Coaching Yourself to Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader

Lessons in Alliance Building

Now that you understand what alliance building has to do with leadership, start developing alliances by first thinking in win/win terms. Take time to plan and think strategically when developing your network of relationships. You are not being scheming or callous. You are simply assessing your situation and building the kind of mutually beneficial relationships that will help you achieve your goals. Use the exercise on the following page to help identify the people with whom you should build relationships. Remember that relationship building should be reciprocal: both you and the other person should benefit, even in some small way, from the collaboration. Sometimes it is not immediately evident what someone else can ...