Great leaders and great relationships

Many people in organizations get ahead because they are very skilled and they accomplish important goals on behalf of the organization they work in.
For the most part these people found a good way for them to be used by the organization, they excelled, and conversely the organization found someone that could contribute exactly what was needed.

All to often though these very same people are not naturally skilled at leading the people around them in a good way. They get the results but they have an unintended impact on the people around them that is not optimum for everybody's highest performance.

This generally results in people feeling misunderstood or worse yet feeling used in a negative way by that "successful" person. Quite often the organization itself decides to ignore or turn a blind eye to that successful persons behavior because they don't want to risk rocking the boat.

Instead they expect the people around that one to put up with behavior that is ultimately not serving anyone including that high performer.
What is interesting about this is that the high performer would most often prefer to have better relationships and they are challenged very often by two big factors.
1) They feel they are too busy to "deal" with it.
2) They don't know how and are often scared of the perceived fallout of addressing what is not working.

When I am coaching someone in this situation I almost always hear from them, a strong desire to be a better leader. These top performers want to be better at creating powerful and respectful relationships and they do want to learn more about how to do it.
They are almost always challenged by the pressure of heavy workloads and it is very difficult for them to create a shift in their own behavior if their personal work is not supported by the team also doing it's share.

Or, quite often they are unaware of what is going on. They don't even know that they are leaving a trail of disempowered or disgruntled people behind them.

I believe that the performance of any individual and the team as a whole is directly proportional to the quality of the relationships that person or group is in.

This is where coaching can be so effective. A good coach can bring everyone together and guide the team members through a process that clears the air, reconnects everyone to the vision and values that they share, and then support them as they create some agreements that can help sustain the benefit of such essential work.

It is natural that relationships eventually get clogged up with unaired stuff. Usually this results in very ineffective performance and ironically the fear of addressing the stuff is usually much bigger than what it actually takes to clear it.

None of us would argue that we need to clean out water pipes that have accumulated stuff inside them and yet it usually takes a breakdown in a team before clearing takes place.

Imagine if clearing the stuff, and realigning visions and strategies was just a normal part of a years work.
Imagine if the energy between team members was always tended to and cared for and that breakdowns were recognized as opportunities for breakthroughs.

Patrick Ryan
www.AwakenedWisdom.com