The problem
Human resources are essential components for the successful running of any business. Business outcomes directly correlate with how members of an organization associated with their peers, juniors, and seniors within the organization, and with other stakeholders like consumers and suppliers. Interpersonal relationship issues are often called people problems because they do not have business roots.
Interpersonal relationships are important aspects of a person’s life because they are part of the parameters that a person could use to measure his or her life (Christensen, James and Karen 23). Interpersonal relationships are also important for a business to business relationships (Woodside 25). It has been shown that people develop perceptions about situations and other people based on their experience.
People tend to have negative or positive perceptions of people or situations (Firestone and Joyce 87). This could lead to reduced or increased perceptions of an individual, the other person, or an event. Research demonstrates that organizations whose personnel have interpersonal relationship issues rarely achieve their business goals and objectives.
Personnel who have constrained relationships with other personnel cannot work to attain their personal and organizational satisfaction. Such workers would not associate freely with their seniors to make them aware of production or operation issues in their areas of duty (Firestone and Joyce 45).
The bad relationships are often translated to affect customers, suppliers, and the public in the surroundings. Customers, suppliers, and the public are crucial stakeholders of an organization who contribute to its success.
When customers feel that they are not relating well with an organization’s workers, they tend to purchase products and services from other businesses whose employees value interpersonal relationships. This could hurt the business, which could be reflected by reduced sales.
An organization’s suppliers who feel that they are not relating well with an organization’s employees may stop supplying crucial products to the organization. This could imply that the organization could run out of the raw materials and products that the suppliers were supplying.
The public also plays crucial roles in shaping the image of an organization because members of the public express their feelings about their association with employees of the organization. If they do not relate well, the public tends to send a bad corporate image about the organization, which negatively impacts its operations (Firestone and Joyce 57).
Demonstration
Research demonstrates that organizations are characterized by workers from diverse cultural backgrounds (Christensen et al. 79). Different cultures have different languages, norms, values, and lifestyles (Woodside, 23). Although cultural diversity is important for the running of businesses because personnel learns from each other, it is also a source of interpersonal relationship issues.
Personnel could look down upon other workers based on their cultural background. They could feel that their peers, seniors, and juniors do not fit in the organization because of their cultural backgrounds.
When such thoughts exist among workers in an organization, conflicts arise, and their interpersonal relationships are severed. This problem does not affect only workers in an organization. It affects other stakeholders like customers, suppliers, and the public because employees could extend their biased perceptions to these groups of people.
People in an organization come from different families in society. The family has been recognized as the fundamental unit of a community. Therefore, a family shapes its members before the community plays its roles of directing members on ethics and morality (Firestone and Joyce 27). Research demonstrates that family diversity leads to variations of the ways through which business is conducted by different members in an organization.
Some employees in an organization could develop bad perceptions about their peers, juniors, or seniors based on their family background. For example, a member could feel that their leader should not lead them based on their family background. This perception could lead to a severed relationship among workers in an organization. The conflict leads to poor performance by the organization.
Family conflicts could also be extended to business stakeholders like customers and suppliers. Once a customer realizes that he or she is being despised by an organization’s employees because of his or her family background, he or she would develop negative perceptions about the organization and its products and services.
If many customers develop such negative perceptions and bad interpersonal relationships with the employees, the organization’s performance will decline because of reduced sales. An organization operating in an environment in which most of its workers are not members of the surrounding may have interpersonal relationship issues that could negatively impact its performance.
Some people in an organization could lack the emotional intelligence to enhance the way they interact with other persons inside and outside the business (Wall 34). Research demonstrates that emotional intelligence is essential in establishing and maintaining relationships in business settings. It is also essential in finding resolutions to conflicts in interpersonal relationships.
This component of knowledge and perception enables people to analyze phenomena in life and find answers to difficult situations. For example, emotional intelligence is required to establish interpersonal relationships with potential customers for an organization’s products and services.
Intelligence enables marketers to understand the needs of the customers so that they could offer the best solutions. Emotional intelligence is also important for managers at different levels in an organization because it helps them to understand and enhance interpersonal relationships among workers (Wall 88).
Solution
Effective communication could be the best solution to interpersonal relationship issues in business (Kay 101). The solution to interpersonal relationship issues could be offered by both the management and employees in an organization. Communication is an essential feature that is required for the running of any organization.
Leaders use communication in the transmission of orders, identification of problems and solutions, and the establishment and maintenance of cooperation. Employees use communication in the clarification of orders, provision of feedback, and making the management aware of their problems.
It has been shown that effective communication leads to increased organization’s productivity through enhanced interpersonal relationships (Kay 17). It enhances interpersonal relationships by serving the following three purposes: coordination of actions among employees, promotion of information sharing among employees, and satisfaction of social needs (Kay 120).
Communication is characterized by actions that ensure that the message is coded, decoded, and transmitted. In enhancing interpersonal relationships in business, communication strategies recognize the roles played by the senders of the information, the persons who receive the information sent, the message itself, and the transmission channels.
In a business setting, the sender of information could be an employee, a manager, a customer, or a supplier. The message is sent to the persons intended to receive it to provide a solution for a business question. The channel of communication could be telephone, telegraph, non-verbal communication, or verbal communication (face to face communication).
Communication is only described as successful or effective if the receiver of the message provides a response that satisfies the sender of the message. Formal communication and informal communication are the two forms of communication used in an organization.
Formal communication could involve managers addressing employees (downward communication), employees addressing managers (upward communication), or employees communicating amongst themselves (horizontal communication).
Informal communication (the grapevine form of communication) is based on rumors, and its transmission speed is greater than that of formal communication. It is important in satisfying employees’ social needs and clarifying orders and decisions. All these forms of communication are important in enhancing interpersonal relationships by promoting the sharing of ideas and information (Kay 35).
Communication is essential in passing and sharing ideas and perceptions. Interpersonal relationships are built on ideas and perceptions about situations and other people. Communication could be used to resolve interpersonal relationship crises among employees. For example, an employee could despise a fellow employee based on rumors at the workplace. This could be resolved by either the management or the parties involved.
The management might realize that there is a constrained interpersonal relationship between the parties and summon them for a discussion. The parties could give reasons for the constrained relationship. The management could offer amicable solutions to the parties with the aim of improving their interpersonal relationship and enhancing the organization’s performance.
One of the parties involved could also take an initiative to summon the other party for a discussion. Through their discussion, they could find a solution to their constrained interpersonal relationship (Kay 75).
Communication could also be used in an organization by members to express what they perceive about their fellow workers and situations. When people let their friends know how they perceive their ideas and actions at the workplace, people tend to have a stronger interpersonal relationship than before the communication.
Negative family perceptions about some employees, suppliers, and customers could be resolved through effective communication because parties express their feelings without fear. This could go a long way in ensuring that interpersonal relationships are enhanced because people understand other persons’ cultural norms, values, and lifestyle.
Therefore, this could imply that persons do not have negative perceptions of other persons based on their cultural background. Communication could help to manage cultural diversity in an organization and enhance interpersonal relationships. Enhanced interpersonal relationships could be reflected by enhanced productivity in an organization (Kay 45).
Alternative solutions
Other solutions have also been suggested to resolve interpersonal relationships in organizations. The Johari Window model addresses how two people self-disclose their issues when they are interacting and sharing information (Kay 67). There are different degrees to which an individual could disclose information.
In a transparent style of the self-disclosure, parties discuss and disclose everything. They do not hide anything from one another. This is the degree of disclosure found in intimate and trusting relationships.
However, this form of disclosure does not apply to casual acquaintances and in competitive events. Also, this style is not appropriate in new relationships without trust and goodwill. This model does not fit to address interpersonal relationships effectively in organizations.
Being open to other persons has both advantages and disadvantages. For example, a person could share his or her feelings with her close friends and could feel understood, and his or her needs satisfied. Through such disclosures, strong relationships are built and maintained.
On the other hand, a person sharing his or her feelings with the wrong parties could end up being frustrated because the information he or she gives could be used against him or her. It is difficult to manage the level to which a person could be open to other persons.
Likewise, being too economical with information could lead to dysfunctional relationships in organizations. Deciding when to be open implies that a person needs to tell when and how he or she could be open to his or her co-workers (Kay 67). This model is not effective in managing interpersonal relationship issues owing to its limited applicability.
Sensitivity testing is another alternative method that could be used to manage interpersonal relationship issues in business. The training works on the assumption that interpersonal relationships are severed by friction among people in business organizations. For example, people could conflict as they endeavor to achieve their individual goals in an organization.
People in organizations often lack accurate perception, and this leads them to be insensitive to their feelings and actions, and those of other people. This culminates in anger and irritation among people in the same organization. Participants in such training talk openly with their fellow workers. The chief goal of such training is to achieve enhanced comprehension of oneself and others.
The participants might be members of the same unit or different units in an organization. After training, the participants return to their job stations. If the training has been effective, the workers better comprehend their feelings and can study and handle the feelings of other people in the organization (Kay 139).
However, the training on sensitivity is carried out in a geographical location different from the environment workers in an organization are used to at the workplace. The training environment is not characterized by the usual pressures and distractions experienced at the workplace.
The training handles a smaller number of people than that found in the practical job environment. This method could not be used to handle interpersonal relationship issues in business effectively because of its lack of authenticity. It has assumptions on the number of participants and the geographical location of the training.
Conclusion
Organizations have different people with different interpersonal relationship styles. Most often, the diversity among persons in organizations causes interpersonal relationship problems that have negative impacts on how individuals associate with their peers, seniors, juniors, suppliers, customers, and the public. Constrained interpersonal relationships lead to poor performance in business organizations.
Management teams attempt to identify interpersonal relationship problems among employees to rectify them. Although various methods have been proposed to address interpersonal relationship problems in business, interpersonal communication is the best way that could be used to handle the problems among co-workers.
Effective interpersonal communication ensures that individuals share their feelings and perceptions about other persons and situations. It also ensures that persons from different cultural backgrounds can share their values, norms, and lifestyle with members from different cultural backgrounds. This is an effective method that should be adopted and promoted by management teams to resolve interpersonal relationship issues in business.
Works Cited
Christensen, Clayton M., James Allworth, and Karen Dillon. How Will You Measure Your Life? New York, NY: Harper Business, 2012. Print.
Firestone, Robert, and Joyce Catlett. The Ethics of Interpersonal Relationships. London: Karnac, 2009. Print.
Kay, Frances. How to Build Successful Business Relationships. Stevenage: Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2009. Print.
Wall, Bob. Working Relationships: Using Emotional Intelligence to Enhance Your Effectiveness with Others. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Pub., 2008. Print.
Woodside, Arch G. Organizational Culture, Business-to-business Relationships, and Interfirm Networks. Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2010. Print.