Something I am thinking about is who are the most important people to build relationships with when you are in an organization? It sounds silly to say but building relationships with your colleagues and peers is critical to your success, this is especially true when you are starting in a new role or at a new organization. The challenge is, generally threefold
- You are left to your own devices – Companies spend lots of money on hiring but less on onboarding. In fact, 20% of people in a survey said that their company properly provided a network for them to connect with others when they onboarded into a new role
- You don’t know the right people – Being new to an organization or team means you lack insight and context. Even if you want to start meeting people, without getting the right introductions it can tough to prioritize and invest time in building relationships with the right people
- You don’t know the right amount – Face it, some people matter more than others. Furthermore, relationship building is important, but there are many other things that you need to do.
The Most Important People to Build Relationships With In Your Company
While each company is unique, there are several common individuals that across all companies are great places to start cultivating relationships with when you are new to an organization.
1)Your Manager
Who They Are: Your manager is your direct supervisor and responsible for helping and guiding you to doing great work and getting you to achieve your goals and outcomes
Why They Matter: They are responsible for helping you with your performance and growth/development, and one of the most influential people on your day to day work.
How to Build It:
2)Your Direct Teammates
People on your direct team who are working directionally toward the same goals and outcomes as you, and who often have the same role/tasks, or complementary roles and tasks.
Why They Matter: You work closely with them and are working toward similar goals and outcomes so that you can support one another. Furthermore, they can often give you feedback, coaching, and guidance to help you get up to speed on your job if you are new, and easily introduce you to other people you may need to meet.
How to Build It: Take time to learn from them, especially when you are getting started in a new role. Go out of your way to ask questions, schedule time to ask and provide feedback for projects, and focus on cultivating the relationship to learn and support them.
3)Cross Functional Peers
These are individuals who are partners to your team and organization, and who you work with on shared goals and objectives. In some cases, they need your support, and in others, you need their support
Why They Matter: These are people who in many cases, you need their help to achieve a goal but they do not report to you, so you don’t have formal power over them. Building a relationship with them ensures you can collaboratively work together to achieve goals and get support
How to Build it: Focus on building trust and credibility with your cross-functional partners, in understanding their goals and metrics, and being able to communicate your own.
4)Skip-Level Manager:
Your manager’s manager for your team or business unit or function
Why They Matter: You ultimately ladder up to their goals, and they are often passing down information to your manager that will impact you. Their strategy is often tied to the things you do each day which helps them achieve the strategy they set. They can often help create opportunities when it comes to staffing, resourcing, promotions, and performance management.
How to Build it: Speak to your manager about the best ways to go about building a relationship with their manager. Some managers (and leaders) encourage a regular cadence of skip-level meetings, but it also may mean a regular update via email, whether that’s quarterly. At the very minimum, if you are new, ask to setup time to introduce yourself and to get to know them professionally.
5)Mentors
A mentor is a person who can support, advise and guide you. They get to know you and the challenges you’re facing, and then use their understanding and experience to help you improve.
Why They Matter: Even as awesome as you probably are, we alone cannot always see the best version of ourselves, and rely on others and their feedback, coaching, and guidance to help us get out of our own way. Mentors can do that, especially when they not only have their own knowledge and experience, but also a good context of the company you are apart of.
How to Build it: The best mentor-mentee relationships happen organically and generally speaking out of mutual interest. Start by taking stock of all the relationships you are building, and identifying based on shared interests and general affinity if there are any potential relationships you want to invest more in. You can also ask around for formal mentorship programs either in your company, or externally, with an industry association or organization.
Sponsors
An individual who can use their power and position to open up opportunities for you. While like mentors, they have more experience than you, they also have the privilege, power and position to open up opportunities for you and speak on your behalf in rooms that you (or mentors) don’t have access to within your company.
Why They Matter: So much of what happens when it comes to opportunities happens when you are not in the room and you have to have someone who is advocating on behalf of you. Having a sponsor, and someone willing to go to bat for you with their power and influence helps ensure you get those opportunities. Furthermore, sponsors have something to gain from this too: generally speaking, they will advocate for you, because it also helps them, such as when your work is advancing theirs.
How to Build It: These are hard relationships to find on your own, but it starts with being an exceptional performer, and having others (especially influential leaders) see your work. You can also check with your HR department and Employee Resource Groups to see if there are any formal sponsorship programs within your company.
Bonus: Informal Leaders and Influencers
Within each organization, people are more than their job title, department or function. They have formal and informal roles that they carry out within the organization. But if you’ve worked long enough you know that certain people deliver outsized impact and value in unique or different ways. The person who always knows who to talk to, the individual who can get you access to additional resources, or the woman who is great at connecting disparate groups of people.
In addition to these formal people you want to develop relationships with, take some time to observe and identify additional employees who play the following roles, and are going to be helpful to navigating your organization.
1) Connectors
These are the people who seem to be the central node of the company – whenever someone needs to find out how to connect with someone they are the person that everyone turns to.
2)Cross-Functional Mavens
These people span across teams and functions, and are able to see the forest through the trees. They often connect different teams, functions, and units together. Their relationship capital and network is strong, and they seem to “know a guy” at all times. These people are incredibly helpful for information gathering, advising, or helping find the right person at the right time. These individuals can also connect with the outside world, such as industry organizations and partners,
3)Knowledge Brokers
Within an organization, knowledge is power. These knowledge brokers help connect and share information across teams, sub-groups and functions. As a result of their insights, ideas, themes, initiatives get connected which is especially important when there are lots of balls in the air. Without these people, the left hand isn’t talking with the right hand.
4)SMES
SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) are the de-facto experts in the company on a specific topic. Their few minutes of insight and knowledge can often be the unlock to unleash a great project or idea, or the advice that’s needed to prevent a major disaster, and they rely on their years of experience and deep niche knowledge to advise the company.
5) Culture Carriers
These are the people a company culture develops. They have a ton of institutional knowledge, and live and act the company’s values. They are often someone other people want to get to know or build relationships with, and are respected and revered within the company.