Moving Forward: Balancing ‘Doing’ and ‘Caring’

“I’m struggling to get back to the ‘task’ focus I had with people pre-Covid”, said a CEO I spoke to recently. The crisis required him to step more into ‘relationship’ than ever before. Checking how people are doing – professionally and personally, asking questions, listening and truly seeking to understand them, their concerns and their world. In my conversations with leaders I noticed that many switched into what I call ‘relationship mode’. Rather than pursuing the usual ‘how are you doing against your objectives?’, the conversations were more personal, simply enquiring about how people are. I remember one conversation with a senior team early on in the crisis, where one leader said “All we are doing is listening to people’. Is that okay? It feels strange. Do we need to do anything else?” They found themselves in a new place, a place that required different approaches. Instinctively many knew that they simply needed to be more human, more caring. The ‘old’ objective driven approach seemed wrong and out of place.

In that process many leaders have discovered a new side to themselves. They’ve shown care, compassion and understanding. Skills they had but might not have applied at work. These are in fact, incredibly useful leadership skills and often underrepresented in the world of work, particularly at the top or from the top.

One of the secrets of effective leadership lies in the balance of ‘task’ and ‘relationship’. In my role as an accredited lead facilitator of the Positive Power and Influence® Programmes, we refer to this as The Influence Balance Beam. We need to balance the need to get stuff done with maintaining and potentially even enhancing the relationships. If all you ever do is focus on getting stuff done without regard for the relationships, you might come across as self-centred, aggressive and non-caring. And yes, people might do what you asked of them but rather reluctantly and only because you have authority (i.e. positional power). When they can, they might well find ways of undermining you.

Equally, if you put too much emphasis on the relationship, then you might come across as too soft, fluffy and unfocussed – over time people will see you as nice but ineffective or even avoiding.

So, if you are one of the leaders who found themselves being more relationship focussed during the crisis, you might want to reflect on how you found that, what was the impact on you and those you interacted with and how might you build a little of that into your working life. At the same time it can be challenging to find your way back to the task side. The world has gone back into a form of equilibrium and businesses need to move forward. You might well want to pick up your more objective driven approach again. As I said before the secret lies in the balance. Every situation requires a different level of balance. With a new direct report you might focus predominantly on relationship, aiming to get to know each other. With someone who isn’t performing despite repeated feedback and support, you might want to focus more on the task element.

Any interaction is likely to need both, task and relationship focus. Focusing solely on one is most likely never the correct answer. However, sometimes the balance will be 50 / 50, sometimes 10 / 90. The crucial question is what are you trying to achieve and therefore what balance is required.

A wise leader knows that at the end of the day it’s the quality of their relationships that enables them to get stuff done.