#### What's the normative source here? - **Organization's mission and goals**: Relationships at work exist because there's an organization that aims to achieve certain outcomes. This lens suggests that professional relationships are successful to the extent that they support the organization in achieving its goals. Examples include hitting quarterly goals, recruiting and retaining top talent, and being financially healthy. - **Individuals' needs and interests**: Every person involved has their own needs and interests, which matter both intrinsically and instrumentally. From this perspective, professional relationships are successful to the extent that they allow individuals to meet their needs. Examples include a sense of belonging to a professional community, learning and growth, and financial security. #### What are the key dimensions of successful professional relationships? Relationships are complex and multidimensional. I'm not aware of any "gold standard" for evaluating them. What I'm looking for here is something less ambitious: a set of dimensions that gives us a broad impression about the quality of professional relationships, which serves as a basis for [[How do you build successful relationships at work?|building better relationships]]. Successful work relationships tend to do well on many or all of the following dimensions: - **Trust**: People have confidence in each other's character and competence. They have positive expectations of the intentions and behavior of each other, which allows them to accept vulnerability. - **Appreciation & respect**: People acknowledge and value each other's competence and contributions. They treat each other with courtesy and fairness. - **Communication**: People express themselves clearly, openly, and vulnerably. They listen to each other actively and empathically. As a result, they know and are attuned to each other. - **Support**: People help each other meet their goals and needs. They recognize their interdependence and play in multi-player mode. They reliably keep their commitments. - **Alignment**: Individuals share common work-related values, goals, and expectations. They create sufficient alignment on strategy, roles, and rewards. - **Negotiation**: People deal with their differences productively. They resolve conflicts in a way that strengthens rather than weakens the relationship. Note that this classification has limitations, such as being vague and having overlapping and interacting categories. --- Topics: - [[Relationships (Index)]] Related notes: - [[How to have a productive conversation]]