all of these other things I've talked about and yet, if we don't start with a foundation of humility, it will all be for naught.

Arruda: We'd love to know what your favorite practice is.

Davis: “Talk Less, Listen More.” My days are so much more rewarding when I just sit back and listen. Resist the urge to jump in and respond. Just listen with the intent to understand.

