“Relationship” in the context of how we get along with others at work, is a word that is shunned in the leadership-world. Perhaps it carries an emotional tone that we’d rather avoid in organizations.

Yet, leadership is fundamentally about relationships. Sure, it isn’t practical for a leader spend time “relating” without attention to getting to the strategy – especially for those really big, awesome goals. But achieving a goal just doesn’t happen without relationships with those who are responsible for completing it. Who wants to follow someone who is treating them like a line item on the financial statement? And what is a leader without followers?

It’s interesting that some leaders are surprised by this analysis. Its not that they aren’t good leaders. More often, their surprise comes from:

- A natural ability to create good relationships with their staff, their peers, and others who are important to getting the work done. This ability comes so easily to them that they don’t stop to think about it;

- A belief that strategy and “getting the work done” are the most important traits to have;

- They’ve just never thought about the importance of relationships to “getting the work done”.

Both strategy and relationship building are important. You can’t have one without the other and be an effective leader.

Tom Rath, author of Strengths Based Leadership puts it this way:

“There’s a conventional wisdom that says that strategic thinking is much more important than relationship building, which doesn’t seem to be nearly as highly valued as it should be, based on what some of the leaders that I’ve spoken with have said to me. But relationship building and strategic thinking are very important in bringing a team together to achieve a big goal. If you only have strategic thinking, you’ll head in the right direction with no one behind you. If you have relationship building without strategic thinking, you have a really happy team that might not be headed toward a result.”

I find it more common for leaders to be stronger in strategic thinking, and for strategic thinking to be more valued than relationships (at least in the organizations I work in). So I challenge leaders who may resist, or feel uncomfortable with relationship building to consider: what if building strong, healthy relationships is a strategy? More on this later.