One’s ability to form caring relationships in the workplace is highly correlated with business results. While a mountain of hard data led to this conclusion, many consider warmth, approachability, empathy, and personal accountability to be the “soft stuff.” Such thinking, and the behavior that goes with it, only gets you to the table—it doesn’t keep you there. Developing a more relational leadership approach, ultimately required for sustainable achievement, requires finding and facing facts about how you are perceived by others. So seek feedback and help doing this, and formulate an action plan with what you learn—not only will work be more fulfilling, but your bottom line will appreciate it too.
Self-coaching:
- In what ways do you tend to prioritize "getting the job done" as more important than developing authentic connections with colleagues?
- What feedback do you need to assess how you come across to others, and how this gets in the way of building stronger relationships?
- Given the above, what changes make sense in the months ahead?
David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed
______________________
Based on client experiences / lessons learned, our weekly LeaderTips have been offering self-coaching themes and topics of interest to leaders since 2004. They are often published in BusinessWeek Online, sent weekly to our clients, and hundreds of other corporate leaders worldwide. I invite you to forward them to others, who are also welcome to subscribe using the link below. Note that over 100 of these tips appear in my book, Beyond Effective: Practices in Self-aware Leadership. Click here to subscribe to LeaderTips via email.
