Leadership is a Relationship. Michael S. Erwin
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picture of the myriad methods animals have for understanding each other.11
When we communicate in ways that don't capture these subtle, nonverbal inputs, we lose a lot of what our brains want to know about others. We lose the stuff of great poetry and salient memories—the way your dad wrinkled his face right before telling a joke, the little tap on the shoulder an important teacher would always give after a job well done—and we lose a treasure trove of subconsciously processed, vital information about the behavior and beliefs of others. All of these tiny pieces of information gradually form attachment to another living being. These are the fundamental bits that become a relationship.
If we want to create a world where people can work remotely, be productive, and enjoy flourishing social lives, we need to find ways to translate these little details to physically distributed work. Mindlessly scheduling video calls won't cut it. Clever leaders can make it work, and the pandemic inspired widespread experimentation with remote relationship-building. We have to recognize the value of relationships, engage with other people, and continuously find new ways to care about each other in a culture that increasingly commodifies and isolates us.
After all, bad actors can co-opt the immense promise of flexible work. Remote and gig work can be a shortcut for the callous boss who wants to get a job done quickly, cheaply, and without any other considerations. Outsourcing tasks to anonymous remote workers can cut costs by taking advantage of different regional expectations about pay or the value of a particular skill. You can get those pesky few lines of code taken care of by an unmet freelancer who lives … well, it doesn't matter where, does it? Get it done, pay next to nothing for it, and move along. Remote work, in other words, can be even more exploitative than traditional employment.
Managers have had the chance to make some version of this cold, short-term choice for decades, but it's never been as easy or anonymous. As Dr. Alexandrea J. Ravenelle found in her study of the gig economy, this dynamic can be particularly troubling for women who are paid to do gig work in the homes of strangers. Without a network of co-workers, “most gig workers are independent contractors who need good reviews from the client and who don't have access to an open-door human resources department or colleagues they can complain to.”12 As more and more workers make their living in roles that require rapid changes and flexible teams, we have fewer and fewer structures to promote meaningful, long-term relationships with the people we work with.
The looming threat of artificial intelligence only exacerbates the same problem. As software and robotic machinery become capable of outperforming humans in more lines of work, we need ways to keep people employed and engaged in social life. That problem demands solutions across a wide range of fields, but relationships stand out as a powerful hedge against being phased out by AI. If your job relies on your ability to relate to, empathize with, and care for other people, you're a lot safer than someone whose work already approximates the labor of a machine. The job market of the future is still anyone's guess, but it's hard to imagine automation fully replacing nurses, teachers, psychologists, or social workers any time soon.
The problem isn't technology itself. Used thoughtfully, many of the apps that now steal our attention are capable of enriching our lives, broadening our worlds, and allowing us to send a letter to a loved one on the other side of Earth … instantly. It isn't bad that remote and gig work exist—they let millions of people craft better lives.
It isn't that relationships will somehow go extinct; the problem is both more nuanced and, because it's so easy to misunderstand, quite pernicious: it's never been harder to practice the kinds of behaviors that build substantive relationships. To build a meaningful life in relation to others, we have to consciously put people first in our noisy digital world.
A Way Forward
Examples of real-world leadership suggest a potent counter to the chaos of relationship complexity: a renewed commitment to people. Whereas technology so often pulls us away from the messy endeavor of relating to others, relationships pull us together and force us to engage with other minds, experiences, and hearts. Meaty relationships keep leaders from caring only about quarterly metrics and quantified measures of success; they're a call back toward the interpersonal and ethical parts of ourselves. Just as so many other powerful forces in our social and spiritual lives—like affection, loyalty, love, trust, and kindness—emerge from empathetic connection with others, so too does leadership. As the tumult of modern life creates lonelier lives, relationship-based leadership offers an antidote.
If this sounds simple, that's because it is. As a society, we just haven't decided to take relationships seriously. It's easy to replace the time-intensive behaviors that build relationships with quick texts and ephemeral messages; it's easy to replace a social lunch with a granola bar in front of the computer because we're “too busy getting work done.” With team members spread out over long distances, each working in physical isolation, forward-thinking leaders need compassionate solutions for entire teams now systemically deprived of face-to-face interaction with their peers. Even the most cynical, number-crunching leader can acknowledge that in a world where the job-for-life model is merely a vestige of the past, cultivating durable relationships is just good business. You never know who will pop back into your life.
The challenges of a device-centric world are huge, but the opportunity to reinvent modern relationships is huge, too. Whether your goal as a leader is to serve and inspire others, build and grow a successful organization, or both, we now know that digital shortcuts aren't shortcuts at all—they're inadequate substitutes for the work of community. Those leaders who have chosen to lead not with blunt authority, but instead with an unshakable commitment to the people around them, are creating environments of healthy growth and robust social impact. At work, their teams stay longer, work harder, and thrive. Leaders who don't have traditional authority or a formal leadership role can win hearts, minds, and loyalty while making progress toward auspicious goals. Relationship-based leadership is working for the bottom line and for people, and it's muffling the noise of our nonstop technoworld.
In this book, we'll share stories and tested tips for building a culture of relationships in the twenty-first century. We're not here to summarize the latest findings in psychology or sociology; we're here to showcase examples of how this kind of leadership actually works. We've spoken with role models from a variety of backgrounds, and whose accomplishments take many forms. We've interviewed educators, military officers, and athletes. Some are CEOs and generals, but most aren't. Some don't even readily refer to themselves as leaders. What they have in common is a core belief that other people matter, and that real leadership starts with that premise. Whereas some people are motivated by a title or power, the leaders in this book approach leadership as a natural result of their dedication to the people in their lives. They are, fundamentally, people looking to serve.
Their stories also show how leading with relationships has major benefits in seven key areas, each of which has its own chapter:
Accountability
Forgiveness
Resilience
Trust
Coalition-building
Loyalty
Stability
By the time you've reached the end of the book, you'll have new strategies with which you, too, can lead through the strength of your connection to others. At the end of each story, we highlight one key lesson to take back to your life. At the end of each chapter, we also give you key takeaways and questions for reflection, which you can use to start creating a personalized plan for maturing your own practice of leadership.
You can read this book cover to cover, and we hope that you do. But you can also skip between chapters, focusing on the topics that you're most curious about. We've designed this book as an ongoing resource for you. Just crack it open to whichever topic you want to revisit, and think about how your answers to the questions for reflection