What if building and sustaining work relationships was as important as achieving results or meeting the bottom line? I’ve spent a lifetime contemplating that question, as well as observing the impact of great work relationships and non-existent (or lousy) work relationships.

All of this pondering began when I was a fledgling corporate scientist. I noticed that things always went better when the six people in our lab worked or otherwise spent time together, even if it was doing routine work or eating lunch as a group. Yet, spending time together was seen as a consequence of the work we were doing, not as the catalyst for the better outcomes we could achieve as a result of the healthy relationships we had with each other.

The morning of 9/11

Fast forward to years later on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was invited to sit in with a project team that had been working on a multi-million dollar enterprise-wide software installation. The project hadn’t gone well for a lot of reasons – the timeline was overly ambitious, and the sponsor micromanaged it, frequently changing his mind about direction. There was poor communication amongst the core team and individuals who were peripherally involved, resulting in a significant amount of disagreement. The project was months behind schedule and costs were mounting as more resources were thrown at the project in hopes of meeting deadlines.

Someone walked into the conference room and told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We were concerned but continued with our meeting. A short while later, that person came back to tell us that a second plane had hit. We now knew the situation was serious, and decided to take a break from the meeting. We found a conference room and watched as the first tower began to fall. Except for the audio from the T.V., you could have heard a pin drop.

Seeing each other as human

As we watched the devastation, I looked around at the people in the room who hadn’t been able to connect with each other over the course of that lagging project. This moment became one of the most profoundly emotional moments of my work life as I observed people on that team with tears running down their cheeks. Some team members were holding hands for support.

As the days after 9/11 unfolded, the team shared stories of people they knew who were in the tower during the tragic incident. One of the team consultants sent a detailed account of her escape from one of the towers. I couldn’t help but notice how much more civil the conversations were compared to those in the past.

Pulling together

It took a tragedy to pull that team together. They saw each other in a new light that focused on their humanity, with an appreciation that they were connected and vulnerable. Perhaps they were able to put things into perspective, realizing that their team mates were actually human.

Before that day, the team was busy working to meet deadlines and working to get results. The project plan included a lot of data and deliverables. It didn’t include intentional attention to relationships, resulting in big problems for the project. After that day the team began to realize that the only thing preventing success was them, and they needed to spend the time developing (or fixing) the relationships that would help them to achieve the project goals.

It shouldn’t take a tragedy to pull a team together. What are you doing to make your work relationships as important as the bottom line?

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