The strategic and intimate balance

Are you being too strategic? 

As we’ve shared recently, strategy is key to organizational success. But strategy alone will only get you so far. It’s the people who execute your strategy who are truly essential to your success. 

And people are more than just goals, work plans, budgets, and tasks. While that may seem obvious, it’s amazing how easily we can swing in the direction of focusing our work relationships on just those ‘strategic’ things.  How many times have you had an exchange with a colleague that started with, “Hi, what happened with XXX?” rather than, “Hi, how are you doing today?” Sometimes jumping right into things is okay and needed. However, organizations that only focus on the work product and not on the people delivering them will not be as successful in the long-term.  

High performing, effective organizations strike a balance between intimate and strategic interactions.

• Intimate - these interactions are about bringing people together and enhancing connection by caring about people’s feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Essentially, this is the “team-building” side of your work, and this matters because it allows people to feel connected, supported, and cared for.

• Strategic - these interactions tend to be more focused on goals and tasks. Strategic interactions often use hierarchical power and are less concerned with equality. They’re about getting things done.

Whether you’re working in person or remotely, there are some easy ways to enhance connection, relationships, and intimacy within your team. We know and recognize that most of our work environments and cultures are extremely formal, and building intimacy with your team may at first feel daunting and uncomfortable. But it can be done, and the rewards are a stronger, more connected and effective team. It is critical to be authentic in the way you approach this, so adapt the following tips to your style.

Encourage participation.

• In meetings, always start with a check in question to get everyone’s voice ‘in the room’ and to help build trust. 

• Mix things up. Even in team meetings, try different configurations of break-out groups - pairs, trios, and larger groups - in order to give everyone a chance to input into the topic being discussed.

• When using Zoom try to have people use cameras if bandwidth allows.

• As a leader, turn to a colleague that doesn’t often speak up and ask them for their thoughts on a topic.

Encourage space for non-work related news.

• Set up a group platform (e.g. WhatsApp, Slack channel, facebook private group, etc.) where your team can share personal updates, e.g. sharing pictures of their child’s birthday party, or a beautiful landscape photo. This can go a long way in helping team members feel more connected on a personal level to each other.

• Mark people’s birthdays. Have a shared calendar or a person dedicated to remembering to mark everyone special day!

Model intimate behaviors as a leader.

• As a leader, whether a CEO or a head of a department, you want to model and encourage this type of intimate interaction. Be the first person to share a personal update with your team. Make sure you’re comfortable with what you’re sharing: being personal doesn’t have to mean revealing or sensitive. 

• Personal struggles and crises inevitably affect our work. Appropriate levels of sharing when things are difficult will build trust with your teammates and provide opportunities for your team to help each other when someone is distracted or unavailable due to personal issues. 

• The most important foundation for building intimacy in teams is for leaders to genuinely care about their people beyond work performance - to be genuinely interested in their lives, struggles, priorities and families.

Carve out time for non-work related conservation.

• Don’t just jump into work discussion. Instead take the time to ask how someone is doing, to hear about their family or hobbies and their life outside of work. Because we’re busy it’s easy to brush over these discussions, but they matter and  the more you listen genuinely, the more you’ll find connections and will care.

Celebrate wins, together.

• Celebrate major milestones for team members - both personal and professional. This could be a graduation, a wedding, the birth of a child or a successful grant application or project conclusion. The act of joining together in the celebration of a positive event can be bonding and sets a great tone for what matters to the organization.

We want to stress the point about striking a balance between these two types of relationships. We’re not suggesting you spend 50% of your time in every interaction asking someone about their personal life or sharing details about yours. However, we do recommend you are intentional about taking time to consciously nurture intimacy when you can, as this investment will help you to achieve your tactical, or practical, goals.

Read the full newsletter here: Maliasili Reader Issue 23

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