Building relationships with your people is the most valuable action you can take. This week, make the time to get to know your people better. Create spaces in your diary to have some conversations with them which will build rapport. This makes a big difference if you are to build together as a team. All business is built on relationships - even virtual ones where the only connection between a vendor and customer is virtual.

For most of us, face to face relationships are the order of the day, yet we find it hard to spend enough time getting to know the people we work with and who are so valuable to the overall performance of the business. Here are six things you can do to start this off, to great effect:- 1. Plan time in your diary to just 'hang out' with your people. Let conversations go their way, not yours - yet be relaxed about it. 2.

Find something that interests each and every one of your people personally, and listen hard to what they say. 3. Ask more open questions (what, how, where, who, when, why etc.) about their interest - especially about what they have told you. 4. Hold off talking too much yourself - especially your own agenda.

5. Don't be too preoccupied with 'business only'. If you build a relationship about their interests first, the opportunity to make business discussions stick will be all the more easy. 6. It's all about 'Just Talking' - remembering that the talking is not mostly done by you - but by them.

And your job is to facilitate them. Relationships are built to last this way - and from these relationships your opportunities to develop and grow comes.

©2006 Martin Haworth is a writer and a Business and Management Coach. He has thousands of hints and tips at his website, Coaching Businesses to Success.