Managing Critical Relationships as a Leader

Coming up on the Leadership Growth Podcast. Every leader has four critical relationships that they need to manage. These relationships are always present in any leader's life. How they approach this, how they customize, how they adjust to it is so key. So we wanna talk about what these four critical relationships are and the unique challenges, the unique needs, the language essentially as to what each of these relationships speak and what can go wrong if you don't customize to it.

And we can definitely share some examples of leaders that when you don't focus on the needs of each separately, things can go bad. (upbeat music) - Hello everyone, welcome to the Leadership Growth Podcast. I'm Daniel Stewart joined by my brother Peter and we are diving into another episode of the podcast here. Excited to be here together. And Peter, how's the week? What's something interesting that's been happening to you? - It's been a good week.

Always good to have time to meet with you, record another episode of the podcast. I'm always learning as we're chatting. So here's an insight from the week. (upbeat music)

I've been sharing a fact for several years and I always appreciate it when I am corrected. I wanna make sure I'm sharing accurate information. - Were you just corrected on this you say? - Yeah, well, I uncovered information of like, wow, I have actually been sharing a false information. - Ooh, okay, what is it? - So I've for several years, I've been sharing this little fact about our brain about that we have over 16,000 independent thoughts each and every day. 16,000, that's a lot.

And now I've been corrected. The Cleveland Clinic has posted an update to that fact. It's not 16,000, it's closer to 70,000. - Seven zero thousand. - Wow, 70. - That is a lot of thoughts that we have each and every day. So the insight from that is one, we can give ourselves a little bit more grace and why we might not remember everything we've seen that day or talked about or thought that day. But I think it also is really impactful to think about all of those that we interact with.

We may have said that one thing to them that we expect them to remember, but we are now competing that one thought with 70,000 other thoughts that that person has had that day. It's really amazing we remember anything. (laughing) So 70,000 independent thoughts. - That's a lot going on in all of our brains all the time as we're processing, as we're recalling, as we're being able to then speak and connect.

Okay, so let me connect that to something that I know you've often shared in the past as well, that our brains are continuing to five times every second, analyze and test to see if they're feeling safe. - Yeah. - So five times every second, our brain is continually looking at the environment and checking to see, do I feel safe? And this is not just physical, this is psychological, this is emotional, any sort of aspect of safety.

And so you can then have a very clear understanding of five times a second, 70,000 thoughts every day. And no doubt the safety component has got to fit in quite well, which frankly begs the question and raises the importance of the importance of psychological safety. Do I belong? Do I feel safe with you? Not just physically, but psychologically. Do you like me? Do I like you? Do I belong here? Do you value who I am?

Those are just these human needs that pop up so much and you can see how they can fit into the 70,000. - Oh, completely. And the safer one feels, then that actually frees up other neurological pathways to have creative thought, to be able to share those, to be able to have more of those executive function type behaviors of memory, of being able to pause and to regulate our attention span and all those sorts of things. So it is, it's our brains are going a million miles a second all the time.

So we can harness that, we can leverage that understanding, but also recognizing the importance of the environment we're creating for others and how we impact those. Do we allow them to really show up and be their true authentic self and feel safe being so?

- Yeah. You could also imagine the stream of negative thoughts that might come or self-doubting or the blind spots that can come in that you and I and so many others at Stewart Leadership work with executives and leaders helping them recognize not to let that, either the imposter syndrome or the negative self-thought or the self-doubts, the gaps that we have in how we view ourselves, not to let that overwhelm and take control, but for us to be able to pause

and go, wait a minute, what are alternatives, narratives that we can tell ourselves? And what we're talking about in our minds as we work with others, how do we view in a sense of confidence to be able to then move forward? All of this plays so important, such in a large part to help leaders have a healthy self-narrative to help them show up as their best self.

- And that whole concept of recognizing the narrative that we have, that internal dialogue, that thought train and how conscious we are of that, and actually the impact or the influence we can have on controlling where that internal dialogue and narrative goes. You know, are they going in helpful pathways? Are they going in more unhelpful? Everybody can struggle with it, as you brought up imposter syndrome. It was about 50% of all leaders struggle with imposter syndrome.

And what is, just for those that aren't familiar with imposter syndrome, it's this notion that you really don't know what you're doing. And if other people truly knew how often you were kind of winging it and not really sure what the correct answer is that they'd fire you on the spot. So it's this idea that it's not that uncommon for people to feel like they might not know exactly what they're doing, especially as you get an advance in leadership roles. That's just a part of it.

So much of that is stretching one's comfort zone, being able to engage in activities that are beyond what you've done before, having that belief that if you don't have the answer personally, you're willing to rely on those around you for that support and that help. Those connections. So those relationships are powerful. - Fantastic. Okay, so 70,000 thoughts and how we then approach it, how we recognize it matters for sure. - Very much so. So now we've added a couple thoughts for people.

- That's right. - 70,002. (both laughing) - Well, that's great. All right, next segment here. Memory lane.

(upbeat music) We talked about this a little bit before the show as we prepped here. You wanna introduce the memory lane thought and I'll just say one word, Koosh. That's right. That's the interesting, Peter, the Koosh, the Koosh ball. Why is that on the memory lane? - Oh my, the minute that got brought up, I'm taken back to the bonus room above the garage, which was dad's office growing up. And so he traveled a lot. And oftentimes he'd fly out on a Sunday to head somewhere for the week.

And so Sunday afternoon, after we got back from church, it has four boys in the house, our brothers, we'd have a lot of energy and mom needed a break. So she'd get a break, she could go rest and we'd head up in the bonus room and we played Koosh. And the Koosh balls, if you haven't seen them, they're basically like full of like loose little rubber bands. So they're somewhat soft with kind of a harder core. And the goal and objective of Koosh ball was to just pelt your brother with them.

(both laughing) And I remember as we'd be on either side with somebody in the middle with a pillow, a couch cushion, trying to block those balls being pelted at them. And we'd do that for hours, just having fun.

- Well, it's almost like, it was like pickle, some version of pickle that two of us would be on each side and the poor person in the middle had this pillow to protect and was continually trying to deflect each of us, which we're trying to just like pelt him because if we got him, then he was out and he was, so in some way, you wouldn't want to be in the middle, but yet you would, because then you could deflect with the pillow and that Koosh ball would just whiz by and we would just get smacked

and just, and you'd have to catch it. And we would just, yeah, play for hours, pelting each other all over the place. - No windows got broken, amazingly up there, computer monitors didn't get smashed. Although there was just one computer, but that IBM compatible 386 over in the corner. - Oh, that's great. - So yeah, just trying to get some energy out and have some fun and we liked being in the middle. Like that's the part you didn't want to get hit. - That was the challenge, yeah.

- You're out of being in the middle. - Oh, too good, okay, fun Memory Lane, there you go. Growing up at the Stewart household, pelting each other with a Koosh ball on a Sunday afternoon. Yes, we'll have to, at some point we need to, oh, Jared and Brian our other two brothers, some air time to defend themselves with some of this stuff. Anyway, okay, fun memory lane, shall we get onto the topic at hand, Peter? - Sure, let's talk. - So the topic, every leader has four critical relationships

that they need to manage. These relationships are always present in any leader's life. How they approach this, how they customize, how they adjust to it is so key. So we want to talk about what these four critical relationships are and the unique challenges, the unique needs, the language essentially, as to what each of these relationships speak and what can go wrong if you don't customize to it.

And we can definitely share some examples of leaders that when you don't focus on the needs of each separately, things can go bad for you and for them. So you want to take the first one and I'll dive into the second one, Peter? - Sure, and I think as you set the stage well on what these relationships are, first it's that mindset that not everybody needs the same thing from you as a leader. And that's why we highlight these relationships.

And just real quickly to understand the four before we dive into them in a little more depth, you're sitting here and we'll often use this kind of cross or kind of a compass middle where you're sitting in the middle and then you have the boss relationship as kind of the north direction, your direct reports as the south, your peers as east and your customers as west.

So if you're picturing that, those are in essence the four critical relationships, your boss, your direct reports, your peers and your customers. So we can dive into each of those 'cause they all want time with you. They all crave things from you and they have different needs. So here's this visual you can have. And one of these days I'll get a belt like this or figure out how to do it. I've just used more of a thought example in recent.

So let's say we've got you as a listener and we have you in the middle of a grass field, okay? And we put a belt on you. Nice thick kind of Velcro belt that's got four kind of carabiners attached at kind of north, south, east and west on that belt. And attached to those carabiners are some long bungee cords. Okay, long bungee cords. And so you're sitting in the middle and each of those bungee cords are now held by a group of people to your north, south, east and west.

And you are starting to move toward one of those groups. You're starting to move, let's say you're moving in the northern direction because they need you to come over there. As you move over in that direction, what are you gonna feel on that belt? You're gonna feel the pull from those other three. As it slackens up a little bit in the direction you're going, it's gonna stretch more and there's gonna be more pressure and more resistance to wait, wait, wait, come back, we need you.

And you're constantly trying to balance that and move and everywhere you go, they're expecting more from you. - And as you picture yourself, if people are trying to figure this visual out, just having this push and pull.

And the interesting thing to me is when leaders deny or don't acknowledge or don't wanna actually understand these critical relationships and the fact that all four of them will continually be pulling off of you, they have their own demands and you need to figure out ways to balance paying attention to each. And certain circumstances you may need to pay attention to one more than the other.

But the point is you need to honor and pay attention to and understand how to best communicate and build relationships with all four of them. Because when one or more is neglected, inevitably, that will not help you be successful because you cannot be successful with them and they cannot be successful with you, especially in terms of optimizing. - Yeah, oh, it's so true. So let's start talking about that boss relationship 'cause that's a relationship everybody has.

Not everybody may have a direct report relationship. They may not be a people manager at this point in their career, but everybody will have a boss, a supervisor, somebody that you are reporting to. And even if you're a CEO or a president or whatever, odds are there still is somebody you're reporting to. That might be a board of directors. It might be other stakeholders. It might be a venture capital firm or PE or whatever. Usually you have to report to somebody.

So Daniel, share a little bit about the boss needs. What is the boss perspective? - You know, it's interesting. When you think what the boss needs, the first thing that comes to your mind, and listeners, what would you say? What would you say? What are the things the boss needs? And we've asked this question to hundreds of different groups over the years. And inevitably, quick responses.

It's the operational, it's the effectiveness, it's the budget, it's the revenue targets, it's the cost savings, it's productivity. It's the numbers, numbers, numbers of, it's the blood of the business, so to speak. It's the lifeblood. It's what enables an organization to continue to function cashflow. Are you hitting the numbers? Those are all of the things that we term as business results.

And what's so fascinating is if you take somebody who has never really been interested or thinking a lot about budget or revenue or cost savings or productivity, and you make them a boss, suddenly they start really caring about how much money we're making or how much we're saving or are we hitting budget or are we on time or these are the things that matter to a boss. Now, a boss can care about other things, but this is usually the stuff they care most about or comes first in their mind.

It's often termed the managerial bias as well. And so you can look at the boss perspective. These are the things typically a boss cares most about. - That's well-described. And it's not to say those are the only things they care about, but usually that is what they are being measured on. Which is why they care about it and why that gets messaged and communicated down to their people, their teams, their organization to be able to hit those. So it's critical.

So good assessment or explanation of the boss needs. Now let's head more on the southern side of those four critical relationships for the direct reports, the team. As we think about the needs of our direct reports, what is it that they want? And it is what we would characterize more as the people results. They want to be sure that they are developed, that they have the resources and skills needed to be able to do the job that they have to do.

They wanna be sure that the obstacles are helping being taken care of. That they have somebody who they feel is an advocate for them, who's going to help champion for them to look out for their needs, to be able to give them the information they need so they can do their jobs and be successful. So it all really revolves around the people side of that so that they can do their job.

- Yeah, clarifying expectations, helping them know what they can do to be able to be successful, that they can add value each day. And it's also clarifying who do I work with and do I like them? Do I enjoy being with them? Do they like me? Do they enjoy being with me? Do I feel like I belong? Do I have the opportunity to showcase the best that I can do each day? And am I followed up and rewarded appropriately? Am I given the feedback? Am I given the direction?

So it's the culture, it's the dynamics, it's the personal development, it's the clarification of expectations. Yeah, all of these are the people results. - And you outlined that really well in terms of the people results and all of these things that they need. And we're highlighting this as the relationship of the boss of those individuals, 'cause they're your direct reports. The influence you have as their direct supervisor to create that environment so that they feel supported.

They're having that comradery among their colleagues, among their teammates and so forth. And there's a lot you can do as a leader to create that atmosphere. - So here's a quick activity for folks to do. And we will often do this with our coaching clients or in leadership programs. We ask folks, we ask leaders to identify what are your business results that you need to achieve and what are your people results that you need to achieve?

And it's fascinating because inevitably the list of the business results, fairly clear cut. People are like, I know what those are, or let me confirm, but yeah, I have a general idea. People results, that sometimes can be met with like, huh? - Yeah. - What do you mean? And how do I measure that? And how do I pay, and what does that look like? And so the engagement piece, how are people paying attention and what's the culture and how often are you following?

All of these things, but to help a leader, I explicitly identify them, write them down and clarify, how are you paying attention to these two lists? Powerful, because it's not often what we do. And what we find is when a leader only pays attention to one of those, they could be lopsided. And we can talk more about that after we talk about all four of these, but there can be lopsided leadership as you then favor one over the other and not pay attention as much as well.

So yes, the boss with business results, the second critical relationship, your direct reports, your team, and they care most about oftentimes the people results, the third critical relationship. Peers, peers. This is this interesting relationship, folks that you do not report to, they do not report to you. They're usually equal to you in the organization. And what they care about really matters, but sometimes it's a little harder to discern.

And oftentimes it's all around, can I count on you and depend on you? Do I know what you're gonna be doing and what you need from me? Can I collaborate effectively? Where are the process handoff points along the value stream ad process? What does this mean? What does this look like? And are you gonna be there consistently? Am I gonna be there consistently? And the other aspect is how are resources, budget, supplies, equipment allocated? What do you get and why, and what do I get and why?

And is that rationale understood? Is there a sense of fairness? Is there a sense of equity as we then work together? All of these things we group together under the umbrella of internal focus. This is the language of peers. It's this internal focus. How do I get stuff done while I work and collaborate with you? What can I count on from you? What don't I count on and why should I keep counting on? What's the pattern? What's the experience?

This is a critical relationship that sometimes gets neglected, especially in very siloed organizations. And this peer relationship can sometimes turn antagonistic and you become more competitors than collaborators as well. - And that last point happens all too often of the competition, the vying for the attention, the vying for the spotlight as it turns into not the collaboration or the sharing of resources, but it's the hoarding and the hogging of resources and information.

That's not then freely shared. So much so as you raised up that point of it can often be a neglected side of our relationships. We might not spend as much time with them, especially if we're geographically dispersed. Maybe there is a weekly staff meeting or a biweekly staff meeting that we attend to.

But I think it's because of that neglect that individuals like Lencioni will coin a term, Patrick Lencioni, who's five dysfunctions of a team and well-known author on several areas will call this peer group your first team. Not that they require all of your attention, but I think it's a reaction to that idea that we often neglect thinking about, oh, what are the needs of my peers? How can I be a good teammate to them?

How do I build them, help them, assist them, look for opportunities for collaboration where our goals might intersect so that we can have win-win relationships together. - The other aspect is the peer learning, which is often one of those things that's undervalued in organizations to learn from each other, learn from your peers, be vulnerable with them, be able to ask them questions, be able to get some guidance, some wisdom, some advice, some perspective on it.

This peer learning component is so critical and yet it's free, it's right there.

To be able to then build effective relationships with peers, to be able to bounce ideas off of, it's one of the things that we consistently strive to build into any leadership programs that we do, especially around peer learning groups or peer coaching, to be able to then help foster that sense of collaboration, cross-functional interaction, and to then help people leverage what can I learn from you and what can you learn from me as well.

- Daniel, as you're sharing that, I'm reminded of a situation that happened a few years ago where I'd been working with an executive team and they were really struggling building this peer relationship. Prior leadership, the prior leader had not really tried to engender and build this relationship of collaboration.

So I had them do a very simple exercise which turned out to be incredibly powerful for them in which I had them each think about their respective teammates on this team and to ask this one question, what do I need from them over this next quarter in order to accomplish what I need to do? That's all, so they went through, there were seven or eight of them, and they went through and just listed, and every person on that team did that same.

And then I paired them up so they each had about five minutes with each other, just one-on-one, in which their whole goal was just to share this is what I need from you this next quarter. And then the other individual would share what they needed from that person. Just that very simple interchange, we had a good couple hour conversation after that short little exercise was over about the impact and the ahas, and I did not realize that that was so important for you.

- So you reminded me, so several years ago, similar activity with a senior executive team, a large global manufacturing organization, and they were having a similar challenge, a very siloed, and the CEO was like, we need to be able to collaborate more effectively.

And so as pre-work, I asked each person to identify the two to three areas that they needed to collaborate with each of the other people on the senior team, send it to me ahead of time, and I compiled them, and then brought that to the offsite for us to then dive into. And what then happened was we were able to reconcile, and people were like, you need that from me? Really? I didn't realize. And others were like, oh, that's exactly it. The first two things, the third was, really?

Oh, that's good to know, I didn't realize. They hadn't shared goals, they hadn't shared so many, and it fostered this sense of collaboration, and it enabled a follow-up mechanism. And so we called it the points of collaboration. I will also say it helped the CEO truly identify who had a spirit or a desire for collaboration, and who didn't.

Who simply wanted a transactional interaction, I just get this from you, and then we're done, versus actually, I need to partner and really figure out a solution with you on that. Fantastic, fantastic idea. Okay, so fourth critical relationship, Peter. - The fourth relationship, customers. - Yes, customers. You wanna dive in, give us a highlight? - Yeah, and often when we say customers, the first question is, well, what customers are we talking about? Internal customers, external customers?

And the answer is yes. Whatever customers might make sense for you, as we're talking about, 'cause you're the one in the middle of this cross of these four relationships. So thinking about who are these customer relationships, what is it that they need from you? It's anticipating. They want you to be able to solve their problems. That's why they're coming to you, or why you are in that customer relationship with them.

And they want you to be able to solve those problems even before they've realized they've had the problem. So it's looking at how do you meet those needs? How do you understand what they need from you? How do you understand their pain points so that you can truly deliver to help facilitate internally so that then they can continue on the next process that they needed that information for?

Or if it's an external customer, that they are delighted in whatever solution, product offering that they are having. So you're getting in their minds of what is it that they want? How can you solve that and do it? So this is what we're talking about, this external focus or future focuses you're trying to anticipate it. So it's that interaction and thought about what our customers really need from us. - Yeah, it's clarifying. Do you know my needs? And do you know my needs before I do?

- Yes. - Can you anticipate them? And do you know the choices I have in the marketplace, why I choose you and why I should keep choosing you? What's the value add for each and every interaction? So key for the customer. Okay, Peter, so as we have talked about the four critical relationships, boss, direct reports, peer and customers. Lightning round here, let me ask you a question.

(upbeat music) What is one of the biggest traps that can happen if you do not treat each of the four critical relationships in a unique way? - The biggest trap, if you try to just treat them all the same, is you're gonna end up with people frustrated with you. And there's going to become interactions in which they're short, they're frustrated, they're complaining because they have fundamentally different needs. And you can't interact with them the exact same way.

As you look at even in your personal lives outside of work, you may have family interactions, you may have friend interactions, you might have little league or school board or whatever interactions. Do you treat them all the same? No, why? Because they fundamentally have different needs. So that is what it's being intentional so that you're pausing to think, what do they need from me?

And asking that one question for each of those four relationships, that sets the table, goes a long way to helping to build those relationships. - That's well said. - All right, Daniel, question for you then. Thinking about these four critical relationships, what should an individual think about if they're not in a management role? If they're an individual contributor and they don't have that direct report, how should they phrase this? Is that part that they just ignore?

What advice would you give to somebody there? - Yeah, two things. First, in your current role, you then have three critical relationships that you can focus on. Your boss, your peers, and your internal external customers. Those are the three critical relationships for you. And it's for you to invest time in each of them to then begin practicing. Practicing not just for now, but for the future. How are you gonna continue to invest and get to know them?

And then the second way of answering it is to begin to anticipate what your critical relationships will be in your leadership role in the future. What practices and habits will you start to even begin now so that you can understand where the other person is coming from? How are you adjusting your behavior to best serve their needs? And asking the other great question, which is what is it like to work with or for me? And being able to have the guts to ask that question and to get feedback.

Feedback as an individual contributor so that you can then continue to build yourself so that as you get promoted into becoming a leader, you're even further along in the self-awareness journey and in clarifying, defining, and adjusting to then customize your relationship for each of the four critical relationships. - Great suggestion. And the way you've phrased that of your self-awareness journey. That is, as we're again going back to the 70,000 thoughts we have each and every day.

Giving ourselves a little bit of grace that recognizing we are on a journey. We're on a journey to become more aware of ourselves, of our own tendencies, of our own abilities, and awareness of how we impact others. And it's being intentional to pause, take a moment and think about these needs. And that is gonna set you moving forward on that journey. Have really, really positive results from doing that. So. - Great summation, Peter. Thanks for doing another Leadership Growth Podcast.

It's been fun. - Always. Thank you. - Absolutely. Well, listeners, thanks for joining the Leadership Growth Podcast where we dive into timely topics and ideas to help you grow your leadership performance. Please subscribe, like, and visit us again. We look forward to having you join us again. All the best. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague, or better yet, leave a review to help other listeners find our show.

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