By?Brian Steele
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is an engineering marvel, masterpiece of design, and just plain gorgeous. As a leader, when you have great relationships with people, these are no less spectacular feats of bridge building.
In his essential primer on leadership, ?The Servant?, ?James C. Hunter clearly shows how relationships are vital to accomplishing tasks as a leader. In fact, leadership without relationship is just as futile as relationships without accomplishments in leadership.
Every relationship you have as a leader in your business, family, or ministry can be viewed as a bridge in one of three stages:
? Bridge Building. Bridges don?t build themselves. They require hard work, time, investment, endurance, and being intentional. In your leadership, what are the new bridges that you need to build? Where is the separation between people on your team? Who are the new people you need to reach to in order to span from where you are to where the team needs to get? Identifying the new bridges to be built is an opportunity for your organization to grow. But building requires planning, hard work and commitment.
? Bridge Maintaining. Bridges don?t maintain themselves. The Golden Gate Bridge is continually being painted, year round from one end to the other, then starting over. Why? With time and the caustic sea environment, the Golden Gate will decay and eventually fail without a commitment and perseverance in regular maintenance. Same with relationships. Great friends can drift apart, great marriages slowly dissolve, great churches lose the effectiveness in building the kingdom. Relationships with team members will deteriorate unless there is a commitment to maintain the connection. On your team, who haven?t you spoken with for a while? Who haven?t you checked in with? Whose quarterly goals and performance haven?t you reviewed in over a year? What relationships with your team members have drifted? More importantly, why? Why are they avoiding you or you avoiding them? Deferred maintenance slowly but surely dooms relationships.
? Bridge Burning. Fires don?t put themselves out. When a minor bridge fire isn?t immediately put out, it can spread and eventually compromise the whole structure. Minor problems between team members can quickly spread and threaten the entire organization if not addressed. A coworker told me, ?Bad news does not improve with age.? If there is an unaddressed issue of performance or failure to meet standards, the issues can grow to conflagration proportions. Your inaction as a leader will be seen as either indifference or weakness, both of which add fuel. Fires should be immediately put out. Problems need to be immediately addressed so that the relationships and organization doesn?t go down in flames.
Successful relationships are strong bridges and essential to successful leadership. Take 15 minutes to make an inventory of the relationships in your life. What bridge needs building? Maintenance? What bridge is burning right now?
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Source: http://ctkblog.com/2012/08/16/indispensable-bridges-for-leadership/
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