Leadership Through Relationship

“People don’t necessarily rebel against authority, they rebel against a lack of relationship”.

Leadership Without Effort

A lot of leaders find themselves guilty of trying to lead without making an effort to build healthy relationships. I get it though. Building relationships with people is hard work, building and sustaining healthy relationships is even harder. There’s no easy way out on this one. People can sometimes be tough. But what is it that separates good from great leaders? In my opinion it’s someone who sees the value in building healthy relationships.

This involves hard work – initiating personal conversations, encouraging each other, forgiving each other – none of this is easy. But at the end of the day, it’s worth it.

What Could Go Wrong

Recently, a senior professional from the U.S came down to our Bangalore office, he worked for an electricity supply company but he also lectured on leadership at a University. He mentioned an instance wherein some of the workers at his electricity supply company weren’t willing to work extra hours on a certain project despite a huge hike in their hourly pay.

When he examined the problem with the workers, he found out that the workers were being treated disrespectfully by the project lead and that’s why they didn’t want to carry out the project, despite the hike in their hourly pay. There was a clear lack of relationship that was positive and healthy between the project lead and the workers!

The Benefit Of Relationships

When you as a leader build genuine relationships you gain access to encourage, inspire, motivate and even discipline or correct people whenever it is needed to do so. So…in what ways are you trying to build healthy relationships? Are you leading through relationship or through a lack of it? Are your relationships built with a genuine interest towards the person or out of obligation?

Leaders who take the time and effort to build healthy relationships with people will get more work done from them than the leaders who lead without doing so. Every one is wired differently, therefore, if you are called to be a leader you are also called to constantly adapt to different types of people and lead them in a relevant manner.

“People want to work for good leaders but great leaders choose to work with people.”

 

_______________

Sharing is caring so please share this post. Thank you!