An effective leader understands the importance of interdependence for personal and collective success, and leverages the strategies to maintain and enhance relationships with individuals, teams and departments.
Common Mindset: Relationships develop organically over a period of time.
Leader’s Mindset: Relationships can be proactively and intentionally developed.
- Make a list of the key stakeholders that are important to your work and success. It may include your team members, colleagues, your manager, other department managers, etc.
- Learn as much as you can about the preferences of your key stakeholders in terms of their ways of thinking, working and communicating. This can be done by asking questions through various interactions – formal and informal.
- As you interact with your key stakeholders, ask questions and clarify expectations regarding context of work, scope, priorities, timelines, resources, support, success criteria etc.
- Act on your previous learning to best align the key stakeholder’s and your own preferences with a win-win mindset. Engage them in critical conversations, brainstorming, decision-making, feedback process, etc.
- Be solution-oriented in challenging times and engage stakeholder voices and perspectives. Be open to offer appropriate support in case of challenges in other departments or with team members, where your work is getting impacted as well.
- Be proactive in sharing mutually beneficial information with key stakeholders. Ask yourself, what information do I have that could enable a peer to make better decisions? Offer to share best practices.
- Encourage brief yet creative conversations with your key stakeholders that go beyond small talk. For example, spend 5 minutes before a meeting or during a breakout area conversation asking valuable questions, such as:
- So, what are you working on?
- What are you most excited about right now?
- What’s the biggest challenge these days?
- Actively and genuinely seek feedback about your ideas and projects: It can inspire creative ideas, improvements, add new perspectives, uncover assumptions, biases and barriers, and even expand your network. Appreciate the feedback and ensure letting your stakeholders know about which part of the feedback you do not choose to consider, rather than ignoring their feedback.
It takes intentionality and authenticity to build relationships that matter.
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Author:
Sahil Sharma
Talent, Learning & Leadership Development Professional | Certified Leadership Coach
CTDP | MBA
Author:
Sahil Sharma
Talent, Learning & Leadership Development Professional | Certified Leadership Coach
CTDP | MBA
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