The four intentions behind effective relational leadership

What is relational leadership all about? My short answer is relational leadership is everything that creates a human relationship between leader and employee. If our objective is to ensure our employees realise their full potential and thereby contribute optimally to achieving the company’s targets, it is of ultimate importance that the relations contribute to a culture that supports and promotes development.

Leadership behaviour affects culture

As a leader, your behaviour not only plays a role in your human relationships with your employees, it also plays a critical role in the company culture. Culture is important to employee engagement. And employee engagement has a significant effect on results. But which culture is the right culture?

A study at Google (2012 Project Aristotle) showed that a critical difference between teams with a high-performance level versus teams with a low-performance level is the feeling of “psychological safety”. Psychological safety can be defined as a cultural norm that says all members of the team are accepted, including their flaws and shortcomings. The feeling of being 100% accepted will enable team members to spend energy on developing their potential and creating results rather than hiding their weaknesses. Intuitively, it also makes sense that, if a team is to be able to realise its full potential, all strengths and weaknesses must be brought out into the open.

A team or organisation with a high degree of psychological safety can use the team's resources more efficiently, as they can assign the right person to a task without having to consider politics, hierarchy, norms, etc. These teams are also typically better at listening to each other and handling disagreements in a constructive and developing way, enhancing their ability to learn and adapt as needed.

What is good relational leadership?

Good or effective relational leadership must consequently create a culture of psychological safety and development. At the end of the day, it is the leader’s behaviour that acknowledges strengths and welcomes weaknesses as development potentials. A leader who is good at relational leadership will typically use methods such as active listening, coaching and appreciation.

There is just that small twist that the right behaviour is not always sufficient if the behaviour is carried out with the wrong mindset. There is, for example, a difference between using coaching to get an employee to change a specific behaviour right here and now and supporting the employee in his or her personal and professional development. Both acts are coaching, but the underlying intentions can be very different. And the results will consequently also be very different. In most cases, the short-term behavioural change will not be sustained over time.

“The right behaviour is not always sufficient if the behaviour is carried out with the wrong mindset.”

— Lisa Richardson, Partner at Conscious Consulting

The mindset underlying the behaviour is critical for your chances of achieving the desired effect.

Mindset creates behaviour, which creates culture, which creates engagement, which creates results.

The right mindset makes all the difference to the effectiveness of relational leadership

This is why it is worthwhile to familiarise yourself with which mindsets promote good relational leadership. I have been inspired by Human Synergistics’s research and data on correlations between organisational culture and leadership styles. Based on this background, I have defined four specific leadership intentions, which support the leader in creating strong human relationships, thus developing human potential in the organisation.

The four leadership intentions behind good relational leadership

PURPOSE: All management books talk about the importance of creating motivating goals. Motivation is strongly linked to the employee’s sense of contributing to a meaningful purpose. So how do you create a meaningful purpose? Begin by initiating a dialogue with your employees on WHY they are here. Once it becomes clear to you, why your employees are here, you will be able to create goals with and for them that are both motivating and inspiring because you are aware of what drives them as individuals.

“While a developing feedback session tends to end with a conclusion about what the receiver might consider doing differently in the future, the positive feedback session should end by the receiver simply saying, “thanks for the feedback”

— Lisa Richardson, Partner at Conscious Consulting

While a purpose may be very broad and ambitious, it is critical for motivation that goals are broken down into realistic targets that are maximally motivating for the individual. There is not one right formula for this – other than dialogue. We all know the feeling of having a target that is either too ambitious or not ambitious enough. The challenge lies in finding the right balance that will keep motivation levels up. And last, but not least, motivation must be maintained. This is done by continuously acknowledging achievements, results AND efforts.

DEVELOPING OTHERS: A good relational leader is good at identifying potential and supporting the team in realising this potential. This involves more than just sending your employees off to training courses. It is about supporting your employees in their professional and personal development as well as recognising that these are interdependent. Coaching is a popular management method in this context. Be careful, however, that coaching is not simply applied as a technique. My experience with skilled relational leaders is that all dialogue has an aspect of development for both parties. Challenges are investigated together with questions such as “How do you think this could be improved?”, “What is your experience?”, “Who knows more about this type of challenge?”, “What are our assumptions, and how could they be wrong?”, etc. 

It can be a challenge if you have an employee whose potential does not match the company’s needs. I would still claim that all development is positive. It may be a good idea to have a dialogue on how personal development and goals fit into the overall objectives of the team and the company.  Remembering that the leader’s responsibilities also include selecting the team. Not everyone is suited for every job, and it is your responsibility as the leader to select a team with the right potential. Once you have selected your team, you must seek to continuously develop the team.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT: A good relational leader will always strive to become a better leader for the benefit of the team and the company.

Just because you have gained the title of manager does not mean that your personal or professional development stops or should stop. On the contrary.

If you are to support your employees in their development, you must act as a role model by taking your own development seriously. In other words, you must “walk the talk”. If we want our employees to reveal their vulnerability and strive for development, we must lead the way by showing how and by demonstrating that it is OK to have human development points. This is where we as leaders show our own humanity and allow our employees to also be human.

My experience is that this particular intention poses a greater challenge in certain cultures than in others, however, authenticity is key. So how exactly do you go about it? The greatest opportunity for showing this intention is in connection with the annual leadership survey or employee satisfaction survey. Be curious about the results and ask your employees what YOU can do to better serve them as their leader.

In my view, the best relational leaders are the ones who always listen and ask for feedback regularly with questions such as “What could I have done differently?” and “How can I offer better support next time?”.

CARING: It is important to show care for the people in your team. A team consists of people, each with their own lives, joys and challenges. For me personally, caring for my team is about being able to embrace the whole human beings they are. They are not just performance machines to be disposed of the minute that they stop delivering optimally. Caring is not just about buying cake on Fridays. A good relational leader is genuinely interested in the whole person. What is going on in their life, and how can you as the leader help them feel good about where he or she is in life at this very moment? Once more, dialogue and listening are key behaviours.

My point with the above leadership intentions is of course that they must be demonstrated authentically through your behaviour. There is no prioritisation – all four leadership intentions are equally important. If you manage to truly feel and then demonstrate these four intentions, you will have created the opportunity for a culture of psychological safety in your team. And with that psychological safety, you will have created a foundation that will enable your team to achieve their optimal potential.

And if you are now thinking that this kind of ‘soft’ leadership stuff is not really your thing or in any way relevant to your work as a leader, I would just like to encourage you to reconsider why you chose to become a leader in the first place. At the end of the day, a leader is a person who works with people. And relational leadership is basically a leadership competence just like strategic leadership or operational leadership.

(This article was originally published in the Danish magazine ‘Ledelse i udvikling’ in November 2018.)