A Fresh Perspective on Improving Relationships at Work - Inner Development Goals Part 4

09/22/22 • 44 min

In our series on the Inner Development Goals (IDG), we have already covered Being and Thinking. Today, we discuss the third IDG category: RELATING

Many leaders are focused on action to get results. The importance of relationships is often underestimated, as we discussed in Relationships at Work. Sometimes leaders intentionally want to keep a “professional distance” thinking it helps them to “stay in power”. “We are here to get the job done, not for relationships.” But in reality, we need relationships to get results.

The IDG framework offers practical guidance for leaders to improve relationships by developing four skills and qualities:

1) Connectedness: Having a keen sense of being connected with and/or being a part of a larger whole, such as a community, humanity or global ecosystem.

Modern science confirms what wisdom traditions like Buddhism have known for over 2,500 years: everything and everyone is interconnected. We can’t exist in isolation, we “inter-are.” We are part of a larger system. Leaders can’t stay outside the system.

Leaders need to strengthen the connection with this system. Improving the connection with others helps on the task level and get better results.

Reflection Questions:

What is my intention and mindset when I am about to interact with other people? Can I be curious and interested in the others?
What does a great "connection" feel like?
How well did I connect with people at work today?
What can I do tomorrow to make a great connection with people?

2) Humility: Being able to act in accordance with the needs of the situation, without concern for one's own importance.

Humility helps to make leaders more approachable. A humble leader can say, “I don’t know. I need your help.” Being humble does not mean you can’t be tough and have a strong drive for results. Humility is not a weakness, on the contrary: it takes confidence to show humility.

Reflection Questions:

Am I confident enough to be humble?
Does our culture allow people to be humble?

3) Empathy and Compassion: Ability to relate to others, oneself and nature with kindness, empathy and compassion and the intention to address related suffering.

Empathy means having a sense of what is going on in another person, especially what they are experiencing emotionally. Emotions provide the energy for action. Thus, leaders need to understand what emotions they might trigger in other people.

Compassion relates to the intention of reducing another person’s suffering.

Reflection Questions:

How aware am of my own emotions?
How good am I at having a sense of what other people are experiencing?
How often do I switch on my empathy “antennas”?

4) Appreciation: Relating to others and to the world with a basic sense of appreciation, gratitude and joy.

We can be so busy and focused on problem-solving that we completely forget to appreciate what is already good in our lives or what we and others have accomplished. Appreciation means not taking other people and their work for granted. Appreciation can be expressed in simple things like saying ‘thank you’. Expressing that other people are doing a great job and you as a leader notice this.

Being appreciated is a strong motivational factor at work.

Reflection Questions:

How do I show my appreciation at work?
What might I take for granted (people and tasks) in my everyday life?

More info about us and our work: secondcrackleadership.com

In our series on the Inner Development Goals (IDG), we have already covered Being and Thinking. Today, we discuss the third IDG category: RELATING

The IDG framework offers practical guidance for leaders to improve relationships by developing four skills and qualities:

1) Connectedness: Having a keen sense of being connected with and/or being a part of a larger whole, such as a community, humanity or global ecosystem.

Leaders need to strengthen the connection with this system. Improving the connection with others helps on the task level and get better results.

Reflection Questions:

What is my intention and mindset when I am about to interact with other people? Can I be curious and interested in the others?
What does a great "connection" feel like?
How well did I connect with people at work today?
What can I do tomorrow to make a great connection with people?

2) Humility: Being able to act in accordance with the needs of the situation, without concern for one's own importance.

Reflection Questions:

Am I confident enough to be humble?
Does our culture allow people to be humble?

3) Empathy and Compassion: Ability to relate to others, oneself and nature with kindness, empathy and compassion and the intention to address related suffering.

Compassion relates to the intention of reducing another person’s suffering.

Reflection Questions:

How aware am of my own emotions?
How good am I at having a sense of what other people are experiencing?
How often do I switch on my empathy “antennas”?

4) Appreciation: Relating to others and to the world with a basic sense of appreciation, gratitude and joy.

Being appreciated is a strong motivational factor at work.

Reflection Questions:

How do I show my appreciation at work?
What might I take for granted (people and tasks) in my everyday life?

More info about us and our work: secondcrackleadership.com

Previous Episode

The Thinking Skills You Never Thought of — Inner Development Goals Part 3

Cognitive Skills are common elements in any leadership model, and most leaders excel at these qualities. However, traditional leadership models may emphasise aspects such as analytical thinking, rational decision-making, or logic. Of course, such skills are still critical today. However, leaders need to expand their cognitive skill set according to the context we are operating in nowadays. The world is highly interconnected and complex, and the speed of change can be overwhelming.

The Inner Development Goals (IDG) offer a new leadership framework to tackle today’s challenges. In this third episode on the IDGs, we discuss the second category of this framework: Thinking. It consists of five skills and qualities:

Complexity Awareness goes beyond mere awareness but includes understanding and skills in working with systemic conditions and causalities (systems theory). We can’t possibly know all the parameters and casualties that impact outcomes. Leaders can’t control an organisation like a machine but can influence the system through their interactions with others.

Perspective Skills refer to “seeking, understanding and actively making use of insights from contrasting perspectives.” This requires humility, awareness of blind spots, and the openness to invite views that are very different from ours.

Sense-Making is directly related to how the human brain operates. We continuously interpret what is going on in our environment and adapt accordingly. This is critical for survival. However, we must challenge whether our sense-making of the past is still useful today. In addition, we make sense through our interactions with others, and we need to share our thinking processes to do so more effectively.

Critical Thinking is what most leaders are very good at already. The art is in applying critical thinking in the right places: at times, we may be overly critical, slowing things down unnecessarily, or frustrating others. On other occasions, we might not be critical enough, especially when we are influenced by our own confirmation bias.

Long-term Orientation & Visioning is another area in which most leaders do quite well. The challenge is often in a) defining short-term goals which support the long-term vision and goals and b) sustaining the commitment to achieving the long-term goals.
Reflection Questions for Leaders:

How can I let go of control and instead, exert influence to achieve the organisational goals?
How well do I understand the degree of complexity in a situation?
Where may I tend to oversimplify, where might I make things too complicated?
What (or who’s) perspective are we missing here?
How aware am I of my blind spots?
How well do I nurture a climate for different perspectives to be shared?
Where might past sense-making limit me in the future? What might I need to re-visit in a different context today?
How do I make my own sense-making more transparent and involving?
Looking at the five THINKING skills and qualities, which ones do need to further develop to remain successful in the future?

More info about us and our work: secondcrackleadership.com

Next Episode

Listening － The Superpower of Leaders with Raquel Ark

How can leaders can create more impact through listening? We interview Raquel Ark, founder of Listening Alchemy and host of the Listening Superpower Podcast.
7:40: Recent statistics show that a key skill that’s needed for leaders is listening. However, listening is normally nothing we learn in school. Research shows that there is a lot of power in listening. Listening is a prestige power It's the type of power where people want to follow you, where people are inspired by you. It's more of an inclusive to-come-with-me type of power.
8:27: When you listen as a leader, your autocratic dominant power goes down, you will lose that type of power. If you have a leadership style that's dominant and autocratic, you do have power. But it's the type of power where you are forcing people to do things, to follow you.
In contrast, if you listen, you create a prestige power where you inspire people and they want to follow you. So that's a difference that the empirical research is showing in terms of power.
10:58: There are a lot of different ways in which power can show up. Listening is an inclusive type of power. It can invite all of us to stand up and work better together, not just focused around one person (the leader).
13:30: Listening helps the speaker become clear, more creative, come up with their own solutions, be more motivated and engaged. And this is what the research is showing that when a speaker has a high quality listener, (listening with no judgment, with openness, care, really trying to understand their perspective) then that speaker will relax and feel safe. And when they feel safe, instead of persuading people, they will start to express themselves.
28:49: Teaching active listening is often reduced to a “mechanical” skill: keep eye contact, paraphrase... This is useless if presence or the interest in the other person is not there.
31:37 Just by not interrupting people and being genuinely interested, you will have a huge impact and be perceived as a great listener. You’ll be perceived in a positive way and have impact on that person. And as others are speaking, they actually gain more insight about themselves and their own thoughts. So they change themselves. You're not changing them.
33:56 Paradox: your communication becomes more impactful when you speak less and listen more.
Reflection Questions for Leaders:

Think of a person who listened to you and it helped you have an aha-moment or solve a problem. Or you came up with an idea, you realised what was really important. Reflect back on that experience.
What was it about that listening that helped you? Then you take that and put that into practice with others yourself.
What can I do to practice my listening? Listening to this podcast or reading about listening will not help you become a better listener just by knowing it. So, what can I do to experiment and play with it?
If I tend to have a strong opinion, what if that moment I reset and become curious like my, six year old child that's asking why questions? What if I were to become curious and then change my presence in this moment?
What are the conditions that I need to be a good listener?
How can I get honest, candid feedback on how well I'm listening ?

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Raquel Ark
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer
More info:
secondcrackleadership.com