It’s also worthy of mention that working with a mentor is profitable. According to Carole Brown, founder of CareerActually:

When conducted well, the benefits of mentoring can be powerful and long lasting. The literature on mentoring over the past 25 years highlights the following benefits:

Benefits for mentees:

• Develops skills and knowledge that strengthen career development and readiness for advancement
• Broadens networks and assists in profile-raising
• Provides insight into organisational culture and the “unwritten” rules of the organisation
• Provides a supportive environment and develops professional self-confidence

CareerActually contributor Julie Preston also writes about mentoring. In her posts she covers the advantages as well as ways and means. Between a mentor-mentee the nature of the relationship and connectivity are significant, which draws attention to how working with others, fostering good work relationships, is a rewarding work habit to cultivate.

So, what’s needed to cultivate a good work relationships?

• Trust – Individuals who trust one another openly discuss successes and failures to learn from them. They explore together
• Diversity – Individuals who acknowledge differences, even encourage them, understand that a difference of opinion, even constructive debate of ideas, advantages themselves as well as others
• Mindfulness – Individuals who are right-there-in-the-moment, being authentic, allowing others to be there as well, understand this creates connection
• Interrelatedness – Individuals who see connection between themselves, others and the task at hand, are better able to facilitate. They can too better navigate and deal with unexpected shifts
• Respect – Individuals who are respectful value themselves and value others. They acknowledge others’ contribution
• Varied interaction – Individuals who understand ways to interact know they can be formal, funny, quirky, adventurous and matter-of-fact. They welcome this flow
• Effective communication – Individuals who are aware of whom they are communicating to and with are much better at getting their message across as well as ‘listening’ to what others have to say

The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else…The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!

Earl Nightingale

True, yet, you can create for yourself a better career vision and operation-of-action in conjunction with others.

MindTools is no doubt a resource many know about. Diverse and useful advice is offered therein. For instance, How to Build Good Work Relationships. In a nut-shell, the advice given is:

• Develop Your People Skills
• Identify Your Relationship Needs
• Schedule Time to Build Relationships
• Focus on Your EI – Emotional Intelligence
• Appreciate Others
• Be Positive
• Manage Your Boundaries
• Avoid Gossiping
• Listen Actively

Within the same article is this advice which rings so true:

Why Have Good Relationships?

Human beings are naturally social creatures – we crave friendship and positive interactions, just as we do food and water. So it makes sense that the better our relationships are at work, the happier and more productive we’re going to be.

Good working relationships give us several other benefits: our work is more enjoyable when we have good relationships with those around us. Also, people are more likely to go along with changes that we want to implement, and we’re more innovative and creative.

What’s more, good relationships give us freedom: instead of spending time and energy overcoming the problems associated with negative relationships, we can, instead, focus on opportunities.

Good relationships are also often necessary if we hope to develop our careers. After all, if your boss doesn’t trust you, it’s unlikely that he or she will consider you when a new position opens up. Overall, we all want to work with people we’re on good terms with.

We also need good working relationships with others in our professional circle. Customers, suppliers, and key stakeholders are all essential to our success. So, it’s important to build and maintain good relations with these people.

Connection? Connectivity?

To end this series on an open-ended note, which in ways has been the agenda all along, I cite Stephen Hawking:

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.