The Connected Educator, Chapter 2: Building a Collaborative Culture

Chapter 2; Building a Collaborative Culture

Chapter 4 talks about building a collaboration which means; you build relationships, you build trust, and everything you mostly need in an employment environment. Having a workplace how it is nowadays there's no easier way to build a collaboration with relationships. Sheryl states “Collaboration grows from relationships in which trust, collegiality, shared vision, and group development flourish.” employees and employers have to work together to help each other, if they don't what's the point of a collaboration?

A workplace is built off of relationships that you make there. Some people meet their best friends from work. Relationships help flourish each other. Just a simple greeting in the morning can make someone’s whole day. Having relationships and working together helps one another accomplish their goals. Not everyone's going to get along in the workplace but if most of them do it will create a healthy environment. There are two different type of relationships, congeniality and collegiality. 

Congeniality is a polite, friendly relationship we have with one another. It is the nicer part of a relationship. It is usually when you first meet someone and you’re trying to make friends.  

Collegiality is the opposite. It is a shared belief that none of us is as good as all of us, it helps us all contribute to improved individual practice. 

The chapter also goes in depth of how important establishing trust in a workplace is. Trust is your way of being vulnerable to one another. Having trust in a workplace is very important even if it's just with your work ideas, if you tell your coworker an idea you have, you trust them not to tell anyone until you bring it up to the boss or whoever you plan to tell. If you don’t have trust in a workplace, it makes it very hard to do anything. It’s like a partner relationship, if you don’t have trust, you don’t have anything. 

 

Being a Dentist comes with making many relationships. From coworkers, to patients, to patients’ parent/guardians. You make a lot of relationships in this field because of how many people you see on a daily. On average a dentist sees 15 patients per day which is 105 patients per week, that's a lot of relationships just in a week.  One of the bittersweet moments of being a dentist is you get to see your patients grow up, if you have children at your office. Being a dentist also helps the patients build trust in you, which is a very important thing. You make long lasting relationships in this field. Being close to everyone around you will make them feel more comfortable. 

Building trust is very important in this field. If you show your patience, you know what you're doing, and you go easy with them they will have trust in you. Especially with children if you're kind to them, they will be kind of you back and work with you. Building trust in the office is also a very important thing so your workers will feel comfortable with working with you on a daily basis.

What is your career path and why is building relationships in it important?

Is trust important to you? If so, why?