Building good relationships with business counterparts. It’s a topic that nearly all IT leaders (and those aspiring to be leaders) struggle with on a pretty regular basis.

Some IT leaders misunderstand this important task and think it means they have to spend more time going out for beers with their work colleagues. Not the case. Developing a social relationship with your colleagues does not qualify as a business relationship.

Social relationships offer a different set of rewards. Bonding with work colleagues over “How-about-them-Jets” conversations and sharing personal moments makes the office feel a little cozier and more pleasant. But don’t mistake these social connections for the strong content-based relationships you need with your colleagues. Business relationships are built around business-related, value-added, content­-rich interactions.

Yet even if the vast majority of your communication with your colleagues needs to be around business-related topics, it can’t be everything. If the sum total of your interactions is nothing but business, business, business, you’ll find it hard to tackle the more complex challenges of senior stakeholder management where social credibility and comfort pave the way for difficult content-based discussions. The right types of social interactions provide an additional set of connection points with your business colleagues that will come in handy when you need them most.

This is true on both the personal and the group level. IT as a whole needs to be seen as people who are capable of genuine social interactions instead of just “the computer guys.”

The question of course is, how do you do it.

What are the right kind of social-based activities that IT and the business can share in common? Instead of generalizing, I’d like to share with you a real-world example, dare I say “best practice,” courtesy of Nolan Bennett, VP & CIO of Teva Americas.

Two months ago (right before Halloween) in the midst of doing all the content-related work of annual planning, Nolan pulled his team together and told them, “we need to have some light fun with our colleagues. We need to show the business that IT has a human side as well.” His idea: To take over one of the extra-large conference rooms at headquarters and transform it into a multi-zone Halloween territory— each zone designed and built by a different IT team. Then, once the room was fully built, to invite the headquarters staff to enter the newly created Halloween experience. (More on the exact nature of the experience in a moment.)

To help “motivate” the teams to show their creative side, he told them there would be a contest for Best Halloween Zone which would be judged by their business colleagues.

Armed with a meager budget ($75 per team) and a half day off to prep the “experience” the teams went to work creating spooky displays for their upcoming Halloween party which included not an insignificant amount of lampooning themselves and a few choice business leaders.

The fateful day arrived. The scene was set. The room was darkened. Bela Lugosi black and white movies were projected on the sheet-covered walls while spooky music played in the background.

Sure enough hundreds of their business colleagues arrived. Everyone laughed together, joked together, and then voted for the winning zone. The triumphant team brought home the trophy.

The whole experience lasted just a couple of hours on Halloween afternoon but it had a great impact. Both IT and business people talked about it for weeks afterward. The comment I heard most from the IT team: “It gave everyone a way of having a bit of fun together… and the business got to see we’re not all geeks!” Similarly, from the business people I heard, “What a great idea. I never imagined that the IT group was so creative and talented.”

So, there you have it. A short, simple, and inexpensive event that produced first-rate results.

The Takeaway

The right kind of fun at the right time can be very impactful. In the midst of serious content-based work on the annual operating plan it was a great idea for IT to sponsor a break-in-the-action event. A little bit of fun not only built new bonds between IT team members working together to construct their area, but the whole viewing and judging process connected the IT team with their business peers in a new way.

An important caveat to bear in mind. This sort of tactic will fall flat if you don’t have your content-based business relationships (and basic credibility) already in place. Consider Nolan’s example extra credit, not the main assignment.

(Thanks for sharing, Nolan.)