Relational Satisfaction & Creating Substantive Change
For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at this idea of business culture, and how that business culture leads to the three satisfactions: procedural, relational, and substantial. Last time, we discussed procedural satisfaction, which comes about when a business has the correct systems in place to make sure it operates smoothly, efficiently, and in such a way as to encourage a healthy business culture.
Today, we’re going to drill down a little bit into relational satisfaction. Relational satisfaction is all about people. It’s about trust between people, but also trust between people and the issues surrounding the business. Relational satisfaction means creating a culture in which people have the opportunity to build trust in one another and in you.
As we’ve discussed before, a healthy business culture will include people trust (relational) and trust in the process (procedural) and result in substantive change and growth.
Relationship changes in your business
Relationships in a business are often in a constant state of change. With the right corporate culture, those changes will be positive. For example, some of the kinds of changes in relationships you can encourage include:
- Changes in cooperation. Your people will, ideally, be in a greater degree of agreement after an issue arises than they were before. If they are less in agreement, it means the issue still needs to be addressed.
- Changes in trust. The more people work together, the more trust will change. If everyone is doing their job (which has a lot to do with procedural satisfaction) trust will build over time.
- Improving relationships. Relationships between team members can improve on their own, but they can also devolve on their own. A good leader makes improving relationships an intentional part of the corporate culture.
- Long-term working relationships. In a positive business culture, people are going to be more likely to want to work together in the future. One of your goals should be to get people to see their work relationships as long-term relationships.
Observing relationship changes and encouraging positive relationship changes is an essential part of good leadership.
You can’t satisfy everyone – or can you?
Relational satisfaction depends on relevant parties being satisfied with the process. It can be a long and winding road to party satisfaction between employees and the company. If they are satisfied with their role and the work environment, they’re more likely to experience relational satisfaction, and to dedicate their best selves to the company and to its core values.
There are some specific things to look at and encourage that can help determine whether people are satisfied. Meetings, as we’ve discussed before at length, are an excellent bellwether for relational satisfaction.
Here are some important questions to ask your team after a meeting:
- Did the meeting work for you, or not?
- Did you attend as a developer (participant), or did you attend as a critic or vacationer?
- Did you get what you hoped to get out of the interaction?
Meetings are a decision-making forum that can be used as a tool for relational satisfaction. When done correctly, they enhance both strategic planning and tactical business execution. This, in turn, opens up the possibility of relational satisfaction by engendering cooperation, trust, and improved relationships.
Building trust among your team
There are four essential choices you must make if you’re going to build trust among your team, with the end goal of relational satisfaction:
- Choose to be open to it. You have to take the initiative. Change begins with true leaders. By recognizing the importance of trust building among your people, you begin to make it a priority.
- Choose to bring the opportunity for trust building. We want to be clear here: while traditional “trust building” activities such as retreats and other activities can be beneficial, it’s infinitely more important to create those opportunities in every meeting and in every daily interaction. Abstract trust experiments aren’t nearly as effective as creating opportunities for trust in the middle of daily processes.
- Choose to be attentive, questioning, and engaged. If you want others to do these things, you have to do them yourself. If you enter a meeting with preconceived notions of exactly what the outcomes should be, you’re attending the meeting as a critic, not as a member of the team.
- Choose to approach interactions with a developer mindset. You’ve built a team based on their experiences and expertise. You chose them because, in many cases, they are much better at what they do than you would be. Approach meetings with the developer mindset, that you’re there to work together with everyone else to solve problems and make the company more successful.
How relational satisfaction benefits you and your organizational culture
There are several things you gain from relational satisfaction. You gain a connection with other people. You develop and receive greater empathy. You engender trust. You also create an environment in which both you and others can change in positive ways.
Relational satisfaction is also an essential component of positive organizational culture. As we’ve discussed above, when you combine relational satisfaction with procedural satisfaction, the natural result is substantive satisfaction.
Another way to think about it is this: when people in a business are happy with one another and their jobs are both productive and efficient, there is going to be organizational growth.
Substantive satisfaction
The ultimate goal of a good corporate culture is substantive satisfaction. While procedural satisfaction and relational satisfaction are also excellent goals in themselves, eventually they contribute to substantive satisfaction. Substantive satisfaction is the manifestation of procedural and relational satisfaction coming together — it is the culture.
Next time, we’ll take a closer look at substantive satisfaction, and we’ll tie all of the information from the past several posts together in order to help you build a positive business culture.