The Relational Manager
In this book, aimed primarily at leaders and managers, Schluter and Lee apply the thesis for success they first developed in The R Factor almost twenty years ago: the belief that relationships are the key to superior and sustainable results. Here is a leadership and management philosophy that challenges the short-term incentive culture of business today.
The market driven culture keeps telling us that the bottom line is financial, and most of the opportunities on offer have to be bought with hard cash. But the authors show that markets and companies are, in the end, only groups of people working with one another, and it is the so-called 'soft' issues that are in fact the hard issues. Relationships, within and around organizations, are an intangible asset that drive the whole enterprise and make a huge impact on performance.
So many conversations about performance are backward-looking - focusing on records of achievement - often for the purpose of assessing performance-related pay. Yet conversations that guide the future of the business and of the team, conversations about shared goals and development, are being neglected. Management that only rewards individual and short-term performance risks stifling behaviours that build long-term stability.
After a summary of how relational thinking totally changes our worldview, Schluter and Lee provide a practical tool to assess the quality of relationships - a five-fold lens of relational health (contact, time, knowledge, power and purpose). They look through that lens at many of the experiences of managerial life, including time management, finance, systems, travel, conflict resolution and the culture of the office, showing how relational thinking can make a big impact on the way organizations and individuals work.
The relational manager understands that the experiences of connectedness, belonging, mutual understanding and a sense of shared identity, produce better outcomes. Unproductive time - often referred to as 'downtime' is a hidden opportunity. Relational managers organize downtime - lunches, coffee breaks, social time - it's one of the most important things they do. Why? Because in the rhythm of the working day, downtime plays a vital part in relationship building, and indeed in sharing information and opinions about the business that might otherwise find no outlet. Importantly, experience and research show that people leave managers, not jobs or companies. And high turnover is expensive.
We need this wake-up call showing how the so-called developed world is gripped by relational poverty - both at work and at home. Fractured relationships and fragmented lives are today's norm, and pervasive communications technology that claims to enable more connectedness in fact limits real connectedness in a culture of 'continuous partial attention'.
We are in a war over reality - a battle to understand and define the world as it really is. In this war, many still believe the lie that it is 'Money that makes the world go around'. Schluter and Lee's book unmasks the lie, and is a powerful revelation of the centrality of relationships in personal, business and global success. It will take, though, yet more evidence to convince everyone, and I would have welcomed a richer set of case studies.
What I especially like about the book is the way it subtly and progressively instils in the reader an altered perspective. It trains us to think relationally about situations and outcomes; to see our workplaces and our world in a different and deeper way; to get beyond the mechanics of measurement to the reality that is at the heart of organizations, and of life.
The Relational Manager is published by Lion, 2009
Paul Valler
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