It has come up recently to my mind that the words relationship and leadership finish both by the word : “SHIP”. Professionals who work on ships for a long period of time with a limited number of people can teach us a lot about relation-ship and leader-ship. The ultimate example are Marines. They not only work on a ship, but they also face stressful situations.
Know at least two facts related to your coworkers…
A friend reported to me the following about a marine’s experience. He has joined the Corporate world and shared with his colleague an interesting story. When he was a Marine, he was asked to learn two facts about each peer. The requirement was that each Marine should be able to easily engage a conversation with any other member on board when they met.
What if each professional within a team knew two interests of their peer? What if each leader knew at least two topics of conversation with each team member ?
… because relationships are necessary to build success.
Relationship in the workplace are key for the success of an organization. The social sensitivity of group members is actually one of the three criteria which increases the performance of a group. The Marines seem to know this by experience. Check the following study “The Collective Intelligence factor in the Performance of Human Groups”, published online the 30th September 2010 (reference DOI: 10.1126/science.1193147) to get to know more about this topic.
After I did a quick search on what we can learn from the Marines, I found out that they can teach us many things not only about relationship but also about leadership.
If you face a challenging relationship at work, contact Anne to discover what can be done to help you.
One thought on “Relationships in the workplace: what we can learn from the Marines (Part I)”