In this time of tremendous economic upheaval and great change, giving attention to the quality of your interactions and engagement with both external and internal customers will be a key factor in maintaining and growing your business, maximizing value, fostering collaborations, and retaining valued team members. In this issue of eBridge we invite you to consider the importance of Strategic Relationship Management and offer a process and tools for developing and assessing your current strategic relationships.
Organizational leaders operate within a complex web of interconnections internally (within departments, across business units, often across a global enterprise) and externally (with individual vendors and often multi-party customer teams). The quality of a working relationship greatly impacts the outcome of transactions. Strategic Relationship Management involves proactive thinking and action, and can enhance your ability to address change effectively. Ki ThoughtBridge offers several models and tools to help leaders assess the quality of their strategic relationships and build skills for relationship management.
We define Strategic Relationships as:
Relationship Management is:
The following six elements can enhance your organization's capacity for Strategic Relationship Management:
1) Establish clear goals:
In defining your goals, envision both the desired business outcomes and your desired relationship outcomes. In defining relationship outcomes consider ways in which the relationship can be mutually beneficial to both parties. Start by building a mutual understanding of each party's short and long-term business goals, current challenges, and potential risks. Jointly envision the ideal descriptors of your working relationship. For example, we encourage our clients to evaluate their working relationships with the goal of being able to describe them in the following ways:
2) Build alignment:
Once relationship goals are clearly articulated and both parties have defined their desired business outcomes, it is key that the goals are communicated and aligned across departments that may impact the relationship. Scheduling ongoing interactions to monitor the relationship and the business outcomes to determine if the relationship is producing the business results all parties want can be the difference between long-term success and failure. Through such ongoing interactions relationship partners jointly anticipate and plan for problems before they arise.
3) Conduct a relationship audit:
Assessing the fabric of the current working relationship provides a basis from which the relationship can grow and develop. As the working relationships unfold, we recommend both parties complete a thorough assessment of the quality of the relationship using mutually agreed upon criteria, then dialogue about their individual perceptions. (Please click here) to view an example of one of Ki Thoughtbridge's relationship assessment tools. Testing perceptions and reading reality truthfully sets forth a clear understanding of where the working relationship is currently and helps to define the future relationship potential. As you audit the relationships consider the degree to which trust is present between the parties.
Building Mutual Trust:
At the heart of all effective relationships is the ability of the parties to establish and sustain mutual trust and respect. There is a vast difference between building client rapport and building client trust. When organizations focus on building client rapport, they often characterize relationships in terms of a series of transactions and may tend to protect individual interests versus balancing the interests of all the parties. As relationships move into the realm of the trusted advisor, the parties are each improved, find mutual benefit in the relationship, and value the long-term sustainability of the relationship. There is a deeper level of communication in which goals for the working relationship are discussed explicitly. The parties consult with each other before making decisions that impact the other. Overall, there is ease within the relationship which allows difficult messages to be delivered with honesty and integrity.
Our experience suggests that developing trust evolves from dialogue that deepens the parties understanding of how each has experienced trust, or the absence of trust, in past relationships. Trust is developed through a shared understanding of trustworthy behaviors; for example, discretion, receptivity, and active listening. Framing a common language also deepens the capacity for building trust. Through our work in organizational and leadership development we have engaged hundreds of leaders in discussions on the topic of trust and the process of fostering trust-based relationships.
We have invited leaders across sectors and across the globe to consider the definition of the phrase “To Hold In Trust©.” When parties in a strategic relationship truly understand what it means to hold one another in trust, they develop deep caring and respect, and receive the gift of relationship commitment. (Note: For more insight into the phrase To Hold In Trust©, see the resource section of this edition.)
Research conducted in 2002 by The Institute for Knowledge Based Organizations suggests that three types of trust are essential for the transfer of knowledge and information, which is an essential element in relationship development. These three types of trust include:
The degree to which the parties in a relationship feel they have established each of these levels of trust will positively impact the long-term sustainability and vitality of the relationship and the ability of the partners to share information and knowledge.
4) Develop a clear relationship strategy:
With a clear diagnosis of both the current working relationship and the preferred relationship, it is possible to focus on developing a relationship strategy to bridge the gap between the real and the ideal. A first step may include the need for building adaptive skills that foster the capacity for cooperative communication, successful conflict resolution and joint problem identification, and problem solving. Providing internal team members with training and the opportunity to practice such skills elevates their confidence in relationship management.
5) Create a joint procedural agreement on “how” the relationship strategy will be implemented:
Once the parties have identified their mutual interests and defined the relationship strategy, it is important to put together a written procedural agreement to define the ground rules for working together (for example, communication protocols, the management of confidentiality, media relations, etc.) and the roles and responsibilities each party will assume in enhancing and monitoring the relationship. This agreement lays out what each party will do in the event of a disagreement or problem and defines the communication channels and procedures for resolving differences. The goal of such an agreement is to assist the parties to separate relationship issues from substantive issues. Mixing substance with process can be damaging to relationships. Choosing to be unconditionally constructive on relationships and acting in a manner that strengthens every element of the relationship does not mean always having to agree. Procedural agreements allow the parties to avoid miscommunications and misperceptions, and to address potential conflict.
6) Implement and monitor the strategy:
Implementing and monitoring the strategy involves reviewing steps one through five, and giving ongoing attention to the larger context and set of complexities in which the working relationship operates. Personal experiences, industry trends, state, national, and global events add to the complexity of strategic relationships. Thus monitoring the effectiveness of strategic relationships includes giving attention to the complex web in which the relationship resides.
We believe the leader's ability to maximize organizational goals depends in great part on his or her ability to work with others. Max DePree (1989) notes, “In most vital organizations there is a common bond of interdependence, mutual interest, interlocking contributions, and simple joy.”2 DePree recognizes that effective leaders move beyond the superficial in their relationships and risk intimacy, which he defines as the experience of ownership. Strategic Relationship Management requires leaders to truly “own” responsibility for their customer relationships shifting as DePree suggests from a legalistic and contractual framework to "a covenantal relationship which rests on shared commitment to ideas, to issues, values, to goals and to management processes."3 Giving attention to building this deeper level of relationship with strategic internal and external customers provides organizations with a steadfast foundation to weather the winds of great change.
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Sources:
1 Adapted from Trust and Knowledge Sharing: A Critical Combination by Daniel Z. Levin, Rob Cross, Lisa Abrahams and Eric Lesser, Institute for Knowledge Based Organizations, IBM, May 2002
2 DePree, Max, Leadership is an Art, New York Dell Publishing, 1989 (101)
3 DePree, Max, Leadership is an Art, New York Dell Publishing, 1989 (60)
About the Author
Joanna M. Murray is a Senior Associate with Ki ThoughtBridge. With Joanna's assistance, Ki ThoughtBridge has integrated its impressive reputation in the fields of negotiation, conflict resolution, and mediation with the expertise and intellectual property she helped to develop while leading Trustee Leadership Development, Inc. (TLD). Joanna has helped us develop new models allowing us to integrate the latest research and theory in leadership development into our work. Read more about Joanna.