Whether you realize or not, relationships are the fuel that feeds your success, and are often highlighted as an important part of your role as a leader. Interpersonal relationships are most important to success in all organizations today. They are especially important in times of organizational stress, emergencies and disasters.
They are founded on trust, and the key ingredient is influence, not command and control or power. You are awarded the privilege of leadership by those who agree to follow.
Relationships can make all the difference between reaching your goals and merely coming close. We all know people who seem to have all the tools they need to succeed – but having all the skills and insights in the world doesn’t mean anything if you can’t connect with others … if you don’t know how to be part of a team … if all your successes are experienced alone and you don’t get to share them with others.
Have you ever wondered why some people have more influence than others? It’s because they invest more “in” others. Those with influence build into others through consistent direct or indirect contribution. Those with the greatest amount of influence seem to have the strongest relationships. If true leadership is about influence, then influence is about relationships, and relationships are about the investments made into people.
Mastering relationships is one of the keys in the rise to true success and significance and requires a conviction that other people are important and deserve respect and attention. That means having faith in people. Here are three of the most important relationship skills you should pursue:
Share Every Item
Don’t Keep Secrets
Always Build Teams
SHARE EVERY ITEM simply means that whatever victories you experience will always be incomplete until you share them with the people you care about. Celebrating with others brings you and them heightened energy to accomplish even more.
DON’T KEEP SECRETS should be easily understood. Sure, secrets may make you feel stronger, but they undermine trust and keep you locked into thinking at the lowest level about others. In other words, you are really telling them you don’t trust them.
ALWAYS BUILDING TEAMS is critical because quality teams are the ticket to long-term success. Teams of people interested in one another’s success expand your reach, enlarge your wisdom and can increase your influence.
For some reason many leaders ignore this most valuable aspect of their lives, thinking they don’t need the love and support of others. Over time, the lack of relationship begins to take its toll on the leader, insulating and breaking him or her down into a shell of the leader he or she could have been.
We need to pay attention to the basics and always develop quality relationships in our leadership. We must develop our relationships with our team, with our superiors, and with those outside of the organization. Doing so will help us have a well-rounded life and form the connections we need to thrive inside and outside of the environment we serve in.
Great advice !
In some kinds of work, especially in church planting, small, temporary teams can prove a wiser tactic than seeking to build a big, enduring, field team. Recall Paul’s several, little, temporary teams.
In church planting, the aim is to establish many, reproducible, little churches that can multiply before the grow too big, and then to get out of the way of emerging leaders, coaching them when they ask for help.
Since clashes with team members prove inevitable, over personnel, tactics, methods, theology, roles, and discipline, there looms a big danger of spending more time on team building or maintenance than on church planting and reproduction.
So, as a facet of strategy, keep your teams small and agree, in advance, that the team will dissolve after a certain time or at a stage in the church plant.
You and former team mates will often prove more productive with new partners, each of you having learned a lot about yourselves along the way.