Leadership Horizons

The Power of Strong Relationships

• Lois Burton • Episode 28

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What carries us through our most challenging moments? It's not our strategies or systems, but our people and the quality of our relationships with them. Welcome to the fifth episode in our resilience series where we dive deep into how strong working relationships form the foundation of resilience for both individuals and organizations.

Through my work with hundreds of leadership teams, I've identified five critical elements that distinguish resilient teams from those that crumble under pressure. 

We explore each pillar in detail: 

active support during challenging times, where team members step in without being asked when others struggle; 

maintaining effective communication under pressure, when most teams default to their worst communication patterns; 

trust and psychological safety, the confidence that your team has your back when things go wrong; 

leveraging diverse relationships for problem-solving, where different perspectives become essential for navigating complexity; 

and empathy and understanding, developing emotional intelligence at scale.

I share a powerful story about an executive team at a major retail organization facing market disruption during the pandemic. Their transformation from talented individuals into a resilient team demonstrates how these five pillars don't just add up—they multiply each other. As their CEO later reflected, "Our relationships weren't separate from our business strategy. They were our business strategy." 

This episode provides practical steps you can take right now to strengthen the relationship foundation of resilience in your own team. Remember, resilience isn't about being strong enough to handle anything alone; it's about building relationships strong enough to handle anything together. Join us next week as we explore the final pillar of resilient leadership in our continuing series.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Leadership Horizons, where we discuss leadership at its most transformative. I'm Lois Burton and if this is your first time joining us, I'm an executive coach in leadership development specialty. This is episode five in our resilience series. During the last few weeks, we've been exploring the pillars of resilience and this week we're looking at another crucial element nurturing strong working relationships. Because resilience that ability to bounce back, adapt and thrive through adversity isn't just about individual grit or personal strength. It's fundamentally about the quality of our relationships. Strong working relationships form the bedrock of resilience, both for individuals and entire organizations. Because here's what I've discovered in my work with senior leadership teams when the pressure is on, when uncertainty hits, when the ground shifts beneath our feet, it's not our strategies or our systems that carry us. When the ground shifts beneath our feet, it's not our strategies or our systems that carry us through first, it's our people. Let me start with a story that illustrates this perfectly. A few years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was working with the executive team of a major retail organization. Like everyone else, they were facing what felt like an impossible challenge the complete market disruption, and that threatened everything they built. In our first session, the CEO said something that stuck with me Lois, we've got great individual performers, but I'm not sure we have a great team, and that was the moment where I knew exactly where we needed to focus. And that was the moment where I knew exactly where we needed to focus.

Speaker 1:

Through my work with hundreds of leadership teams, I've identified five critical elements that distinguish resilient teams from those that crumble under pressure. So let's explore each one. The first pillar is what I call active support during challenging times. This isn't about being nice to each other when everything's going well. Anyone can do that. This is about what happens when the pressure is on. In resilient teams, I see something beautiful happen. When one team member is struggling, others step in without being asked. They redistribute workloads, they offer expertise, they provide emotional support. But here's the key this isn't random acts of kindness. This is systematic, intentional support that happens because the team has built that muscle. Think about it this way if you're in a rowing crew and one rower starts to falter, the others don't just row harder to compensate. They adjust their rhythm, they check in, they find ways to support that person back to full strength, and that's what resilient teams do.

Speaker 1:

The retail team I mentioned earlier. Once we helped them build this pillar, they transformed how they handled their market disruption. Instead of individuals fighting their own battles, they became a unified force, each person knowing they had the full support of their colleagues. I've seen the reverse of this very recently, speaking to one of my coachees who was saying that in the organization she's currently working in, the exact opposite is happening. People are just getting their heads down, they're becoming isolated, they're moving back into their silos and she said to me there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to speak about what's going wrong or what's going right, there's no support and everyone feels very fragile and they're fighting their own corner. This organization is in deep trouble. Organization is in deep trouble, so absolutely thinking about how you can provide active support during challenging times is so important.

Speaker 1:

The second pillar is maintaining effective communication under pressure. Now, we all know communication is important, but what I've observed is that pressure has a way of destroying our communication habits faster than almost anything else. Under stress, we can default to our worst communication patterns. We become short, we assume others understand what we're thinking. We stop listening properly, we avoid difficult conversations, but resilient teams have learned to do the opposite. They've practiced what I call pressure point communication. They know how to be direct without being harsh, how to ask for help without appearing weak, how to deliver difficult messages with clarity and care. And they've learned that in high pressure situations you need to over communicate, not under communicate. Examples can include daily check-ins, weekly pressure releases, monthly strategic reviews. Resilient teams don't abandon communication. When things get tough, they intensify it.

Speaker 1:

The third pillar is trust and psychological safety, and this might be the most crucial one of all. Amy Edmondson's groundbreaking work on psychological safety shows us that when people feel safe to speak up to make mistakes, to speak up to make mistakes, to ask questions, teams perform at their highest level. But here's what I've learned through my coaching practice. Psychological safety isn't just about feeling comfortable. It's about feeling confident that your team has your back, especially when things go wrong. In one of my team coaching engagements with the higher education leadership team, we uncovered something powerful. The team thought that they trusted each other, but when we dug deeper, we realized that they trusted each other with the easy stuff, the routine decisions, the comfortable conversations, but they hadn't learned to trust each other with their vulnerabilities, their uncertainties and their fears. We focused on building that deeper level of trust and it transformed their resilience. When the next crisis hit and let's face it, in today's world, there's always a next crisis they didn't retreat into individual silos. They moved toward each other, sharing concerns openly, asking for help without shame, and collaborating at a level that I'd never seen before.

Speaker 1:

The fourth pillar is about leveraging diverse relationships. Problem solving Resilient teams understand that different perspectives aren't just nice to have. They're essential for navigating complexity. I've seen this play out in my work with leadership teams across different sectors. The most resilient teams actively seek out diverse viewpoints. They don't just tolerate different approaches to problem solving, they celebrate them. They understand that their individual blind spots can become collective insight. The fifth pillar is empathy and understanding, and this is where the human element of leadership really shines.

Speaker 1:

Resilient teams have developed emotional intelligence at scale the ability to read, understand and respond to the emotional needs of the team, not just the individuals. This doesn't mean they're soft or that they avoid difficult decisions. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Because they understand each other at a deeper level, they can challenge each other more effectively, support each other more precisely and work together more powerfully. So pulling it all together. Here's what's fascinating about these five pillars they don't just add up, they multiply each other. When you have active support and effective communication and trust and diverse problem solving and empathy, something magical happens. The team becomes more resilient than the sum of its parts. So that retail team I mentioned at the beginning, they not only survived the pandemic and that market disruption, they thrived. They have become industry leaders in adaptation and innovation and when I asked the CEO what made the difference, he said you helped us realize that our relationships weren't separate from our business strategy. They were our business strategy.

Speaker 1:

So as we wrap up today's exploration, I want to leave you with some practical steps you can take right now to strengthen the relationship foundation of resilience in your own team. First, assess honestly, when pressure hits your team, what happens to your relationships. Do you move toward one another or away from one another? Secondly, invest in your communication systems. Don't wait for a crisis to figure out how to talk to each other effectively. Thirdly, build trust through small actions.

Speaker 1:

Trust isn't built in grand gestures. It's built in daily interactions and kept commitments in consistent care for each other. Fourthly, actively seek out and celebrate different perspectives. Make diversity of thought a competitive advantage. And finally, practice empathy as a leadership skill Understanding your team members as whole human beings isn't soft leadership, it's strategic leadership. Remember, resilience isn't about being strong enough to handle anything alone. It's about building relationships that are strong enough to handle anything together. Thanks so much for joining me on Leadership Horizons today. I'm Lois Burton and I believe that the future of leadership is relational. Next week we'll be exploring the final pillar of resilient leadership, so make sure you're subscribed. Until then, keep building those relationships that will carry you through whatever horizons away. Thank you and goodbye.