Article by Jefferson V. Baloaloa
Divine
Word College of Laoag
jvbaloaloa@yahoo.com
Abstract
Leaders strive every day to become successful in leading
the organization. Encouraging collaborative and productive team relationships
is one of the solutions. To be successful, it is believed that a leader must
be able to bring out the best in each team member and the team as a whole. This
article proves this claim as it analyzed the importance of relationship
building towards effective leadership. Relational leadership theories were
reviewed and it emphasizes the importance of leaders building quality
relationships with their followers to achieve individual and organizational
effectiveness. Both theories also demonstrate the importance of effective
communication that allows both leaders and followers to build trust and
commitment. It was found out that the quality of the relationship followers has
with their leader is the primary driver of these feelings of engagement. Therefore,
relationships really matter as a fundamental enabler of the organization’s
ability to attract, keep and get the very best out of the people. In this
article, various concepts were discussed to help leaders equip the necessary characteristics
in becoming an effective leader. Further, effective leaders must be open and
transparent with their followers and serve the community in a way that benefits
everyone.
Keywords: Leadership, Building Relationship
and Relational Leadership Theories
Introduction
People are at the center of all leadership
efforts. Leaders cannot lead unless they understand the people they are
leading. One way to look at leadership is that the function of a leader is to
lead and guide people who will follow with the same values. An effective leader
thus must be able to build relationships and create communities. We can define
leadership as inspiring people and planning for the future with the motivating
factors of relationship building and community service. Relationships can
happen between concepts, actions, and values.
The
management gurus James Kouzes and Barry Posner discussed the importance of
relational leadership in their book, The Leadership Challenge. They state,
“When leadership is a relationship founded on trust and confidence, people take
risks, make changes, keep organizations, and movements alive. Through that
relationship, leaders turn their constituents into leaders themselves” (Kouzes
& Posner, 2007).
However,
leaders’ relationships with their people are somewhat strained these days.
Trust, a key part of any relationship, has been damaged by the financial
crisis, the recession, corporate responses to the recession that were often necessary,
but also very difficult. Rebuilding leadership trust and relationships is a
critical component of engagement and for moving forward.
If
leadership is a relationship, how do real relationships is built? The focus is
not on the tasks and activities needed to get work done but relationships creating
a work environment where the sum is greater than the parts. Leaders with
strong, trusting and authentic relationships with their teams know that
investing time in building these bonds makes them more effective overall.
Relational
Leadership Model
Relational
leadership is a relational process of people together attempting to accomplish change
or make a difference to benefit the common good (Komives, S. R., Lucas, N.,
& McMahon, T. R., 1998). This philosophy values being ethical and
inclusive. It acknowledges the diverse talents of group members and trust the
process to bring good thinking to the socially responsible changes group
members agree they want to work toward. Relationships are the key to leadership
effectiveness.
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The
Relational Leadership Model
Relational
leadership involves a focus on five primary components:
- Ethics:
Upholds values and standards of morality.
- Purpose:
Having a common set of values and vision to move an initiative forward. This means having an individual commitment to a goal or activity. It is also the individual ability to collaborate and find common ground with others to establish a common purpose, vision for a group, or work toward the public.
- Empowerment:
Sharing power with others to embrace what they have to offer.
- Inclusivity:
Welcoming and open to diverse points of view and diverse identities.
- Process-Orientation:
The focus is on the group and how the group works together remaining a group,
and accomplishing the group’s purpose.
Relational Leadership Theories
Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX). The first leadership theory is leader-member
exchange (LMX) and focuses on the relationship between leaders and followers.
This theory focuses on the relationship between the leader and each subordinate
or dyad, so the theory posits that leaders develop an exchange with each of
their subordinates and is a two-way interaction. The theory suggests that each
of these relationships are unique and that the quality of the leader-member
exchange relationships influence subordinates’ responsibility, decisions, and
access to resources and performance (Bauer & Ergoden, 2015).
The relationships are based on trust and respect and
extend beyond transactional, business relationships. Subordinates who develop strong
emotional attachments with their mentors tend to engage more fully within the
organization and become effective team members (Day & Miscenko, 2016).
Servant Leadership Theory. The servant leadership theory is based on the
premise that leaders are effective when they first serve their followers.
Essentially, the leader is not in a position of power above the followers, but
the emphasis is on the leader meeting the concerns of the followers (Northouse,
2013). An effective servant leader empathizes with their followers and nurtures
and empowers them to help them reach their full potential (Greenleaf, 2012).
There are ten characteristics that are central to
the concept of servant leadership. It includes listening, empathy, healing, awareness,
persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth
of people, and building community.
Communication is an important skill for all leaders
yet servant leadership emphasizes the value of listening intently to others.
The servant-leader seeks to identify the aims and goals of the group and helps
them fulfill this mission. The servant-leader is receptive to what is being
said within the group. One of the hallmarks of a servant-leader is the ability
to balance listening with periods of reflection to consider what they can offer
the group (Greenleaf, 2012).
The servant-leader also strives to empathize with
others and accepts their individual characteristics. So, although the
servant-leader might not like something that they did, they choose not to
reject them as people. Effective servant-leaders are also able to heal through forgiveness
of themselves and of others. Servant leaders also recognize that they have the
ability to help those who have been emotionally hurt and so they strive to help
them when they come into contact.
Another characteristic of servant-leaders is that
they are self-aware and so have strong ethical standards and values. Having
this strong sense of morality enables servant-leaders to have a holistic view
of the organization. Servant-leaders have an inner peace yet are also able to tackle
and challenge thorny issues within the organization that are based on their
code of ethics (Greenleaf, 2012).
Three Characteristics of Servant-Leaders
There are three characteristics of servant-leaders
that show a commitment to the community and people in organizations. These are stewardship,
commitment, and building community.
Stewardship. Stewardship means serving the needs of others to
serve the greater good. Stewardship occurs when the servant-leader views the
organization as an institution that exists for the greater good of society.
This stewardship emphasizes the main goal of servant-leadership which is first
and foremost a commitment to serving the needs of others coupled with an ability
to persuade and to be open rather than to control others.
Commitment. Servant-leaders are committed to nurturing
individuals and their potential. This stewardship is also revealed in the
commitment that servant-leaders have for the growth of people. Servant-leaders
believe that people have an intrinsic value beyond their contributions as
employees so they engage in nurturing each individual within the organization.
Building Community. Role modeling helps build communities that hold
together. Finally, servant-leaders are adept in building community particularly
after the change has occurred and people feel they have lost some of the
familiarity of old-style organizations. In order to build and rebuild
communities, servant-leaders just need to show the way through demonstrating
their own unlimited liability. In fact, mass movement is not needed but just
for the servant-leader to be an excellent role model for others (Greenleaf,
2012).
Defining Relational Leadership
Theories
Relational leadership theories shift attention to what
transpires between individuals and center relationship as the locus of
leadership. While academics and practitioners participate in the relational turn,
they develop different philosophical understandings about the study of relationships
of leadership.
The meeting place of all these different understandings
is the awareness that leadership is not alone, secluded action. Instead,
leadership lies in the collective action of interconnected individuals, an the outlook that challenges deep-held assumptions about leadership, such as
individualism, agency, and independence.
Responding to these challenges requires first to
distinguish between the different philosophical understandings around
relational leadership to then move on to a discussion about what these offer to
the conception of leadership. Views about relationality in today’s leadership
arena fall into the following two broad philosophical domains: entitative and
processual stances.
Entitative Perspective on
Relational Leadership. This views
leadership as starting from individuals and extending into the collaboration between
one or more sides (Bolden et al. 2011). Leadership is produced by interacting
individuals that are in relationships, with the production of leadership available
from others than the appointed leader. The underlying premise is that one an individual cannot embody all the capacity needed to deal with organizational reality;
therefore, there is the need to shift attention from individual to diffused
forms of leadership.
This diffusion brings about an arrangement or a network of interacting individuals that come to form relationships. The
entitative philosophical domain on relational leadership is primarily concerned
with examining the conditions of diffusing leadership to achieve organizationally
goals, under the assumption that interacting individuals are separated from
each other before coming to form relationships.
Processual Perspective on
Relational Leadership. Processual
perspective on relational leadership conceptually demotions the role of the
individual (Hosking 2011). This ontological position contests the hegemony of
the bounded individual as well as the separation between leader and followers.
Leadership is not an outcome of the action that can be traced back to individuals
or networks of individuals; it is a process.
This implies that relationships are not independent
of the individuals making them; they go on among individuals and the only the characterization that would then be possible about individuals is that they are
temporary expressions of these relationships (Gergen 2009). Such a processual
understanding questions individual agency as the source of leadership and
redefines participants engaged in leadership beyond rational and self-contained
entities.
Rather than the producers of leadership, individuals
are relational participants in the process of leading. Instead of separating
between leaders and followers, leadership becomes a process of negotiating
social order, where the labels “leaders” or “followers” do not exist in advance.
Labels do not come before relational processes; they become in the process.
The processual philosophical domain on relational
leadership is primarily concerned with studying leadership in action. Starting
from the premise that leadership does not precede relational interaction, the
focus is on studying how relating to one another brings about orientation and
organizational achievements – leadership direction.
Building Trust in Relationship
Effective leaders recognize the importance of building
solid relationships. They spend time focusing their efforts in key areas that
will build connections with the people they lead. These three simple tools that
great leaders use to improve their working relationships:
Listen. Leaders let other people talk and they pay
attention to what they’re saying. They remove anything that would distract from
their conversations and focus on what people are trying to convey.
Understand. They appreciate what other people do and value
their contributions. Leaders are not only open to new ideas but are also eager
to learn new things. They know that taking the time to understand where people
are coming from will pay dividends in the long run.
Acknowledge. Leaders acknowledge the contributions of others.
They are quick to give credit to others for their successes. They celebrate
achievements and delight in the accomplishments of their team. They know that
people will be more motivated to work hard and try new things if their leader
acknowledges their efforts.
In his book, The Trusted Advisor, David Maister
discusses the trust equation, a formula for building sustained partnership with
others. While he discusses the equation’s importance to business advisors, it
describes the elements of trust that are key to real leadership.
The
trust equation is:
Trust
= C + R + I
S
C is credibility. Leadership credibility has two components. The first
is how much the team believes the words and actions of the leader. The second
is to what degree the leader has the know-how, experience, or background to
know what he is talking about. On the one hand, it is objective — does he has
the ‘qualifications’ to be a leader. On the other hand, it’s an emotional
response. Does he perceive himself as being believable? Does his actions reflect
truthfulness? Does he have truthful intent? How many experiences have the team
all had over the past 18 months that made them question the truthfulness of those
they considered leaders? What’s the lingering impact on their workplaces?
R is reliability. People need to know they can count on leaders, that
the leader will walk the walk and talk the talk. Leaders need to follow-
through on promises and follow-up on commitments. There needs to be a sense of
predictability and fairness in the way a leader approaches situations and
people every single day. Otherwise, the relational bank account that funds
trust goes into the red.
I is intimacy or the ability to create a personal connection. This
does not mean that the leader needs to share his private life or dwell on the
private lives of his people. It means recognizing that work is a personal place
and issues like career development, promotions, compensation, reorganizations,
hiring and firing are intensely personal. As a leader, the willingness to have
emotional honesty about these and other issues in the workplace increases the
trust that the team has in him and the commitment they have to his agenda.
Credibility, reliability and intimacy’s additive
effect is mitigated by how much others perceive a leader is acting primarily
out of self-concern. If others believe a leader building a ‘relationship’
primarily to serve his or her own interests — i.e., to advance his or her
career, to manipulate a situation for advantage without regard to the goals,
needs and struggles of others, to push off responsibility and blame others–
trust is destroyed, the relationship is seen as disingenuous and engagement and
commitment plummet.
According to Oxford Group (2019), there are five key
conversations that a leader can have to transform trust and develop more
effective workplace relationships. These are the following:
Establishing a trusting
relationship. A
conversation with a team member to share a deep, mutual understanding of the
respective drivers, preferences, motivators, and demotivators for high
performance at work, and to understand what makes each other tick.
Agreeing with mutual expectations. A conversation about not only what the team are both
trying to achieve at work, but also why, and the expectations the leader can
have to support each other in achieving these outcomes.
Showing genuine appreciation. A conversation to help a team member focus on where
they are being successful, to jointly understand the reasons for their success,
to say how much they appreciate their contribution and find further ways in
which they can deploy their skills and talents to benefit both themselves and
the organization.
Challenging unhelpful behavior. A conversation to agree on a new and more effective
set of behaviors where what a team member or colleague is saying or doing is
getting in the way of team performance.
Building for the future. A conversation to explore the future career aspirations
of a team member and give the leader the best possible chance of creating
conditions that will enable them to build that future career within his organization
rather than elsewhere.
Relationship Building: Skills
Needed by Leaders
In the recent two studies conducted by the Center for
Creative Leadership (2020), relationship building was identified as a key skill
for leaders. Whether he is the CEO of a or the principal of an elementary
school, relationship skills matter a lot. Leaders who are skilled at building
and maintaining relationships share several traits. Here’s what many effective
leaders have in common in terms of relationship skills:
A leader must be self-aware. Self-awareness includes knowing your strengths and
weaknesses, but also the impact that your behavior has on others. For example,
say a small business owner takes pride in personally managing client relationships.
She also realizes that her hands-on style can frustrate her staff by creating
the appearance that she doesn’t trust or appreciate them. By taking into
account the impact of her behavior, the business owner can adjust how she
relates to her clients and employees.
An effective leader should be
willing to delegate important tasks and decision making. Delegating — besides being an efficient way to lead
— helps to build experience and confidence in others. It also forces leaders to
give honest, consistent feedback and to motivate and reward people for their
hard work. Think about the parent who teaches his kid to pick up after herself.
While it may be slow-going at first, eventually the child develops the skill
and is able to help around the house.
Skilled leaders must also have good
interpersonal skills. They should
be able to negotiate and handle work problems without alienating others. This
requires an understanding of others’ perspectives and needs. Leaders with honed
relationship skills develop a rapport with all kinds of people. Have you ever
known a school principal who is equally comfortable with students, parents,
teaching staff, and school board? If so, you’ve seen people skills at their best.
Effective leaders must have a
participative management style. Strong leaders use effective listening skills and communication to
involve others, build consensus, and influence decisions. Compare the styles of
2 city mayors, for example. One mayor is participative; the other autocratic.
Initially, the mayor who values relationships and broad communication appear
to be less effective than the more independent-minded mayor. But, as time passes,
the participative mayor is able to build support for key initiatives and is
considered a good leader and skilled administrator. In contrast, the
authoritarian mayor faces many political roadblocks and becomes highly
controversial.
One other significant point — the importance of feedback.
Giving and receiving effective feedback is one of the best ways leaders can
improve their relationship skills. Feedback lets people know how they’re doing reinforces goals and encourages strong effort. When giving feedback, make sure
to focus on a single message, being specific, and be sensitive. And remember to
judge the behavior, not the person.
Being good at relationships isn’t just a personality
trait. And the good news for everyday leaders is that we can all improve.
Conclusion
The leader of today is no longer the lone hero who
can do it all. It is critical for leaders now to encourage collaborative,
productive team relationships while leading. To be successful, a leader must be
able to bring out the best in each team member and the team as a whole. One of
the key practice areas effective leaders demonstrate is Enable Others to Act,
which focuses on the importance of building trust and relationships within the
team. Relational leadership theories emphasized the importance of leaders
building quality relationships with their followers in order to achieve
individual and organizational effectiveness. Both theories demonstrated the
importance of effective communication that allows both leaders and followers to
build trust and commitment. The theories also show how power and coercion are
unnecessary sanctions that only exist to harm the organization. The most effective leaders are those who are open and
transparent with their followers and serve the community in a way that benefits
everyone.
Therefore,
when employees have high levels of engagement this has a significant,
measurable, and transformational impact on organizational performance. Research
shows that it is the quality of the relationship people feel they have with
their immediate leader or manager that is the primary driver of these feelings
of engagement. So, relationships really matter. They are not an optional take
it or leave it factor. They are a fundamental enabler of the organization’s
ability to attract, keep, and get the very best out of the people. Effective
leaders know that leadership is a relationship, and leaders and managers with poor
or toxic relationships with their teams will see performance suffer.
Without
relationship, there is no trust. Without relationship, there is no extra
effort. Day after day, people do not come to work for a time clock. They come
to work for a person. And for them to give anything other than the minimum,
they must have relationships with that person.
References:
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Oxford University Press, Oxford
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A. (2018). Leadership as a relationship: Why "we" matters more than
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