You can achieve very little on your own. You may think that you know the answer to a problem or that you have a unique contribution to bring; you may see yourself as the only person bringing detached wisdom when all around you seem to be bringing an unrealistic perspective; but to be successful you need to build supporters: a combination of bosses who will sponsor you, colleagues who will support you and followers who will respond to the lead you give. Building supporters is about building trust and a shared agenda so that there is a win/win in the delivery of outcomes for everyone.
It is easier to see the enemy in front than your supporters behind. Building a common purpose and a shared agenda will mean that you are less likely to be stabbed in the back. When you are working effectively with others the overall effect of the creativity and the shared energy is more than the sum of the parts. As you grow a team of supporters you are building both allies when addressing current issues, and long-term backing for future occasions.
Hazel had just begun to work with the new chairperson of her organisation. We talked about how she wanted to come over in her conversations with this person. She wanted to be seen as confident, clear and competent and to be viewed as somebody the chair was comfortable with and could rely on. We talked about what evidence the chair would have over the next few weeks to see her like this. Our conclusions were centred on the value of preparing for meetings with the chair and being both confident and relaxed in those discussions. It was important that the boss thought it was worthwhile to spend time talking to Hazel and also enjoyed being in her company. The key words confident, clear and competent helped Hazel centre herself as she prepared to meet the chair, and then assessing herself following the discussion. They provided the right balance between bringing intellectual clarity to the discussions and maintaining a sense of warmth and reliability.
As you approach a meeting with your boss, might the following be a useful checklist?
What would be a successful outcome for the meeting?
How might you best prepare for the meeting?
If you were sat in the boss's shoes, what are the outcomes you would want from the meeting?
What is the initial impact that you want to have on the boss as you walk in the room?
How do you want to pace the meeting, if you have an opportunity to do so?
How will you keep flexible to respond to the boss's mood?
How would you like to try to ensure that you get clear conclusions from the meeting?
How will you ensure that you keep up a relaxed and yet purposeful tone throughout the meeting?
Investing time in colleagues almost always pays dividends. This can be a combination of both formal and informal contact. The ideal is to create a situation where the hallmark of the relationship with another individual is that you are both committed to each other's success. Create situations that are win/win with your colleagues.
Building a relationship of trust is central to success.
Often, however, that is easier said than done when there are competing priorities. Sometimes there is no option but to risk making yourself unpopular when you are clear that a compromise outcome will create more problems than it solves.
Often it is worth systematically identifying the key people you need to get on your side to ensure success, and then to plan how you are going to inter-relate with them. It helps if you like the people concerned, but the preparation is particularly important if you feel a sense of unease with some individuals.
Make a list of who your supporters are:
Identify the 6–10 people who will have a particular influence on your success.
Assess the quality of your current relationship with them on a scale of 1–10, where 1 is poor and 10 is excellent.
Identify what type of support you would like from each individual.
Identify how you can support each individual.
Reflect on the best way of building the strength of mutual support. (This could be through formal discussions, meetings or informal conversations.)
Decide on your next steps in building the relationship and developing the support.
Identify specific tasks where you can reinforce and develop your links with these individuals.
The danger with the list above is that it sounds very transactional. The best working relationships may be rooted in honest self-interest or mutual interest, but if trust, empathy and values are shared, the strength of mutual support is likely to be more long-lasting. The risk when there are strong emotional bonds is that objectivity can go out of the window. While short-term emotional rapport is fine, long-term supporters will bring intellectual objectivity as well as respect for an individual's personal strengths.
Building support is often about asking the right questions. Someone who feels that you have opened up new opportunities and avenues through your questioning and have enhanced their ability to solve their own problems will long remember you as an influential and treasured boss.
Practical steps for building supporters among your staff:
Explicitly recognise the contribution of individuals.
Identify teams that have made a distinctive contribution.
Allocate time to mentor individual staff.
Promote learning sets and set aside time to make a contribution to them.
Take an interest in the personal development of individuals.
Explain why you have taken forward particular actions.
Be open about your learning journey.
Give general praise and focused practical feedback, always checking how it is being received.
Building a network of supporters frequently pays dividends. But how do you know where and how to invest your time in doing this? Building a wide number of semi-acquaintances hardly seems worth the effort. One of the joys of having a conversation is to try to find a common interest and resonance, so that two people can look at an issue in similar ways, or in ways that complement each other.
Good networking is not about platitudes, it is about using short conversations to the best possible effect and finding common ground.
Building and keeping contacts in different spheres can seem self-serving or a waste of time. So much depends on what your motive is: if it is merely self-interest, then other people will realise this. If it is finding shared agendas and building mutual interests, then what might have initially appeared transactional can become both engaging and productive. When I was learning to use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, there was one other person on the course with the same overall preference set as me (ENTJ). A shared fascination with what the preference type might mean led to worthwhile conversations and a valuable new network.
It is right to guard against excessive and indulgent superficial networking, which may be very hearty but is of little consequence. It can soak up far too much time unless used in a thoughtful and realistic way. Not every contact leads to new revelations, but progress comes through enjoying engagement with a variety of people, finding those with whom you have a common bond and then building on that rapport.
From his leadership roles in public and private ventures in the aeronautical industry, Archie Hughes comments:
It is important to build a network quickly with customers and suppliers. You have to be known. Spend time building networks. It may not be immediately apparent what the value is for your existing role, but networking is never wasted. Business is a relationship game. Build networks for the future and do not lose sight of the people you leave behind.
Effective communication is about clarity, curiosity, thinking through consequences and being corporate.
Clarity: This is about effective preparation, identifying key points, keeping it simple and then giving a message that is not too cluttered. It is ensuring that you are not diverted by the irrelevant.
Curiosity: This is about listening hard and wearing the shoes of the people you are talking to, trying to understand where they are coming from and what their concerns and priorities are. Curiosity is also about looking around corners to try to find a way through problems.
Consequences: This is about looking beyond the short-term to what might be the long-term benefits of different shared agendas or alliances.
Corporate: This is about seeking shared success. It is being willing to engage in viewing an issue from different perspectives and finding a way forward that reinforces the shared agenda.
