The Important Relationships behind Your Leadership Style

By Mike Brown of Brainzooming, and presenter of the TMSA Webinar on Strategic Relationships: "Creating Great Business Relationships" > Details

Have you ever considered who and what has defined you and your leadership style?

Most people who have considered this question have probably done so at a surface level. An unlikely source a couple of years ago, however, pushed my own thinking about examining this question in greater depth.

Several years ago, People Magazine published a special issue featuring the 100 celebrities who have most defined our time. As one might expect, People Magazine filled the list with celebrity profiles of those that have defined popular culture. If they are the same people who have defined us as individuals, however, we’re all in big trouble!

Although the list was scary in its own way, the underlying concept stood out as a wonderful leadership exercise.

Who Has Defined Your Leadership Style?

I highly recommend investing the time to identify the one hundred people who have most defined you and your leadership style. Listing these names might seem like a cakewalk, but personal experience and that of others that have taken up this challenge suggest it’s more difficult than you might think.

The first ten or twenty names might be obvious and come relatively quickly. By the fiftieth name, the rate at which you add new names to the list will likely slow appreciably. Don’t be surprised if the last ten take as long as the first fifty.

Developing your personal list of relationships that have defined your leadership style provides a wonderful opportunity for personal reflection. It also prompts you to evaluate whether you have adequately acknowledged, recognized, thanked, and shared what you’ve learned from these one hundred very important people in your life.

After completing the list, review it to identify the patterns and themes it suggests.

• Is there a reasonable mix of recent and long-ago influences or is it skewed to one time period? Would you benefit from more new influences or revisiting some of your foundational learnings more deliberately?
• How many of the people are you still in contact with and able to continue learning from them? Are there important people where there is an opportunity to re-establish a learning relationship?
• For how many of the people are the relationships two-way, where they’re also learning from and being influenced by you as well?
• What’s the balance of influences from your career, personal, work, and other aspects of your life? Is that balance serving you well?

While it’s certainly possible to generate your list in one sitting, don’t hesitate to take more time and revisit the list on multiple occasions to reflect and refine it.

Consider returning to your list on an annual basis to see how actively it has changed. While you want to work from a solid leadership foundation, changes in your list of important relationships over time suggest an openness to change and signal your continued growth as a leader.