When leading others, it’s important to be aware of the effect you are having on them and the status of your relationships with each one of them. Regularly evaluating your relationships can be a powerful strategy for a leader to take. The last thing anybody would want is to find out at the end of the year that a direct report has been unsatisfied with their coaching relationship.
Ideally, a leader would have a solid pulse on his/her relationship with his/her direct reports, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, the work we do on a regular basis consumes us to the point where we may neglect the relationships with the people they lead. This is why it’s important to reflect on the status of your relationships with others on a regular basis.
Evaluating Your Relationships: A Simple Strategy
In order to truly have a better understanding of your relationship status with others, I recommend a reflection exercise where you answer a question about each of the individuals you manage. On a scale of -10-10, how would you rate the positivity of your relationship with other individuals? You can then also guess how each of your direct reports would answer that question themselves.
If you want to take this exercise even further, you could ask them to complete the same exercise and then share responses with one another. Answering these questions and sharing them with one another can help you glean insight about something you may have previously taken for granted.
Relationship Bank Accounts
In the end, relationships are like a bank account with positive interactions acting as the deposits and negative interactions acting as the withdrawals. Whether you are being intentional about it or not, every time you speak with, send an email to, or even walk by an individual, you are depositing to or withdrawing from your relationship account with that individual.
Evaluating Your Relationships with the Right Ratio
What’s even more significant for school leaders to recognize is that it takes three positive interactions to make up for one negative interaction1. If you have an interaction with a staff member where you ignore their greeting in the hallway because you are hurriedly headed to a meeting, you need to follow that up with three positive interactions by praising them in person or email, or checking in to see how they are doing.
At the same time, this also means that building up that positive balance can help prevent your relationship balance from dipping negative because there are enough positive interactions to compensate. For example, if you have consistently had great interactions with an individual and then have one interaction where you ignore their greeting in the hallway, they’ll be more apt to brush off that interaction as an exception rather than a norm. They’ll give you that generosity of spirit and assume you had a good reason to ignore them.
Aim for a Positive Balance
If there’s a positive balance in your relationship account, individuals will be less likely to attach that interaction to your character, while they will be more likely to do so if there’s a negative balance. With a negative balance, it is more likely for the other individual to think to themselves, “this person never cares about me,” this person is always late,” or “this person doesn’t value others.”
A positive balance is crucial to avoid these value assumptions and character attacks from occurring. The positive balance you have with others goes a long way toward them becoming your “cheerleaders” and supporters even when you aren’t around. Rumors and gossip are inevitable in any location where employees are expected to interact with one another. There is a smaller chance of these rumors or gossip having an impact on what individuals think if they have positive relationship account balance with you.
1 Losada, Marcial. (December 9, 2008). Work teams and the Losada Line: New Results. Positive Psychology News Daily. Retrieved at http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/marcial-losada/200812091298
