Welcome to episode #215 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast. If you’ve ever struggled with working with other people or if it feels like people are constantly creating stress at work for you, you’ll want to listen to today’s podcast. We don’t want to change who we are when we’re dealing with other people, but we also know that life would be so much less stressful if we could figure out how to fight or argue less – and how to not let people get under our skin. Today’s podcast on making relationships better at work will help you become more trusted and valued with your boss, co-worker and teams.

If you’ve been thinking about changing your job or even your relationship, one of the most common reasons people want to make a change is because the people side of work is getting to become too much. There’s more drama, arguments or feelings of being undervalued or micromanaged. We don’t feel inspired by the people around us and we start to wonder if it’s better if we were to leave.

When work environments turn toxic and unprofessional, our health begins to suffer and often our performance does as well. We complain more to people around us about how our bosses or coworkers are behaving and we start to worry every time we get an email or text with their names on it. There’s often a feeling of PTSD that comes with work relationships where the boss or coworker attacks, blames, yells or starts to become outwardly aggressive or negative.

The thing is that no matter where we go, difficulty with people will still exist. There are different cultures in different companies where certain behaviors are not tolerated or they exist few and far between, but generally there are still managers, leaders and coworkers that aren’t going to be as skilled at communicating, delegating or leading as you would like them to be. This much is going to be true.

Yes, they could have said it with a different tone. Yes, they could have showed you how to do the work instead of just expecting you to figure out something you’ve never done before. Yes, they could be better at working through mistakes and failures with you instead of blaming you for them. They can be more patient, clear and caring. Yes, yes and yes.

At the same time, the scenario you’re faced with is that they aren’t the way you want them to be – and as a result, you’re having a hard time working with them. There are times and places where it makes sense to leave, and there are times when you don’t want to exercise that option – or even if you do – you want the time you have there to be more pleasant and productive.

Either way, the question still becomes this: what can I do now to make this situation better?

I get on calls all the time where people are struggling with the people they work with. Bosses, ex-bosses, co-workers, team mates and team members. The common feeling is one of anger, frustration, or even sadness. They’re worried that if they don’t improve this relationship, they won’t keep the job. They’re worried that if they don’t fix this situation that team members will leave or just be miserable. They worry that this will be their fault that they couldn’t figure out how to work better with this person. They hate that they’re even bothered at all and wish they weren’t.

There is a massive leadership crisis and gap where we have not developed the skills to work with other people well. Instead, we focus on just getting work done and the people stuff isn’t important, until it is. In this day and age, getting work done happens through people. As you level up in your roles, you don’t work alone and you need help. You need people to engage with you and to work with you, not against you. In order to be promoted, you need more people on your side singing your praises, advocating for you all day long even when you’re not in the room.

This is the biggest leadership shift you can make. To see that your relationships at work are more important than the work itself. The work will change, but getting work done with and through people will be the thing that will yield the most dividends.

The people who sleep better at night and have less Sunday scaries are less stressed by people. They know how to handle people who work and think differently than they do. They don’t avoid the difficult people and try not to include them in meetings. They are used to dealing with confrontation and conflict and use it to help and serve. Leaders don’t become leaders by not working with and succeeding with other people and we need more conscious leaders who are able to leave people better than how they found them, running our companies and organizations.

No one is going to save us or you from the hard client or difficult boss. We need to improve our skills of building relationships with different types and communicating with people who are not just like us. 

How we do this is through a spiritual, high-performance strategy method I call 10X Leadership. 

It’s thinking not about work in a way where you are just getting things done, but considering who you are being in the process. Are you showing up as a leader who can work well with others that are different from them or are you a victim that feels disempowered? Are you able to accept that it’s your job to innovate and try new and different ways to communicate or do you feel like someone else needs to do that work? 

When we learn how to work and communicate with people differently, we’re not changing who we are. We’re realizing that who we are is stronger than how we communicate. We can change tone, conciseness or messaging without becoming a different person. We are just pragmatic and realize that someone doesn’t understand it this way. It’s not wrong. It’s just different. 

Often, we wish other people listened to us and understood us the way we want to be understood and deep down, we’d love to do the same for other people. We know that it’s worth it because these relationships at work affect our confidence, morale and just because you’ve had a hard time in the past, doesn’t mean that you won’t figure out how to make it work.

Different styles of communication and decision making need different behaviors. 

It’s not being inauthentic or manipulative if you give more facts to someone who believes that the numbers drive the decision. It’s not inauthentic to connect to someone who cares about relationships and focus more on the relationship than the task that has to be done. You’ll find that this is the same at work as it is at home and the only reason we don’t do it is because we either don’t know to do it – and it’s a skills gap we need to close – or we don’t think it will work or that we have to become someone we don’t want to become.

Believing new things about leadership is part of our job as leaders. The same goes with learning new skills and developing ourselves as leaders. You weren’t born to be a leader but you can learn how to become a leader. You weren’t born knowing how to communicate but you learned. You can do it again.

The reason this works is because you take you everywhere you go, which means that you take the skills of communication and influence with you. You build trust everywhere you go because you’re the one who is able to tailor your communication and behaviors to the people around you. As long as you know that you’re the one making these changes because you want to have better results, a more pleasant work experience and supportive environment, then you’re the one in the driver’s seat. 

You don’t have to worry that you’re becoming a version of yourself that you don’t like. That only happens when you feel like you’re catering to someone else in a way that makes no sense and doesn’t achieve the ultimate outcome.

When you keep going the course of avoiding difficult people or harder situations with tougher clients, co-workers or bosses you start to feel less agency about your career. You want to hide more and you start to think that maybe this work thing isn’t for you. 

Start learning the skills and mindset of leadership and you make relationships better at work and at home. You start to find that you’re not tied to a place or organization and that you have more choices because you know how to work with lots of different kinds of people. You know that’s a skillset that is highly valued and you now have leverage.

In our coaching together, you’ll get lots of opportunities to practice these skills and have multiple attempts every day to run meetings more effectively, to delegate and to provide feedback to other people. They all won’t go as planned, but they are all steps in the right direction. It will look like it’s not working until it does.

Your job isn’t to find the easiest people to work with, it’s to become so skilled and curious that you keep doing your part to handle what you can control. Your skills, your mindset around people.

Now comes the moment of truth. You can decide that blaming and complaining are the way you want to approach your work and have disempowered relationships as a result, or you can decide to accept that the difficulties that exist with the people you work with are not insurmountable and you can create better working relationships. 

When you take the second path, the experience with harder people become your success stories. This is the path of the Spiritual Achiever. Less stress, more acceptance and results.

If you’d like to become a Spiritual Achiever, I invite you to watch the free training on how to Stand Out and Lead, using spiritual, high-performance strategies: STAND OUT AND LEAD.

You can apply to join my Spiritual Achiever® program, where you’re going to create your next chapter with spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom using my proven method. It’s risk-free. You either start seeing results within your first month or I give you your money back. Schedule your call here at www.mayempson.com/contact.  We’ll see you inside.

Want to know more about what happens when you join?

1. When you join Spiritual Achiever® Coaching you’ll be supported for a full year: Career Revelation Academy: A 5-step career change process (if you have a job you want to stay in, I’ll show you how to love it even more) that can launch you into your next career chapter in 30 days.
2. 2x/month group training and coaching on Spirituality, Achievement, Earth Energy and Harmony. You’ll know how to design your days for breakthroughs, create a personal brand and community, lead yourself and others through change, become more physically and mentally fit, reduce stress and reinvent what’s possible in this next chapter of your life.
3. Discover your Leadership Strengths and Branding Workshop: Increase your awareness of what makes YOU different from others and how to become even better at your genius zone.
4. Your Best Year workshop: Create your one year plan and design this next year, no matter what time of the year it is.
5. Your Next 5 Years one-day virtual retreat: Vision what’s possible 5 years from now and break out of your old routines so you can step into new habits, behaviors and routines.
6. Tickets to all in-person Spiritual Achiever retreats (discounted rates): Highly immersive and intimate gatherings where we spend time in nature, experience energy work, eat and move well – all while making big decisions and committing to what’s next for us.
7. Monthly 1:1 Coaching Sessions: To help you break through obstacles, define your individual path, and to work on both strategy and mindset.

The next step?

Schedule a consultation to get clarity on how coaching can help you on your journey.

Once you’re accepted into the program, you’ll receive a calendar invite for a 2-hour deep dive 1:1 session to map out your personal goals and your own year-long journey.

You’ll have immediate access to the Spiritual Achiever process and philosophy – how to achieve your biggest goals and reinvent your life.

You’ll have immediate access to 5 modules of Career Revelation Academy – to love your career even more and launch that next chapter of your career in 30 days.

You’ll have the calendar invites for the upcoming group calls and retreats.

If this speaks to you, I can’t wait to talk to you live: Schedule a consultation.

Reach out at www.mayempson.com/contact for more information on my Spiritual Achiever coaching program. You’ll figure out what’s next and actually go and do it.

That’s it for this week. Have an amazing one and I’ll talk to you next time.