4 Tips for Repairing Damaged Professional Relationships

Broken RelationshipAs we grow up, we learn that we are not superhuman and that there are limitations to what we can achieve by ourselves. It’s a fact of life that we need the help of others to achieve our goals in life. This certainly holds true in one’s career, and that’s why it’s important to maintain our professional relationships.

Every day at work we encounter people with different personalities, and it’s no surprise that there are people we don’t get along with. However, this is no reason to leave your relationships damaged. After all, you need all the help you can get, especially when you’re looking for a job. Your relationships with other professionals can make a huge difference, so it’s better to start patching up conflicts now than later. If you don’t know where to start, here’s how:

Admit it – Sometimes when everything is going well for us, we tend to shrug off little misunderstandings with coworkers and supervisors. Still, no matter how much you try to ignore it, it will always come back to haunt you. The sooner you admit there’s a problem, the faster you can find a solution.

Think about the outcome – Often when you don’t want to face conflicts with colleagues, it’s because you don’t see any reason why you need to fix the relationship. Yet when you visualize what the outcome will be—either good or bad, depending on how you handle the situation—you’ll see why you need to maintain a healthy relationship with other people in your industry.

Communicate – Probably the hardest part in trying to solve conflicts is communication; perhaps your previous encounters with a coworker or supervisor didn’t go so well. However, as hard as it may be, there’s nothing better than having friends around when you’re in need of help. Try to ask for a meeting, be honest that you want to fix things, and set aside differences in order to achieve a bigger goal.

Consistency – After you patch things up, you need to be aware that there’s more work to be done; this is just the beginning. You must continually work on strengthening the bonds you have with your network.

Preventive measures – It’s great to fix a broken friendship, but you know what they say about an ounce of prevention. The best policy is to be proactive and develop strong relationships early on.

Having a strong network is invaluable. It can help you in ways that you might never expect them to. Build and maintain your professional relationships early on, and you’ll see how they can benefit down the road.

Read 8746 times
Alan Carniol

Alan is the creator of Interview Success Formula, a training program that has helped more than 80,000 job seekers to ace their interviews and land the jobs they deserve. Interviewers love asking curveball questions to weed out job seekers. But the truth is, most of these questions are asking about a few key areas. Learn more about how to outsmart tough interviewers by watching this video.