Relational Leadership: Not for the Faint of Heart

By Steve Clabaugh, CLU, ChFC

Relational Leadership is defined as a leadership core value that prioritizes building long-term positive, meaningful and growing relationships with associates that lead to ever improving personal and professional growth. In other words, a relational leader cares as much about the wellbeing of the employee as they do the success of the organization.

I’m not sure why, but some folks seem to think that relational leadership is somehow for those who are, by nature, always gentle and kind, or in other words - weak. I once had a manager tell me that “your kum-ba-yah and sing around the campfire stuff isn’t going to work in our company. This is a tough outfit and we need managers who are strong to make it around here.”

The notion that relational leaders are anything but strong leaders is far from reality. In fact, relational leadership requires a great deal of strength and courage to face the challenges of building and leading a high-performance team.

There are examples of strong leadership demonstrated by relational leaders in virtually every type of organization from sports teams to service organizations, to military units, to businesses.

Grace Hopper overcame age, size and gender discrimination to become the first woman to ever achieve the rank of Rear Admiral in the history of the United States Navy. A mathematics professor, she was rejected when she tried to join the Navy during World War II because she was too old (34) and too small (barely more than 100 pounds). She persevered and was finally accepted in the Naval Reserve. Even then she had to battle the sexism that confronted her throughout her career and limited her opportunities for advancement. She was dedicated to the defense and security of her country and fiercely loyal to her staff even when many of them resented the fact that a woman was their boss in “this man’s Navy ”. Today the cybersecurity building on the grounds of the United States Naval Academy bears her name – the only woman to have such a building named after her.

AP Giannini was an outstanding relational leader from an earlier generation. When the big banks shut them out, he fought to give working class men and women access to banking and other financial services so they could have the opportunity to pursue the great American dream. At one point, the Wall Street bankers who had taken over the bank’s leadership during the Great Depression decided that the bank was going to fail. They determined to declare bankruptcy and liquidate all the bank’s assets. A.P. left his sick bed, still weakened from a very serious illness, and led a stockholder revolt against the leadership team. Thousands of his customers who had become stockholders of the bank joined him in voting to throw them out and restore A.P. and his team to leadership. In case you’re wondering about whether that bank survived the Great Depression the answer is a resounding yes and, in fact, Bank of America is still thriving as one of the major banking institutions in our country.

There are many challenges in business leadership that require exceptional strength and courage. Here are some examples of the many:

When dealing with awkward and uncomfortable challenges.

Maria had worked in the policy processing department of a life insurance company for many years. Part of her responsibility was to prepare and send out a memo to the company’s managers and officers, at the end of the business day, reporting the number of applications received and the number of policies issued for that day. It seemed unusual when she started sending out the memo not at the end of the day but several times throughout the day with numbers that didn’t seem to make sense. This went on for several weeks before her managers came to see me about the situation.

They had recently learned that Maria was suffering from a rapidly worsening form of dementia. Her doctor had been telling her and her family that she should not be working and, in fact, needed to be in a memory care program for her own safety. Maria refused to accept this diagnosis and insisted on continuing in her job. Finally, her children came to meet with our managers secretly to request that the company terminate her employment for her own good.

Her managers were also long-time friends and this request was very difficult for them as they wanted to be able to maintain a relationship with her. So, since I was the new guy and didn’t really know her that well, they requested that I be the one to fire her. It was an uncomfortable duty to complete but I tried to do it in as gracious a manner as possible.

As you might imagine, Maria did not respond well to this news. She was extremely angry with me and told everyone she knew about my unfair and undeserved decision. Her children and her managers, however, privately expressed their appreciation and respect for the decision that had been made in Maria’s best interests.

When dealing with a non-productive employee.

Sonny was a Vice President who had been with the company for 29 years. He knew a lot about the company’s history and was well known by all the employees and agents of the company. Unfortunately, no one could figure out exactly what he was responsible for, nor any contribution he was making to the company’s success. My predecessor actually apologized to me for not having dealt with the situation before.

I had learned many years ago about the “1–10–100 Rule” which says that: the first opportunity you have to deal with an issue is the easiest it will ever be; if you don’t address the problem then it is 10 times more difficult to deal with when it comes back up; and if you still don’t deal with it – it becomes 100 times harder to correct the third time. While I had learned the “1-10-100" Rule long ago, I hadn’t applied it in this situation.

Instead of addressing the situation with a specific plan of improvement or resulting termination; we kept moving him to different departments and different supervisors. Nothing worked and I began to hear from department managers that his apparent “special employee” status was actually hurting the productivity and morale of their teams. When the difficult decision to terminate Sonny’s employment was finally made, we expected some negative blowback especially from long-time employees. Instead, the reaction was exactly the opposite. Employees actually appreciated the fact that the company had some real productivity standards and that doing a good job was what would be rewarded – not longevity.

When an employee is treated unfairly.

Anna was a customer service representative – a very good one. Sales associates and customers alike appreciated her caring and thoughtful manner. One day as her manager was walking by her work area, she noticed that Anna was crying. Through her tears, Anna explained that one of the sales representatives was very upset by her decision not to approve the sale to a specific customer. He screamed at her, on the phone, and informed her that she would immediately change her decision, or he would have her fired.

Her manager was an excellent relational leader and did not believe the old falsehood that “the customer or the sales representative is always right”. First, she made sure to understand the actual details of the sale and, as expected, Anna had made the exact right decision. Next, she called the manager of the sales representative and explained the situation to them. Her instructions to the manager were that, within the hour, the representative would call Anna, apologize for his actions and promise that he will never engage in such behavior again. If that action failed to occur, the company would terminate the sales representative's employment immediately.

The sales representative did make the call and was a model of cooperation and respect ever after that occurrence. As for Anna, she was very grateful for her manager’s support and continued to do an outstanding job for the company in supporting both sales associates and customers.

When setting a performance standard.

I had the opportunity, over the years, to attend many rewards trips both as a qualifier and later as a corporate officer. These trips to exotic and beautiful locations gave opportunity to celebrate the prior year’s success. In addition, they provided a relaxed environment for relationship building between corporate executives and field sales leaders.

While primarily focused on exciting fun activities, trips also included a brief business meeting used to announce new products, programs and company progress. They also were a requirement so the company could receive a tax write off for a significant portion of the trip’s expenses. My experience over the years was that the business meetings were a significant waste of time as company leaders basically “mailed in” their presentations with little pre-planning or creativity.

When it became my responsibility for managing rewards trips, I established a standard of preparation for the business meeting that was not very popular – to say the least. Months before the trip each presenter was required to describe their subject and how they planned to present it. Then several weeks before leaving, we scheduled rehearsals for each person to actually give their presentation to the team while receiving feedback on how they could improve it. This took place twice before leaving. A final dry run was held in the actual meeting room generally the afternoon or evening before the presentation.

The majority of our leaders, maybe all of them, disliked this disciplined approach and many of them felt free to complain about them. I agreed that it was hard work and uncomfortable to hold each other accountable for what we were saying in our presentations, I pointed out that I held myself to the same standard.

Following our first rewards trip presentation together or team was delighted to receive high praise from our attendees with many of them saying it was the best such meeting they had ever attended. Being tough about setting a high standard turned out to be well worth the effort although they didn’t like it any better during subsequent years.

If you take some time to think about it, I’m sure you can come up with other examples where strong relational leadership was used or, sadly, neglected I hope you will take these situations into consideration the next time you face a challenge or an opportunity that requires strength and courage.

As always, please feel free to contact me to discuss a particular case, situation or to request a proposal for your client company.

You can learn more about Relational Leadership Experience at: https://voluntary-advantage.com/relational-leadership

Steve Clabaugh, CLU, ChFC

Steve Clabaugh, CLU, ChFC - started his career in insurance as a Field Agent, moving on to Sales Manager, General Manager, Regional Manager, Vice President, Senior Vice President, and President/CEO. A long time student of professional leadership, Steve created the Relational Leadership program that has been used to train home office, field sales associates, mid-level managers, and senior vice presidents.