7 Principles of Meaningful Relationships for Servant Leaders
Everything big in life starts and ends with relationships.
School, romance, parenting, traveling — and, yes, work — all rely on our connection with other people and also our connection to ourselves.
A company is a collection of people working toward a shared goal that they couldn’t otherwise do on their own. In essence, the foundation of work is relationships.
However, often when we are stuck, especially in work, it is because we interact with others transactionally instead of engaging with them, human to human. And when we are unhappy at work, we might blame it on someone else but the root of the discontent is often within us.
After coaching hundreds of business leaders, I see clearly that the most successful founders, CEOs, and managers actively, intentionally nurture their relationships with the people around them. This is called being a servant leader. To be one, you’ve got to follow these seven principles for building meaningful connections (pro tip: they also work for thriving in love, learning, and taking care of tiny humans).
7 Principles of Meaningful Relationships
These are your crib notes for building relationships that matter. Keep reading to dig in deeper.
- Start with yourself.
- Refocus on service.
- Ask what others need.
- Give. Receive. Sometimes say no.
- Empathy is essential.
- Safety first.
- Assume positive intent. Even when it is hard.
Here’s how to apply these principles to your leadership daily.
1. Start with yourself: To have healthy external relationships, develop a healthy relationship with yourself internally.
Bluntly, if you operate from scarcity, believe that everyone is against you, and you’re not worthy of receiving help, funding, promotion, or anything else, your relationships with other people will suffer. But if you foster your internal relationship with yourself, embrace abundance, believe people want to help you, and that you are deserving, it completely shifts your relationships with others into a healthier place.
It may be challenging to nurture your internal self when you hear no on a regular basis, if employee turnover is high, or if you’ve put all you have into one idea. That’s why the daily practice of having a healthy relationship with yourself first is so important. You will more readily bounce back from rejections, assess why your staffers are leaving, and be better at your work and more passionate about your passions. Other people pick up on this. Why would they want to engage, connect, or invest in a leader who doesn’t see their own value or recognize how to be open to growth and opportunity?
Additionally, by turning inward first, you’re more likely to notice the ways you may be contributing to the challenges you’re having with others. Or as Reboot’s CEO Jerry Colonna asks, “How am I being complicit in creating the conditions that I say I don’t want?”
Take Action: Getting outside counsel through mentors, advisors, friends or coaches is a substantial investment in yourself, and is about much more than running a meeting. It is one way to develop how you as a leader see yourself in the world, your company, and the mirror. Seek regular outside counsel to help you see your blind spots and where you have room for growth. Or turn toward your journal and get curious on your own. What feedback are you getting from your organization? What might that feedback be showing you about the way you feel about yourself and the world? What learning can you find here?
2. Refocus on service: Actively set and reset your mind on serving others.
Relationships grow first from what we observe about others (like that instant chemistry we feel or body language we observe) followed by how the other person makes us feel. Then these feelings are reinforced over and over in our subconscious as we process thousands of data points with each interaction. It is a simple process with limitless complications.
When we actively focus our mindset on serving others, our body language, voices, posture, and language follow. We’re able to more easily connect with others on a human level, inspiring more positive feelings. Long before we meet someone new, we are preparing to connect and care, so that everything from the introduction on is already geared toward success.
Take Action: Reflect on the moment you met your trusted business partner, best friend, or the love of your life. What did it feel like, emotionally and physically? Who were you in that moment? Looking down from drone-view, what would you observe about the way you stood, the tone of your voice, the look on your face? What does this tell you about how you are when you want to know someone more? How often do you act the same way in a pitch meeting or interviews with prospective employees? How might you change if you ask yourself, “How will I be in service as a leader with this person?” every time you meet someone new?
3. Ask what others need: Serve others how they want to be served.
The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you want done unto you” can fall short in business leadership. Surprising? If you are always approaching people in the way that works best for you, there is no space to hear or serve in the ways that they need most.
Creating room to really listen — and pivot — will radically change how you lead and how you relate to the people you’re leading. It feels good to be asked what we want or what works best for us, so imagine how that investment will shift your employees when you invite them to share with you. Consider the shift:
- What’s the best way for you to receive feedback?
- Do group brainstorming sessions inspire your best ideas, or do you prefer to have solo time to be your most creative?
- How might this workflow work better for you?
This doesn’t mean you need to get overwhelmed by input on the process. Being a leader also requires that you set the course. But do create stops along the way where you ask your crew how they can contribute, participate, and invest the best. Then support them in service and care for the relationship you share. Side note: it’s much easier to do this when you’re making space to do work on yourself (go back to point #1 above to refresh on how to do that).
Take Action: Hold one-on-ones with team members and ask how you can better serve them. Or keep it within a structure by offering to scaffold for some team members, and giving others clear goals and then step out of the way. Be creative in how you approach this step. If you lead with the best interests of others in mind, you’ll make great strides.
4. Give. Receive. Sometimes say no: A healthy relationship requires reciprocity.
Being a servant leader does not mean giving unconditionally. You’re nurturing relationships here, which require that both parties contribute by both giving and receiving.
Receiving is hard for many leaders. Sure, you might expect a team member to turn in data analysis on time or log a certain number of sales per quarter, but you will need to receive more than the deliverables.
If you are in the practice of blocking your team’s efforts to support you, or if you turn down an offer to buy you a cappuccino, or dismiss congratulations, then you are actually denying the other person’s ability to grow the relationship with you. You’re cutting off half of the opportunity.
Service asks us to both offer and accept the abundance. That also doesn’t mean you ignore your boundaries. That invitation to Thanksgiving dinner with your new CMO’s family might feel really inappropriate. You can still say no with genuine thanks for the kind offer (and maybe a request for his amazing scratch apple pie recipe) as your form of acceptance.
Take Action: The next time an employee compliments you, accept it with thanks. Find other moments to receive graciously, reminding yourself that it is a critical part of your service to the relationship. If you find yourself resisting, ask yourself what makes it tricky and if you are willing to let that go for one minute, one hour or longer to see how it feels.
5. Empathy is essential: Travel on other people’s maps.
Your company and industry probably have a lot of jargon, so that you and your team feel like you speak the same language. A servant leader doesn’t assume, however, that every person attaches the same meaning to words that they do.
For example, if someone said, “I’m going to make $250,000 this year,” you might interpret that as being a lot of money and an ambitious endeavor. But they may be worrying about how they’re going to pay their bills.
Each person has their own map for the world. Every one of us navigates that terrain differently. Take some time to be mindful and relate to how others are walking through their experiences. What does it look and feel like to be on their map?
How does their race, gender identity, educational opportunities, socioeconomic status, upbringing, values, and beliefs impact their map and the course they take? What about their goals, fears, passions, and stresses? What do you connect to from your own journey, and where can you empathize.
Take Action: Don’t assume you understand a team member when they’re speaking about an issue. Ask clarifying questions and really listen to the responses. If in doubt, “tell me more” is a very effective strategy for opening up the conversation, as is clarifying the meaning of important words with “what do you specifically mean by ______?”
6. Safety first: Pause to consider what creates fear, procrastination, and stalling.
So many interactions are unsafe for others. Without safety, the other person can never truly open up and be vulnerable. Imagine trying to hang out with someone that’s afraid they’re in danger. Will they be focused on connecting? Will they present? Will they talk about things that are meaningful? Of course not. They’ll be focused on not dying.
As trivial as this might sound when we feel unsafe, we remain in fight or flight until the perceived danger is gone. Just like keeping the engine of the car running permanently in case you need to drive away in a hot second.
It’s our job as servant leaders to focus on ensuring our team feels safe, so we can bring them into a place where they can do their best, most creative work. This is where real bonds are formed and where servant leadership can really amp up. It is also a critical place where those diversity statements living in your company mission need to be put into action. Do more than ask how people from marginalized communities and identities are experiencing your workplace, their departments, or jobs. Really listen and invest in responses with care and follow-up.
Take Action: Consider introducing Red, Yellow, Green Check-Ins to your meetings and one-on-ones. By creating time and safe space for your team to bring in their whole self, no matter what issues have their attention, you are setting them up to do their best work.
7. Assume positive intent. Even when it is hard: See the positive, not just the behavior.
Humans are driven by pleasure or pain. It is how we make choices, even if it means we are discerning between pain and less pain. For example, if it is a choice between a delicious salad or boiled kale, what do you pick? What about boiled kale and undercooked liver? In both cases, you’re choosing the best of the available options.
In our daily working lives, a team member might make a rash decision to switch a pitch at a meeting, confusing everyone else at the table and fracturing the relationship with investors. While the behavior may have shown inexperience or wreaked havoc during a big opportunity, a servant leader would first ask, “And what positive intent led them to this behavior?”
This principle doesn’t excuse hurtful behavior, but it also allows time and space for empathy and deeper understanding. If they had a better, more pleasurable option, they would be making it. But when people do things that are not seen favorably, just remember it’s the best available option to them at that moment. If they had a better one, they would have taken it. A servant leader might respond by acknowledging that the employee is deeply committed to company success, and is a bold risk-taker, then setting up mentorship opportunities with high-stakes senior team members so they can learn how to channel that energy productively.
This is by far the hardest principle to accept, but it’s also the most empowering and the culmination of the first six principles.
If you can own this perspective and allow it to guide your interactions, you will shift how you see, invest, and honor your team members, especially through “bad” behavior or missteps. You will build empathy, nurture safety, walk their maps more often. You will be more apt to accept when they want to give back and do more as a way to grow through their own mistakes. And you will be committing to your own healthy internal relationship. It works, as hundreds of clients have exemplified.
Take Action: The next time you find yourself triggered by a colleague, take a moment to calm yourself, and get curious. Reflect on what the individual might be experiencing and see if you can come up with what may have been the intended positive outcome of their behavior. When you’re ready, address them directly by asking questions from curiosity and with the intent of truly trying to understand.
Nurture relationships and everything else — from work to dollars to experiences — will become easier, more effective, and ultimately, more abundant. Take action today with these seven principles and discover what is possible!
For additional ideas on this topic, check out episode 37 from The Reboot Podcast, Are You A Servant Leader?
