Personal Leadership is about the leader becoming intimately acquainted with their leadership values, beliefs and philosophies. This foundational construct serves as the leaders’ ability to provide authentic and credible leadership. Authentic leaders, who now live out their values consistently every day, now have earned the right build authentic relationships. Relational Leadership leader now reaches out to others who have observed their consistent authentic behavior. The precursor is authenticity and the next step is building trusting relationships. Reaching out as a credible authentic leader opens the door for the leader to begin to show respect and care for their team by getting to know them beyond just job objectives and performance review.
Relational leadership is about demonstrating the value of the team by learning why that member of the team wants to be on the team and give maximum effort and results. In essence, it is learning about their values and their personal goals and aspirations. The leader’s responsibility is to then connect the dots from their personal goals and aspirations to team goals and aspirations. The leader imparts the team vision and then shows each team member how giving 100% will yield great results for them personally. The interest, time and actions around helping employees connect the dots; will help set a solid foundation for strong trusting relationships. Trust is the number one requested leadership trait from team members surveyed in top U.S. companies.