By Rania Bejjani
for the 2025 Risky Women Writing Competition, presented in partnership with Ocorian
Building strong relationships sounds simple—after all, who wouldn’t want a harmonious workplace, right? Yet, when faced with the inevitable office tensions, it seems many prefer to retreat into their comfort zones. But fear not! A well-crafted B.R.I.D.G.E can transform discord into collaboration, one awkward conversation at a time.
Building good relationships is good for us and good for business. They create harmony, promote well-being, give us a sense of safety and belonging, and make us happier, healthier, and stronger.
Now we all know it’s easy to get along with people we like, who like us, share our values, and validate our thoughts. Those relationships flow effortlessly, and we joyfully support each other. While we may have the occasional disagreement, we have enough positive connection to easily patch things up.
But what about people we don’t like, who don’t like us, who don’t share our values or views, or appreciate what we stand for?
In our personal lives, we might choose to avoid them, surrounding ourselves with people we like.
At work, though, that isn’t feasible. And so, we are left with three choices at work:
- Avoidance and distance: which leads to stagnation, decline, and loss.
- Conflict and confrontation: which drain time, energy, and emotion, sabotage progress, and distract from results.
- Relationship building and alignment: which is the key to engaging, working together effectively, and creating real value.
I passionately believe that mastering the Art of Relationships is the foundation for success in life and in business. And nowhere is this truer than in Governance, Risk Management, Compliance (GRC) and Internal Audit. By design, these roles highlight risks and issues, conversations that often trigger tension, defensiveness, and opposition. If left unmanaged, that tension escalates, both sides feel misunderstood and frustrated, conversations stall, risks remain unaddressed, and value is lost.
The solution? Dealing with the root cause. Building good trusted strategic relationships.
Why Building Relationships across the Business Matters
Because businesses were made to create value and thrive. Connection, collaboration, and camaraderie trump conflict, confrontation, and avoidance every time. The latter waste energy, stall progress, and distract from what matters most: creating value. When our businesses thrive, we thrive too.
Because a healthy, harmonious work environment fuels creativity, innovation, and productivity, lifting individuals, teams, and organisations to new heights.
And because when we master the Art of Relationships, we expand our minds, earn respect, open our hearts, connect better, and build trust. That is what allows us to influence, lead, and leave a lasting impact.
What a Good Relationship Is, and Is Not
Let me first state what a healthy harmonious relationship is not:
- It’s not resignation or submission, saying yes to everything for the sake of peace.
- It’s not complicity, overlooking bad behaviour to avoid confrontation.
- It’s not compromise that sacrifices what matters most, breeding resentment and lose-lose outcomes.
A good trusted strategic relationship is about creating alignment, value and win-win outcomes. It’s about rising above walls of differing opinions, needs, and priorities, with the intent to find common ground. From that higher perspective, communication flows, collaboration thrives, and strategic impact is made.
A Story We All Recognise
We’ve all been there: wanting connection, yet finding ourselves stuck in tension, misunderstanding, or silence.
Perhaps you are in the office. The atmosphere feels heavy. You send emails, no reply. Meetings drag on in tense silence, or worse, sharp words. You feel the weight in your chest, the tension in your shoulders, the knot in your stomach. It’s like playing a duet where the other musician refuses to join, every note you play falls flat, discordant, lonely.
Then you glance across the hallway. Another group is gathered harmoniously engaged in a meeting. You long for this harmony. Picture yourself in that group: You hear the laughter, you see the energy, you feel the flow of ideas bouncing around the table, you sense your shoulders ease and your breathing deepens. It is like stepping into an orchestra, each instrument adding its part, blending into something bigger, powerful. Trust, influence, and impact all working in harmony.
So, here’s the question: how do you get from the discord of the duet to the harmony of the orchestra?
You take responsibility. You set the intention. You choose to lead. You reach out to those you feel dissonance with, and you begin to see them differently, not as opponents, but as potential partners. You rise above the differences for the sake of a higher purpose: creating outcomes where everyone wins, you, them, and the organisation.
And how do you do that? That’s where the bridge comes in.
We often hear the phrase “build bridges” but what does that really mean? For many, it’s easy to say, but harder to live. To me, it means intentionally creating a path across differences, so we can meet in the middle and move forward together. Step by step, plank by plank, conversation by conversation. And each time you choose to build rather than withdraw, the bridge extends further, until one day you walk across to respect, trust, and partnership.
That’s what the Art of Relationships looks like.
That’s how we go from discord to harmony.
That’s how impact is made.
The B.R.I.D.G.E Model
How to build it? My B.R.I.D.G.E model is a simple practical guide to building strong, trusted strategic relationships:
- B – Begin with Intention
- R – Reach Out, Don’t Retreat
- I – Inspire Compassionate Collaboration
- D – Dialogue with Courage and Honesty
- G – Grow Together in Alignment
- E – Empower Each Other
For GRC and Internal Audit
Becoming a strategic business partner is the ultimate prize. Relationship building is one of the key pillars of this multi-faceted journey.
Our mission as GRC and Internal Audit is not just to find and report issues, but to effectively help the organisation prevent, detect, and respond to risks. To build resilience. Importantly, to create value. To achieve strategic goals. To thrive. And that mission only works when relationships are based on trust, credibility, and dialogue.
The B.R.I.D.G.E model transforms avoidant or adversarial interactions into true, trusted partnerships. And that is what enables us to be seen not as blockers, but as allies. Not as critics, but as collaborative strategic partners. Not as invisible, but as impactful.
Remember when the business thrives, we thrive too.