Attain Alliance to increase your Leadership Capacity

\”Building and repairing relationships are long-term investments\”. – Stephen Covey

They say the greatest of leaders thrive in relationship building. It\’s not a short-term gain or strategy – trusted relationships need to be built and nurtured over time.

As a senior leader I\’ve been frustrated, disregarded, mistrusted and shut down many a times by people who I reached my hand out to. I am not perfect, I don\’t want to be a `boss of anyone\’ and I don\’t assert that I know it all. However, I refuse to quieten my voice when I have expertise in an area, before I\’ve even been given a chance to prove myself!

I know how challenging senior leaders find relationship building, we often get too busy spreading our energies by increasing connections instead of concentrating on investing it towards increasing capacity. You can increase capacity by co-designing things with team members, family members and handing over decision making power to those who would be the most affected. Once you start doing that, you will realise how powerful it is to empower others to take responsibility for decision making, instead of always doing it yourself and depleting more and more of your precious energy.

Most people associate collaborative leadership with teamwork, but the approach can relate to any area of our lives; in the context of business, family or the community at large. The following are 5 collaborative skills you can expand in, to work through a structured process and have the support and commitment of your team and the wider community:

1. Team building – is an essential first step to get to understand people, their behaviours and bring everyone to the same starting point of a journey. Once you have done this, don\’t get laidback and assume things will tick along fine, because I can tell you they won\’t! Too often I\’ve seen managers who hate meetings and conversations, because they feel it slows them down. Once upon a time I used to feel slowed down too, but then I faced several conflicts as a direct result of lack of communication in how teams are coordinated. Unless a team has a leader that appreciates the importance of communication and the power of coordination in ensuring everyone is collaborating and is on the same page, dysfunction will cause havoc and eventually be blaringly obvious to everyone.

2. Inclusion – is not just about meeting demographics requirements to cover Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. How can we achieve that, when everyone\’s needs are so different? There is only one way that you can prove you are working inclusively and that is when you understand a team or community\’s diverse needs and actively find ways to ensure they have the same opportunity to contribute and their voice is heard. Of course, in the context of a wider community, you are more likely to face a lot of opposition and sometimes even so called `community leaders\’ who are using political strategies to advance their own personal agenda. In those situations, it is essential to figure out your genuine alliances and navigate your way through politics. Democratic engagement is often the best approach; it will ensure that \’the truth prevails\’. I remember a time when I was a representative on a community board, working with a diverse group. I noticed how a couple of community leaders drowned the voices of young people and also prevented the group from making progress. It wasn\’t long before those with little power started to utilise their voting power to outnumber and disadvantage the loudest two people.

3. Facilitation – is more than guiding an activity or a discussion. It\’s also about figuring out what the activity or conversation needs to be about in the first place. When we are working as a group focusing our energy on a specific goal, the role of facilitation is crucial in making it easy to achieve a successful outcome. Setting boundaries through ground rules or objectives helps to build accountability and stay on track. If you remain impartial and understand group dynamics when facilitating, it becomes easier to intervene when appropriate and also handle difficult situations.

4. Visionary guidance – is essential in translating a future that doesn\’t exist yet. This vision has to be made clear to gain support from a group of people or an entire community. When I set out to instigate a project that would cost more than £50,000 I only had £500 to contribute towards it. However, I knew the project would benefit hundreds of families from several villages. That was enough for me to share my vision of what the future could look like and once I could guide others, it didn\’t take long before many more people rallied around to complete the project. You need to know how and when to share your vision with others and also be very adept at eliciting constructive feedback.

5. Shared responsibility – is achieved when a group of people feel personally responsible for the success of their team or organisation and you often hear people say ‘We’re all in this together!’  I experienced this as a community sentiment during the pandemic. However, where there is a strong culture of responsibility being accepted as only the leader\’s role, it can be very difficult to achieve it. Ultimate responsibility is not something you can shift, although I have experienced leaders who were masters at delegating everything, including their responsibility as a leader. Sharing responsibility means not telling people what to do but ensuring that everyone feels personally accountable for the future success of the team or organisation.

You can not transform a community without the right alliance. To leverage your greatest potential to attain alliance when networking or building teams, you must lean towards collaboration. The `art of collaboration\’ has several layers to it and although it appears challenging for a variety of reasons, the more we practise it the more we improve our resilience. If this proves to be the greatest barrier in your leadership journey, you will need to seek mentoring from someone who is highly experienced.