Relationships and communication

Review the activities to choose the ones you feel will benefit the majority of your team members. Facilitator notes are included to support your success.

Attribution error

Whether we’re talking about our own behaviours or someone else’s, we’re likely to make assumptions about why they occurred. We often attribute behaviours to something either external or internal to the person.

Building empathy through mirroring

Managers can better deal with negative emotions in the workplace when they make efforts to truly understand what leads to individual workers’ emotional reactions. 

Communicate without judgment

When we’re listening to people in workplace situations, we may have an emotional response. We may make judgments or assumptions about the intent and meaning of their message.

Emotional contagion

Emotional states are “contagious”: we can take on what other people around us are feeling, often without even realizing what happened. At work, this means that strongly positive or strongly negative emotions can lift or lower the energy of the entire team.

Interpret negative feedback effectively

It’s difficult for most of us to receive negative feedback from anyone (a manager, a worker, a partner, a friend), even in the best of times. Learning to hear feedback as information about what we do rather than who we are, can make it easier.  

Listen to understand

We listen to understand when we sincerely try to understand what people say and what they mean. 

Listen without interrupting

When workers feel their opinions and ideas aren’t being heard and appreciated, negative emotions can arise in the workplace. In contrast, workers who believe managers value what they say may be more likely to maintain positive emotions and be more productive. 

Match intent and behaviour

Communication and interaction in the workplace is complex and demanding. It requires considerable energy to maintain a standard that reflects our goals. In our minds we have the best intentions, but our behaviour isn’t quite able to keep up.

Strengthening relationships at work

An emotional intelligence article about strengthening relationships at work. This article helps you build connections in the workplace to build, maintain and improve relationships.

Understand basic human needs

As humans, we all have several core basic needs (Rosenberg, 2004). We experience positive emotions when our basic needs are met and have negative emotions when our needs aren’t met.

Understand personal barriers

Dealing with negative emotions in the workplace can be one of a manager’s greatest challenges.