In Focus/Relationships-How to Connect for Competitive Advantage

customers’ experiences, and the qual-

ity of products. They can then under-

stand what is under their control that

they can impact.

WILFRED DRATH COMMENTS

The participants in this interesting

and lively conversation explore the

importance of relationships to leader-

ship. Drawing on their personal expe-

riences, they offer a number of expla-

nations why relationships are so

important. One especially interesting

aspect of this conversation is the way

their explanations circle around two

different ways of understanding rela-

tionships and thus two different

answers to the question of why rela-

tionships are important to leadership.

It would be helpful to spell out these

alternative answers, especially as

people think about how to make lead-

ership more inclusive and shared.

Let’s look at two answers to the

question of why relationships are

important to leadership.

Answer 1. Relationships are

important to leadership because rela-

tionships form a link between leaders

and followers. Leaders cannot effec-

tively influence others to act in cer-

tain ways unless there is a strong

relationship link characterized by

respect, caring, and trust between

leaders and followers.

Answer 2. Relationships are

important to leadership because rela-

tionships, not leaders, are the source

of leadership. Leader, follower, influ-

ence, trust, and every other aspect of

leadership are empty of meaning

except as they are embedded in ongo-

ing relationships.

Cities and Roads

Answer 1 rests firmly on the com-

monsense and taken-for-granted

assumption that people are like cities

and relationships are like roads link-

ing the cities. People are like cities in

that each person contains within his

or her “city limits” everything needed

to make a complete person: character,

personality, values, thoughts, and

emotions are all contained within the

person. In the same way meaning is

also contained within the person: we

are used to talking about “your mean-

ing” and “my meaning” and the ways

in which we understand or fail to

understand each other’s meaning.

The view of leaders that follows

from this cities-and-roads way of

understanding relationships is that

leaders are people who contain

within their city limits a quality

called leadership. For this quality to

become effective it must travel along

the roads of relationships and enter

the city limits of followers; in other

words, leaders produce leadership by

“driving” the leadership that is within

them toward others.

From this Answer 1 perspective,

relationships are understood as tools

that leaders use to link themselves to

others and express their leadership.

This perspective is evidenced in the

conversation when the participants

talk about the need for leaders to

engage in “cultivating and leverag-

ing” relationships. When they talk

this way, they seem to see leaders as

needing to create relationships (roads

that link them to others) that are

wide, clear of obstructions, well

marked, and smooth, so that leader-

ship can flow effectively from leader

to follower (and from follower to

leader). The conversation touches on

how leaders can create these kinds of

good-road relationships by matching

their espoused values and their

enacted values. The idea that leader-

ship is contagious fits this Answer 1

perspective in the sense that leader-

LIA •VOLUME 23, NUMBER 5 • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003

ship can flow around among leaders

and followers on clear and unob-

structed relational roads.

Garden Variety

If Answer 1 involves the metaphor of

relationships as roads linking self-

contained cities, Answer 2 sees rela-

tionships as the seedbed of a garden

and individual people as flowers

growing in this garden. In this image,

relationships don’t link people the

way roads do. Relationships are

instead the matrix of life-giving soil

in which people live. People are

embedded in relationships like flow-

ers are planted in a garden. Just as a

living flower is inseparable from the

soil in which it grows, people are

inseparable from their relationships.

Instead of seeing people as cities that

contain within themselves everything

needed to be a person, and relation-

ships as the roads that link them,

Answer 2 sees people and relation-

ships as mutually generative and co-

creative. Relationships are the life-

giving source of the person, of

character, personality, values,

thoughts, and emotions; like a flower

cut from its roots, a person without

relationships is empty of live-giving

meaning.

This view suggests that leadership

cannot be a quality contained within

a person called a leader. If there is

nothing “in” a person that is not “in”

his or her relationships, leadership

must be in the relationships, not in

the person. So relationships them-

selves are the source of leadership

(and in fact of everything meaning-

ful). From this perspective, relation-

ships are not tools that leaders use to

express “their” leadership. Instead,

relationships are the very ground out

of which leadership emerges.

This is where the conversation

really gets interesting. When the par-

ticipants talk about there being “a

way people relate to one another

[that] can be generative or perfunc-

tory,”they seem to be pointing to the

difference between seeing relation-

16

Relationships them-

selves are the source

of leadership.