The other day I was passing one of our Gen Y employees in the hallway and I said, “Whatsup?” “No one says that anymore,” he retorted. “What DO they say?” I asked. “Sup,” he told me, “We don’t have time to say the whole thing.”
Wow, what’s become of rapport building in our culture? Or should I say “rap in our cult?”
I believe we’ve gotten pretty lax in building relationships with our co-workers and customers. Lets start with our customers. The best salespeople I’ve ever met build deep, meaningful relationships; the sale is really an afterthought. To work on your rapport -building skills, try these simple steps:
- Find something to like about them.
- Find a commonality in values, not just things.
- When they answer a question about something personal and important, ask two or three follow up questions.
- Have good eye contact. Don’t think about other things while they’re talking.
- Remember important details that they discussed and bring them up again in your conversation before they do.
As for co-workers: get to know the names of their children; find out what’s important to them; ask what they did over the weekend. Everyone needs a best friend at work.
Perhaps future generations will simply create a numbering system to shorten personal contact:
- 2 for “How’s your family?”
- 6 might be “Read any good books lately?”
- And 32 could be “I really like you, want to have dinner some night? “
I prefer to catch myself when I get too busy and impersonal. After all, nothing really meaningful ever gets accomplished without someone to do it with.
Great article, Shari. Nothing replaces those small things that help you build sincere rapport with another human being. Thanks for sharing your article. It was a nice reminder.
Rapport-building skills. Powerful. Relating to the generation y professional. Priceless. We have evolved to
e-text books & just text me. – JW
I recieve daily Best Practices from Harvard Business School called the Harvard Business Review. I recently recieved an update on a similar topic. I hope this will help you all to relate to the younger generation in the workplace. – JW
Adapted from Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work
The first step to managing Y’s is understanding them and what drives Y’s to think and act in ways that often may seem different from how you think or behave. Once you understand them, you’ll be able to apply this knowledge to your recruiting and managing efforts.
Gen Y myths
Each generation in the workplace has been shaped by markedly different teen experiences that have led them to approach work with diverse assumptions about how the world works and what they want from life. The first step to understanding Y’s is to understand the events and trends that affected them in their teenage years.
SOURCE: http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2009/01/guide-to-managing-ys.html
Aloha! from Maui. John “JW” Hermes
Your so right Shar, this is a good evaluation of the “Y” generation. There are a couple of “Y” generation in our office and I’m always telling them to slow down in the way they talk to customers and do the presentation. Everything is done at 100 miles an hour and attention to detail does not exist. The care factor is not there and they do not understand the rapport building factor. I said to one of them you need to spend more time building rapport and ask more questions about themselves…the reply came back “I don’t know what to talk to them about for that long”……!!!