DEVELOPMENT
Create a safe and welcoming environment
It may sound cliché but a warm and welcoming
smile, eye contact and saying hello goes a long
way. It’s about taking the time out to stop ‘doing’
and giving someone your undivided attention.
Oxytocin is the hormone released by physical
touch when we are with someone we like. This is
where, depending on what is appropriate to your
workplace or culture, a handshake, a high five or
a hug can help boost social connection.
Hardwired
to connect
Dr. Jenny Brockis explains what it takes to
create and sustain great working relationships
THE EXPERT
Dr. Jenny Brockis is a
medical practitioner
specialising in brain
health and mental
performance in the
workplace. She is also
the author of Future
Brain: The 12 Keys To
Creating Your Own High-
Performance Brain.
As an EA, your relationship with your exec
is critical to the success of your working life –
but that’s not the only one that matters. Every
interaction during your day has an impact on your
mood and thinking skills and a great working
relationship makes us feel great, which has a spin
off effect of making you feel more connected,
more energised, boosting productivity, creativity
and performance. It also provides the security
of knowing someone is looking out for you and
encouraging you to step up to be your best.
Have you ever wondered why we get on better
with some people than others? Well, what draws
us to like one person and not another is based on
your brain’s decisions of how similar that person
is to you – we like people who’re like us.
One fifth of a second is all it takes to decide
‘friend or foe’ even before you’ve shaken hands
or said hello. And, beyond that, the first seven
seconds of introductory conversation will clinch
the deal of how trustworthy you believe the other
person to be.This is because the brain’s primary
objective is to keep us safe, and the default setting
is to assume danger first until our more ponderous
conscious mind can fill in the gaps to affirm the
correctness of our choice.
As an EA with great social intelligence
skills you are perfectly positioned to enhance
social cohesion in your workplace by using the
following strategies…
Demonstrate your trustworthiness
Reliability, consistency and being super organised
is part of the territory for a great EA. Helping
others to be the same comes from your observable
behaviours that lead to small incremental
deposits into everyone’s trust account that pays
compounding interest and helps to sustain our
most enduring working relationships.
Avoid taking sides
Office politics can be fraught with danger as they
can quickly develop into a ‘them and us’ situation
and a potential scenario of perceived injustice. So,
a sense of fairness is critical to all relationships.
This is where having the courage to lead an
open and honest conversation between all parties
can hopefully result in a rapid resolution or
acceptance of the expressed differences.
Practice kindness and generosity
More rewarding than a pay rise or material bonus,
doing something for someone else triggers the
brain’s reward circuitry to release dopamine,
another of our feel-good neurochemicals.
For example, when Susan heard that Helen,
one of her colleagues, was going through a tough
time following the diagnosis of a life-threatening
illness affecting one of her children, she checked
to make sure that she had enough help at home
and looked for ways to reduce Helen’s work
load during that difficult time – performing acts
of kindness without the expectation of reward
produces a pay it forward effect; increasing
generosity as well as gratitude in the recipient and
a win-win effect. Kindness and generosity makes
us feel good plus they also help to strengthen
social bonds.
All working relationships take work
Establishing a great working relationship is only
the beginning. What happens next depends on
how well it’s nurtured by both sides. Knowing
how your brain is geared to move you either
away from the potential threat of social hurt or
towards the reward of friendship provides you
the means to nurture strong and healthy working
relationships that will endure. S
April/May 2018 | Chief of Staff 61