Building Meaningful Relationships

BizOps is an extremely relationship-driven role, so it’s critical to demonstrate your thoughtfulness in the relationships that you build in your job.

Here, we’ll cover two aspects of relationship-building: individual, and network.

Establishing Trust and Credibility

A common framework used to talk about trust in the workplace is the trust equation:

We’ll walk through how each plays a role in BizOps interviews.

Credibility

Credibility is important in bizops because senior stakeholders rely on bizops output to make critical decisions. Having a credible partner helps the stakeholder skip over the stage where they sense-check the analyses and poke holes in the rationale.

In interviews, it’s important to highlight your capabilities which would make you credible in the role you’re applying for. Here, a close read of the job description and tailored project examples are musts. The team wants to know that their stakeholders will find you credible.

Additionally, highlighting stories where you figured out how to seem credible to a senior stakeholder can be especially powerful (audience!). When prepping stakeholder management stories, ask yourself "what did this stakeholder value?" and "how did I discover that value and deliver?"

Reliability

Reliability is the time factor in the equation. Do someone’s actions speak for themselves? Do they consistently show up over time? Lack of reliability often leads teams to pass on shooting stars, so be sure to cultivate reliability daily.

In interviews, think about what you are known for at work and showcase those things. Talk about how they play a role in your impact.

Intimacy

Intimacy in this case doesn’t necessarily mean knowing everything about each other. Rather, it’s a level of trust, respect, and closeness between two coworkers that facilitates more open collaboration.

In interviews, talk about how you win peoples’ trust and respect in partnerships by doing the right thing even when it’s hard.

Self-orientedness

Self-orientedness is especially taboo in bizops because the team is often viewed as a neutral party facilitating decision-making and business thinking.

In interviews, highlight your ability to rally behind core company principles and values and how you rallied other people around them to make an impact. It’s not just good interview material -- it’s good leadership.

To build these elements of a trusting partnership, here are some common best practices:

• Meaningful 1:1s: Set recurring one-on-one meetings with your key stakeholders so that you have regular touchpoints. Make sure you walk into each one with a good idea of what you want the conversation to be about and what you anticipate to be top-of-mind for the other person. If the stakeholder is more senior, sending an agenda ahead of time is never a bad idea, but don’t overwhelm the other person with too many items. Finally, following up proactively is a very effective way of demonstrating reliability.
• Proactive advocacy: One of the quickest ways to win trust is by advocating for them when they’re not in the room. That’s why it’s important to gain a good understanding of what your stakeholders believe in and why. This doesn’t mean adopting all their interests, but rather understanding them well and being able to help them have the conversations that they may not have the time and bandwidth to have.

Building a Network of Influence

Now that you’ve got the ingredients for strong, trusting relationships, it’s about strategizing what you want your network to look like. An influencer map can be super helpful here.

Consider the organization map below:

(photo credit)

Take note of a few key things:

Each person has a direct reporting chain, so you can expect folks in the same chain to share relatively similar information and perspectives.

Each color also indicates an additional overlap in terms of employee committees or social groups, so you can expect a reasonable amount of information sharing as well.

Remember, there are informal relationships or differing levels of trust even within the same team or social group.

When you’re thinking about where to invest your time to build that network, think about the breadth of your coverage. You probably don’t want to be in the same social group as your team, because it creates redundancy that doesn’t actually help you get broader perspectives or more information.

If there are a couple of stakeholders that you need to influence frequently, consider joining their circles or the circles of those they trust the most. This can help you get quick feedback on your ideas or someone to nurture the conversation for you when you’re not in the room.

Finally, here are some tips for working well with any team member:

• Acknowledge the differences in each stakeholder's needs and working styles; make sure each is heard and their inputs are taken seriously.
• Involve them early and consult them often.
• Learn to speak their language.
• Be data-driven in communicating priorities and decisions.
• Consistently communicate the “why” behind the work.
• When in conflict, remember you all want the same things.

Recap

Relationship-building is key in bizops, where you'll wrangle multiple cross-functional stakeholders, sometimes with conflicting priorities. Interviewers will look for evidence that you can build and keep trust, communicate, even when it's difficult, and keep your eye on greater business goals.

To show you can build positive work relationships:

• Practice the question "Tell me about a time you built trust."
• Be sure to work the ways you build credibility, reliability, intimacy, and group / company orientation (trust) into any question related to stakeholders.
• Highlight your ability to dig deep for better understanding when faced with opposition.
• Take the time to think through different stakeholder interactions and what you've learned over time. Self-reflection and sharing what you learned is extremely powerful in interviews.
• Take time to be proactive in building your network. Interviewees we spoke to reported that unexpected connections have led to some of their most successful and exciting projects. Bonus points if you can share a story or two on projects like this in an interview -- it shows passion, dedication to the work and mission, and ownership.