Relationships

Morning Leaders,

I wanted to touch on a key subject and something we all need to work hard on, especially as a lot of us are continuing to work remotely.

Relationships with your people are critical, how do you expect people to trust and respect you, and feel empowered to do their greatest work if you haven’t worked hard on establishing meaningful relationships with them. Relationships take time, it’s a daily process and something we constantly need to be conscious of and on the look out for opportunities to improve on.

If there is one take way from this newsletter, it’s this: Build big healthy Relationships with everyone in your team.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

How do you build big relationships?

1) Know Your People - it starts by getting to know the individual more. What are their hobbies? What’s their pet called? What do they feel passionate about? What makes them nervous? What drives them? What’s their career aspirations? What are their values and beliefs? They wont be open from day 1, but over time they’ll start to open up more to you.

2) Genuinely Care - you’ve got to deeply care about the people that you work with. If you look after them, they will look after you. Always have their best interests at heart and be “Human” about sensitive situations. Always do right by your people.

3) Engage rather than Instruct - I am sure you have seen the Leader vs Manager differences littered everywhere. Focus on spending as much of your time in Leader Mode. So Manager’s instruct, Leader’s Engage. For example, rather than email or Slack an individual, “Hey Henry, do this task for me” (Manager Mode). Setup a call and get face time with them. By talking to them you are not only getting the task done, you are also working on your relationship at the same time and empowering them to voice their opinion and contribute. “Hey Henry, I am working on this task and I would love to have your support and input, you free to jump on a quick call to talk through it?” (Leader Mode). You’re probably thinking: “Well… that’s going to take me 20 mins, when I could just email in 2 mins”. Yes you are right, but that’s short sighted, and will certainly help you win today but wont help you win tomorrow and moving forward.

4) Humility - always see the organisation as flat, yes there is a hierarchy but don’t let this interfere with your relationships. Whether you are interacting with the CEO or the office cleaner, treat everyone with respect and take a moment to find out how are they doing. There should be a congruency between what you say and how you behave. Being vulnerable and admitting when you don’t have the answers or suck at something encourages other people to follow.

5) Consistency - Simon Sinek has a great video about this, which I’ll drop into the Resources below. There is no single event that occurs for you to establish relationships with your team. It’s a daily and on-going process. It’s all the small events over a period of time which add up and accumulate. Consistent nurturing of the relationship will win you trust and respect. Always having their back, always supporting them, always empowering them and always being attentive to their needs.

When you have developed strong relationships with the people in your team based on mutual trust and respect, you’ll begin to see a profound effect on your engagement levels.

All the best

David

Resources Of The Week

YouTube Video - Simon Sinek - Consistency - why the consistency of turning up every day builds relationships and why it’s not the intensity.
Book - Leadership: Plain and Simple by Steve Radcliffe. Great book which carries on the theme of this newsletter why it’s so important to establish strong relationships with your team. Based on Leadership FED framework. Future, Engage, Deliver.

Quote of the Week

“The leaders who get the most out of their people are the leaders who care most about their people.” - Simon Sinek

By David Marsh

Hello, My name is David, I am a Tech Leader, Blogger and Runner from Hove, UK. Every week I write a Newsletter covering Leadership and Personal Development and anything else I came across which will add value to your journey and inspire you to take action.

Relationships

Reply