Studies have shown that there’s not much you can offer in the way of perks to balance out the effects of a bad boss. But there’s a seemingly endless amount of rewards – from employee satisfaction to increased company profitability – that can be derived from having a great one.

While writing “The Awakened Company,” I interviewed many top CEOs who had come to the same conclusion. On top of finding and cultivating great leaders, we all need to review our relationships on a regular basis – our relationships with ourselves and members of our team.

What Is a Relationship Review?

A relationship review is designed to develop greater self-awareness and to ignite positive change in your relationships.

It’s an assessment of different aspects of your relationships at work and encourages you to reflect on these unique aspects and to focus on how you can strengthen them.

Once you have completed it, you will have a clear idea about how to effectively “show up” in your relationships.

This review can be done at any time, and I would suggest doing this regularly before things go out of balance and someone quits!

Signs that your relationships are an issue in your organization:

• High unwanted turnover
• Burnout
• Disengagement
• No clear roles or relatedness
• Frequent arguments
• Un-energizing interactions

Benefits of a Relationship Review

Conducting a relationship review develops self-awareness around your interactions with others. It also helps to bring clarity to your intentions for future engagements.

Some tips on how to begin:

• Find a quiet space.
• Be honest.
• Get your thoughts and feelings on paper.
• Remember, the only way to change someone else is by showing up differently.

We have the power to build healthy connections – and how we are to ourselves matters most in shaping our relationships. Did you know we have 60,000 thoughts a day, 85 percent of these are repeating, and 95 percent are negative? What we tell ourselves matters!

So, how can we do a relationship review?

Relationship Review

We are the only person we can immediately change, and in changing ourselves, we change everything.

First, I would like you to reflect on your connection to yourself by answering the questions listed below. Then reflect on your key relationships at work.

Feel free to add columns for each of these key relationships. Be completely honest with how you see them.

With yourself

With (insert name)

How are we connected (relatedness) to ourselves or to the other person?

What is the purpose (role) of this relationship?

What is the depth of this relationship?

How do we live in alignment with our values in this relationship?

Where and how is this relationship peaceful?

Where and how is this relationship powerful?

Does the structure of this relationship work?

Where and how is there joy in this relationship?

What is this relationship's wisdom?

Now, ask yourself how you want to show up in this relationship. Fill out the table again to reflect how you would like these relationships to be.

Notice what attitudes and behaviors are asking to be changed. What can you do to bring about the changes you would like in these relationships?

Additional Tips to Build Healthy Relationships

We need to cultivate one-on-one relationships in organizations. Only by fostering these deeper, meaningful connections can we create relationships that enable higher employee satisfaction, greater productivity, and broader company success.

Here are some ways to strengthen our work relationships:

1. Be heartful. We all have emotional bank accounts; we need five positives for every one negative remark. Let’s celebrate each other in the act of awesome – and, in doing so, people are likely to do what they are doing right again!

2. Be mindful. Ask questions and get team members to think for themselves. If you are in a reactive space, consider taking a pause to be more thoughtfully responsive than reactive.

3. Be spacious. Give people as much control over their work environment as possible. Let people have autonomy in their work.

Perhaps most importantly, remember your relatedness in your relationships at work. That means honoring the humanity of ourselves and the other person; we must separate out people’s roles from our relatedness with them.

Other ideas include taking each member of your team out for lunch; if that’s not feasible with your schedule, try taking them out for tea. Making time to connect should be a priority, not a bonus.

This can be achieved daily by recognizing your colleague for what makes them unique and valued, so comment on what their awesome is!

With an open heart and effort, we have the power to be the best part of each other’s days.

What's Next?

At the heart of better relationships is understanding each other. And active listening is a great place to start and begins with being totally present in the conversations you are having.

In a wider sense, developing our emotional intelligence – the ability to recognize our own emotions and how they affect others – can also help improve our relationships.

And why not check out our article Tips for Creating an Inclusive Culture for ways to build bonds in your organization.

Tip of the Week

Getting Virtual Onboarding Right

By Kevin Dunne, Mind Tools Content Editor

When I first arrived at Mind Tools five years ago, the company laid on a nice welcome breakfast for me to meet everyone.

With a new arrival on the Content team this month, it got me thinking how different it must be joining a remote or hybrid team these days.

So, here’s our guide for doing a good job of virtual onboarding:

1. Pre-Boarding

• Send a friendly hello email and inform your new hire when to log in and ask if they need anything.
• Set up video chat and messaging software/groups.
• Send links to online resources like training videos and procedure documents.
• Send out any hardware they’ll need, add subscriptions to software they'll use, and create log-in details for them.

2. Week One

• To avoid overwhelm, keep meetings to key people like line manager, teammates and head of department.
• Turn any anxiety into excitement about the role with virtual ice breakers and social activities like quizzes.
• Start with easy-to-hit targets for confidence-boosting “quick wins.”

3. The First Month – and Beyond

• Schedule catchups.
• Supply an "org chart" and help them build their network.
• Assign a virtual team buddy or mentor to be their go-to for help.

4. Keep Checking in

• Get regular feedback on their onboarding experience so you can fix any problems and improve your approach as you go.

For a more in-depth guide on this subject, see our article Virtual Onboarding.

Pain Points Podcast

Praise is a good thing. But sometimes it can backfire. Sometimes people react in different ways than you expected.

So how can you make sure that your praise will be taken in the right way? And how can you improve your praise giving – and receiving?

Find out in this week’s episode of the Pain Points podcast, “What’s the Problem With Praise?”

Subscribe today!

News Roundup

This Week's Global Workplace Insights

Nothing Going on But the Rent?

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “there’s got to be a better way,” perhaps this is it – live somewhere exotic as a digital nomad, all expenses paid for less than your housing costs.

A recent World Population Review study reported the average American household spends $61,334 per year on their expenses. Of that, housing accounted for almost $1,800 a month.

Alternatively, International Living compiled a list of 13 places around the globe where a couple can live for as little as $1,500 a month.

This figure covers everything (all with English-speaking communities and high-speed internet access) – housing, healthcare, food, and fun.

• Arenal, Costa Rica

• Armenia, Colombia

• Cozumel, Mexico

• Isla Mujeres, Mexico

• Querétaro, Mexico

• Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Hoi An, Vietnam

• Kuching, Malaysia

• Penang, Malaysia

• Phnom Penh, Cambodia

• Alicante, Spain

• Bergerac, France

• Granada, Spain

Wanna Go Big? Better Not Go Home

If you want to be seriously well-paid and work fully remotely, you might be disappointed, according to online news portal Worklife.

They’ve run the numbers on the flexible jobs landscape in the U.S. – and here are the headlines:

High-paying roles are a remote possibility. Career site Ladders analyzed half a million postings on its site and found that fewer than 10 percent of high-paying ($100,000-plus per year) jobs are fully remote.

Flex still has muscles, though. Employment site Flexa reported that flexible job ads are up 62 percent, and that half of all workers were searching for fully remote roles over the last quarter.

Boom time for homework. Gen Z, it seems, doesn’t rate flexibility over anything else the most after all. An American Staffing Association poll found that only 26 percent of Gen Z want to fully work from home. Baby Boomers led the way, with 37 percent preferring fully remote setups.

Your Brain: Use It or Lose It

Mentally stimulating work plays a key role in helping to prevent dementia in old age, according to new research from Norway.

The Guardian reported that a study of more than 7,000 people found that those whose jobs involved repetitive manual tasks – the least mentally demanding jobs – had a 66 percent greater risk of mild cognitive impairment.

They also faced a 31 percent greater risk of dementia after the age of 70 compared with those in the most mentally taxing roles.

Dr Trine Edwin, a postdoctoral fellow at Oslo university hospital, said, “It’s important to go to work and use your brain, and to use your brain to learn new things.”

The results also suggested that people in less mentally stimulating jobs might benefit from further education and pursuing more cognitively challenging pastimes outside of work.

Discover more ways to train your brain with our article Cognitive Load Theory.

See you next week for more member-exclusive content and insight from the Mind Tools team!