Leadership Without Relationship Is Impossible

This is a guest post by Ricky Petrson of www.bloggingwithchris.com CEO of Rikhav Infotech www.rikhavinfotech.com a company specializing in SEO & Web Development.

Yesterday, Sally, my friend, came to me crestfallen. She says she has no control over people in her life. Her daughter prefers to follow her father, Michael, more than her. Even her domestic help seems to readily execute the orders of her husband more than her. Not that Sally’s jealous of her husband for his skill in impressing people and making them do what he wants, but she wants to know the secrets of his mesmerizing effect on people around him. Being a life skills coach, I could immediately understand her problem.

I know Sally to be a person who doesn’t have a lot of connections in real life. Though good at heart and sufficiently knowledgeable, she simply doesn’t seem to get her message across to people, even though she’s correct. Michael, on the other hand, has a lot of strong connections who simply follow him like hypnotized puppets and pledge to hang together! Obviously, Michael’s a people’s man. He strives to maintain a good rapport with people around him and enjoys the fruits of trustworthiness and likeability, which he uses adroitly to influence people. Sally on the other hand, has not done this groundwork before making people obey her and that’s why people don’t have a natural inclination to follow her.

Its not only in personal life that you come across situations like Sally’s but in professional life too. As a fresh professional, I just could not understand why I liked working under one mentor, while I was indifferent to another. Mr. John, my senior, had a way of connecting with me. He was very empathetic and he had a way of delivering things, which made working for him a pleasure even at the time of crisis. Mr. Smith, on the other hand, was more concerned with the given work and I felt like a mechanical robot working for him. I wouldn’t feel like giving him my extra bit as easily as I would for John. My relationship with Mr. Smith was too impersonal.

What do these experiences tell you? Making good relationships is essential for effective leadership. To make people obey you, you should first make them like you and confide in you. Power, knowledge, experience are rendered worthless, when it comes to leadership without firm relationship.

I recommend you to read Townsend’s work “Leadership beyond Reason” where he implies that above the logical attributes of leadership, lie those internal reasons which give good leaders an edge over others. Their very personalities exude altruistic motives, which consolidate their relationships with people and make them their followers.

Some of us already have this in us owing to our personalities and value systems. Those of you who want to improve your relationships, here are some tips:

♦ Next time you interact with someone, just observe your feelings or your impression about that person. You’ll see that you have an internal concept of that person according to which you interact with him or her. Others also have an internal picture of yours in them. If you want to build good relationships, you’ve got to work upon this internal concept which is the net result of all judgments made upon you from the past to the present.

♦ When you want to make strong relationships, you should be able to overlook the mistakes of other people and forgive them. First of all don’t be judgmental, unless absolutely necessary, because it can be taken negatively as criticism. Get rid of all biased opinions about people owing to your personal experiences. Approach each person with a fresh mind.

♦ Don’t take any person for granted. People might want to work with you, but you should understand that they are individuals with mindsets that might differ from you. You should not expect them to have the same for doing your work as you would have. They are individuals with their own personal opinions. You should be able to connect with them and convince them about your points.

♦A fundamental secret that you should know is that it is on the basis of good relationship that you can call a spade a spade. Why do you listen to your mother when she tells a fact about you, even if you don’t like it? It’s because you are close to her and understand that she’s not telling the truth to hurt you but to rectify you. To be a good leader is like a mother to your followers. If you don’t connect with them emotionally, they’ll never listen to you.

♦ You cannot make people follow you, using compulsion. People should have a natural inclination to follow you. They will do this only when they develop a passion for working with you. You cannot inculcate this passion simply by verbalizing it. You’ve got to understand the likings and personality types of your followers and create conditions to develop their passion.

Surely, neither Sally nor Mr. Smith has done this easy preparation before approaching people. That’s the reason they are surprised when people distance themselves from them and don’t like to follow them. If you don’t want to surprise like them, just go ahead and polish your relationships.