Are Tasks Squeezing Out a Focus on Relationships? (#209)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
Given the Paris Olympics, you might expect a newsletter on leadership lessons from the games. I want to highlight a different athlete from another type of Olympics.
“If you believe a business is built on relationships, make building them your business.”
― Scott Stratten (American author and speaker)
This Week’s Edition
Task-oriented leadership has huge benefits for an organization. However, when task-orientation is the sole focus, its limitations outweigh the benefits.
Clarify Your Thinking
Recently, we moved our daughter into her freshman dorm. Those who’ve had this experience know the challenges: the planning, the logistics, the slow elevator, the flights of stairs, the heat, the crowds, and the emotions.
In addition to these challenges, there is a slight competitive aspect to this event, not unlike an Olympic sport:
- Jockeying for the best move-in time slot
- Vying for the closest parking spot
- Deploying the right evasive measures to avoid long lines
Our team performed well, due mainly to our star athlete, my wife, Karen. It’s safe to say that dorm move-ins are her Olympics.
She won gold for us by skillfully handling two competing priorities:
- Completing hundreds of tasks AND
- Engaging all the new relationships (i.e., the new roommate, her family, etc..)
My performance wasn’t as elegant. Mistakenly, I thought our goal was to get the task done. I was oblivious to the relationship-ing required.
Watching my wife, easily move between the two competing priorities (task and relationship) I realized I typically focus on one at a time.
My initial hesitation did not account for the demand for the content OR the potential impact as evidenced by the gracious leader who thanked me on that call.
I had to ask myself, “Should I focus on the innumerable tasks? Or, should I take time to get to know the new roommate and her parents risking full completion of the job?”
Leaders wrestle with these competing priorities often.
Old Thinking: In the next six weeks, I’ve got to complete this huge project with its hundreds of outstanding tasks. I don’t have time to build relationships. What do I do?
New Thinking: I know I am task-oriented. I am aware I need to prioritize relationships too. I’ve got to find a way to do both and not sacrifice one for the other.
Thoughts Lead to Actions
Task-oriented leaders get stuff done – great productivity. That’s a win. Adding a relationship orientation promotes employee motivation, support, and development. This approach produces greater team efficacy, increased job satisfaction, and sustainable long-term growth.
If you are a task-oriented leader who is aware enough to know the value of relationships, take these initial steps to move forward in building the relationships you want (and will need in the future):
Step 1: Identify who you want to build stronger relationships.
- Your leader, direct reports, peers, etc…
- Others outside the organization who are important to your success
Step 2: Identify why it is important to have a stronger relationship with each of those individuals
Step 3: Determine how you can strengthen the relationship and schedule it (i.e. make it a task)
- Regular coffee or lunch
- Weekly 1:1 or quarterly check-in
The two-day move-in was a success. Both priorities were accomplished. The dorm room looks great AND we established some new relationships. If it can be done in the hectic freshman college dorm move-in process, it can be done in any company in America.
Boost Your Performance
Watch this week’s video for some ideas on how to add organic relationship-building activities to your day-to-day leadership allowing you to operate in two gears simultaneously: task and relationship.
What’s Your Opinion?
Are you more task-oriented or people-oriented? Share it with me at robin.pou@robinpou.com.
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE CONFIDENT LEADER
Let’s Connect
Follow me on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.
What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
