Work Relationship: What Would Your Colleagues Say About You?

Consistently here ar Newblancejobs, we keep sharing guides that would boost your career choices and growth with tips that would help you grow. So, in this article, we want to help you to learn to describe your working relationship with your colleagues.

This question “What Would Your Colleagues Say About You?” is quite a deep one that calls for a checkmate of how professional you are as regards your job(s) at the moment.

If you encounter this question during an interview or an appraisal screening session, How would you answer it? We will guide you through with amazing tips to give the best answers possible to this question.

According to a research piece by Gallup organization, people who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. But it doesn’t have to be a “BFF.” 

Furthermore, Gallup found that people who simply have a good close friend in the workplace are more likely to be happy at their job. What’s more, good work relationships are linked to better customer engagement and increased profit for businesses out there.

In this article, you will see reasons why it is very important to have good work relationships with colleagues, how to build and maintain them, and even find ways to work with people that you don’t get on with easily.

What is a good work relationship?

A good work relationship is a form of relationship or connection between co-workers that requires trust, respect, self-awareness, inclusion, and open communication for the company they work for to make profit and actualize its goals.

Why should you have good work relationship with colleagues?

Humans are naturally social in nature and that is why it is very important for us to interact. Through interactions, information is shared from one person to another easily.

In a work environment, good communication is needed among co-workers for the actualizations of the aims and objectives of the company or business where they work.

How can you build a good work relationship?

Below are some tips on how you can build a good work relationship.

• Identify Your Relationship Needs
• Develop Your People Skills
• Focus on Your EI (Emotional intelligence)
• Practice Mindful Listening
• Schedule Time to Build Relationships
• Manage Your Boundaries
• Appreciate Others
• Be Positive
• Avoid Gossiping

Identify your relationship needs

You should be able to identify what your work relationship with your colleagues needs to have a good time at work with your co-workers. Identify the needs and work on them.

Develop your people skill

You must develop your people skill by working on your collaboration and communication skills when it comes to working with others within your work environment.

Focus on your EI (Emotional intelligence)

Emotional intelligence  (EI) is your ability to recognize your own emotions, and better understand what they’re telling you. By developing your EI, you’ll become more adept at identifying and handling the emotions and needs of others.

Practice mindful listening

Ensure you constantly practice mindful listening when it comes to your communication with your fellow co-workers. When you pay attention to what they have to say, it helps them see that you value their opinions.

Schedule time to build relationship

You must make out time to build a sound relationship with colleagues. For example, eat out with your co-workers during work break hours to get to know them more. This is fun and in turn, helps you love your work place.

Appreciate others

It is very necessary that you appreciate the efforts other co-workers put in to make the goals of the company a reality. When they make good inputs, appreciate them by passing great, encouraging comments that would boost their morale to want to do more next time.

Be postive

Focus on being positive.  Positivity is actually contagious and people gravitate to those that make them feel good. Be a source of positivity at work.

Avoid gossiping

At all cost, you must avoid gossiping about a co-worker with another co-worker. This will only make the workplace a toxic environment full of resentments, hatred and hidden grudges that can ruin a business.

Why employers ask how your coworkers describe you

Often times, employers ask questions about how your coworkers describe you to get a general oversight of your personality and self-awareness.

Some employers might compare your answer to how your references described you as a way to test the accuracy of your self-assessment.

The employer might as well look for detailed answers that show how your various personality traits could help you adjust to a position at their company and provide examples of times when those characteristics contributed to your success in the workplace.

How to answer “How would your coworkers describe you?”

Here are some tips on how to answer the question when it is thrown at you

1. Brainstorm your strengths

Be sure to make a list of your strongest qualities and consider how you express them in the workplace. Your answer to questions about how others would describe you should only focus on the positive traits you have to offer at work.

2. Be sure to match actions with descriptions

Think about all the tasks you perform and the skills you use every day at your job, and identify which of your characteristics help you complete your work.

Matching each descriptive word with an action can help you explain to an interviewer exactly how your personality facilitates your success in the workplace. Brainstorm anecdotes and stories that you can use as evidence for the descriptions you chose.

3. Quickly reference performance reviews

One of the best ways to understand how others would describe you is to look at past feedback and performance reviews. Peer reviews from coworkers and manager feedback can both give you ideas of how your colleagues would describe you.

Look for themes in your performance reviews that represent a well-rounded description of you in the workplace.

4. Reflect on past conversations

Carefully look through work emails, instant messages and spend time reflecting on past conversations with your closest coworkers to understand how you stand out in the workplace. Pay attention to compliments and praise, thinking about how to concisely summarize the feedback from your coworkers into a strong interview response.

5. Talk with your coworkers

If you have trouble brainstorming answers to this question, ask your coworkers directly how they would describe you to another professional in your industry.

Asking a few different people about their perspective can help you gain insights into your work relationships and provide reliable content for your answers in interviews.

6. Review the job posting

Look at the job description and highlight any detail of their ideal candidate. Think about how you meet those requirements and take note of keywords that you can use in your answer.

Indirectly referencing the job posting by using similar language shows employers that you have spent time researching the position and know why you are the best fit for the job.

7. Write down and rehearse possible answers

Write out some possible responses to this question and read them over to help you gain confidence in your interview answer. Practicing reading different answers in front of a mirror can prepare you to recall the topics and stories you plan to discuss to support your answers.