Interpersonal Skills: Relationships Key to Leadership Success | Stepshift

Interpersonal Skills: Relationships Key to Leadership Success

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

As a leader, a key function you have is to influence key stakeholders, whether they are internal to the organisation or external. Your success in achieving this level of influence is often based less on your proposition than it is on your ability to build relationships with these stakeholders.

Developing these relationships relies on your interpersonal skills and when they are strong you can build trusting and effective relationships without having a lot of time available.

Everyone is different and so the way you build a relationship with one stakeholder will be different to how you do it with another, and some people you will feel you can relate to more easily than others.

Having said this, if there are two skills or attributes you can develop and utilise under the interpersonal skills heading they are:

  • Care and Interest: To get the best from a relationship you need to develop a genuine care for and interest in that person. If you think they are a prat, the relationship will always be compromised.
  • Understanding: Take time to understand them. What do they want, why, where are they heading, what are their interests / family situation etc? Genuinely understand them and be prepared to let them get to know you.

There’s an old saying that carries weight in the leadership arena: “It’s not what you know it’s who you know”. As a leader the more focus you put into developing relationships and the more you develop your capability in this area, the more success you are likely to have and at the same time dramas are likely to reduce.

Contact us to positively impact your communication and interpersonal skills or return to the Stepshift Leadership Blog for more business advice.

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