How to build personal relationships at work

[25yearstilretirement]

Please be kind.

I am a lawyer and I left private practice a few months ago to go in house. I left because partnership opportunity was thin on the ground, the hours were insane and I like the commercial side of work better and therefore hoped to find the work more interesting and fulfiling in house. I also wanted to work for a company that did good in the world and I now do.

I knew it would be important to build business partnering relationships with people internally as an in house lawyer and I have never underestimated this. When I joined the company I had 1:1 s with key stakeholders, was relentlessly positive about how excited I was to be here, went around smiling constantly and generally tried very hard to get to know people. I have always prioritised work from business people so they feel important and prioritised and I am constantly trying to show interest in what we are doing.

I work in an Arab country, not the UK, but I am white British - so building personal relationships is not an easy task when everyone else is speaking Arabic and from a different culture. I really thought I was making progress on this.

Today I was told by my ultimate boss (2 stages up) that there is a perception that I am only here because its better than where I was before. She told me that general feedback was that I thought I was better than everyone else and that I need to make these relationships better or I would be let go at the end of my probation period.

I asked for examples - she didn't give any. I said I was surprised and disappointed that this was the feedback and would take it on board but I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. She told me its my general demeanour. I didn't argue or whine at her.

I grant you, I am not relentless positive and I am not a smiley smiley person on a daily basis, but I am not miserable and I really really have tried. I dont know what else to do. I suspect there is partly some political tension here as (a) I am the only external new joiner after a massive internal restructuring and (b) I am white, but this doesn't explain the issue.

I have to try and fix this so I wanted to just try inviting some people for coffee and lunch but I am not good at this with people I dont know. I dont know what they would think if a random invited them for a coffee and I dont even know what we would talk about. But I need to try. Any tips on this?

PS - I cant do much for another 3 weeks because its Ramadan and nobody else is eating or drinking during the day, so I have time to formulate a plan if anyone has any tips.

I'm sorry to hear this - my advice would be more tailored to UK and I suspect the culture might be different where you are - is there someone at work that you get on with relatively well and that understands the company/people well you could have a confidential chat with and ask them what they think about how you can improve relationships at work? I say that because I would take what your manager says with a pinch of salt, it doesn't sounds terribly good management practice to give you such personal feedback without concrete examples and ideas of what you can actually do to improve. It's possible she's just a bit odd herself or you've annoyed her somehow and instead of being honest about that she's pushing it onto 'everyone else'?

Speaking as someone who would describe themselves as socially awkward and has really struggled with this in the past, I do wonder if in making such a huge effort to be positive and smily and enthusiastic you've accidentally gone too far the other way and come across as false/fake? I certainly have been guilty of this in the past, I always used to hate the standard advice to 'be yourself' because clearly my true natural self is shy, introverted, grumpy with people especially strangers, silent in large groups and generally comes across as an oddball which doesn't go down well professionally . So I do have to make a bit of an effort to modify my behaviour but when you do that you can sometimes hit a bit of a false note which can be as off-putting to people as my natural taciturnity and lack of social engagement.

The only advice I can give is to try and naturally put yourself into social situations which suit your natural preferences, I'm much better one on one than large groups so I do a lot of engineering corridor chit-chat, kitchen encounters over tea/washing up, catch ups before or after meetings etc (harder since Covid of course!) - like you I make an effort to get to know people a little bit personally and share a bit of myself too, not on a deep and meaningful level, I'm talking about where they're going on holiday, isn't the weather/traffic/work crazy right now, did they catch the latest Love Island, how are their kids getting on at school, would they like to see a funny picture of a cat and so forth (bit formulaic and boring but seems to work OK). I don't know if this is an issue for you but also rigidly sticking to whatever the social 'norms' and etiquettes for your company is around 'nicities' in emails and phone calls etc is important, maybe I'm weird but for personal preferences I'd skip a lot of that, we're all here for work, I'm emailling you requesting XYZ from you in a perfectly straight forward and polite manner, I don't see why we need to waste time with flannel like 'Hello Bob how are you? I hope you are well. I am well too! Are you looking forward to the weekend? I understand your department are very very busy but I am hoping you may be able to assist with XYZ.... if someone else would be better placed to deal with this please let me know, I am very happy to discuss if it would be helpful thank you so much in advance for your assistance' bla bla bla, then they have to respond in similar terms, surely it would be easier all round to say 'Dear Bob, Please can I have XYZ, thanks', 'yes here you go' and save everyone the trouble but I have been accused of coming off 'brusque' or 'like I am offended/cross' in emails before I play along now. Same on phone calls and meetings etc., we have to have a little bit of pointless 'flannel' before every chat .... Is it possible it's this sort of thing you're getting just a bit 'wrong'?

When I joined the company I had 1:1 s with key stakeholders, was relentlessly positive about how excited I was to be here, went around smiling constantly and generally tried very hard to get to know people. I have always prioritised work from business people so they feel important and prioritised and I am constantly trying to show interest in what we are doing.

Speaking solely for myself, when I have had new joiner colleagues behave like that I found it really off-putting and uncomfortable. As pp says, it comes across as fake. And a bit patronising / superficial because you're trying to force things.

Rather than ramping it up even further with work-dates, maybe dial it down and be a bit more natural / less intense? It is possible that people might be finding you a bit over-familiar.

However, I also agree it's crap management to give you "feedback" without any actual specific examples or details that would enable you to act upon it.

Did you move countries for this job? What's the worse case scenario if it doesn't work out? You find a better fit somewhere else?

(Asking because I doubt that piling pressure on yourself will help!)

Sometimes your face just doesn't fit and no matter what it never will. Staff are clearly talking about you, perhaps it is just a toxic environment?