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Today on the podcast, we have David Nour, a trusted adviser to global clients, corporate leaders and rising entrepreneurs and the author of the recent book, Curve Benders. David is an expert in Relationship Economics: how to build enduring relationships that last a lifetime. Inside this episode, David shares how deepening relationships is the way to succeed in today’s distributed workplace.
David proposes three relationship centered goals for leadership development in a hybrid work environment that allow leaders to both deepen their relationships and stretch the true potential of their teams no matter where they are.
Relationships: Your Company’s Biggest Undervalued Asset
Companies rarely tap into their biggest undervalued asset: relationships. Strategic relationship planning is the most important part of a business strategy, yet is often overlooked.
The question for leaders today is, how do you build that relationship centric team, especially now where many teams are not getting together physically?
Goal #1 Relationships Before Business
Early in David’s career, he thought about how he could combine the art and science of relationships to teach people how to identify, build, nurture, and sustain valued relationships beyond the inauthentic “networking” lessons. David wants to teach the following practices.
Unlike typical – and often ineffective networking approaches–David talks about the value of relationship deposits, where you cannot ask for a favor until you’ve earned the right to do so.
With his experience living in several cultures, David was able to see the vastly different ideologies within relationship economics in different countries compared to America. In other countries like Iran, Asia and Latin America, relationships are built first before two people conduct business.
Unfortunately, we as Americans are so focused on the business first, that we typically don’t focus on relationships until after there is a good business fit. Once the business part works, we then begin forming relationships.
But when it comes to having a successful business, leaders must remember that people will prioritize who they will invest in based on their relationship with you. Their relationship with you is based on four considerations: know, like, trust and respect. Relationships must be first, you must get other people to know, like, trust and respect you before you engage in business. Trying to bypass these four factors rarely works. To be an effective leader for your hybrid teams and for your customer, it is so important to build relationships first before doing business.
Goal #2 Build Relationship Centric Teams
Relationship centric teams have three characteristics:
- A defined set of personal characteristics
Relationship centric teams need a clearly defined set of characteristics that they know are required for that team to succeed. The team then needs to be clear on further developing these characteristics. Many teams look for characteristics such as grit, personal accountability, responsibility and proactiveness.
- Trust.
Trust is easy to talk about, but incredibly difficult to build, nurture, and sustain. Trust takes years to develop, and an instant to destroy it. When it is destroyed, it’s often because one is Pennywise and pound foolish. Relationship centric teams are skilled in developing trust and having conversations around when trust is broken.
- Proactive Execution
Relationship centric teams are proactive. They execute quickly and efficiently, and leverage their creativity. In order to be proactive, a team needs to be centered on having strong relationships with each other so that when there are breakdowns, they can be handled quickly, efficiently and deepen the relationships.
Goal #3 Innovative Curriculum and More Coaching
The modern day organizational structure was formed in World War I. This structure is focused on command and control, and focused on establishing structure, discipline, consistency and execution. Because of this, our current structure is incredibly outdated and it’s incongruent with the needs of the current dynamic market. This demands that we need to dramatically reinvent our leadership development programs.
Innovative & Effective Leadership Development Curriculum
How we work has changed drastically, from how we communicate, to how we engage and influence. Even the role of mental health in the workplace is different now. Yet, many leadership programs overlook these factors, and they continue to teach outdated programs that don’t fully serve the needs of today. Successful hybrid teams and companies are focused on finding innovative leadership development that is effective in solving the problems of today and tomorrow.
More Mentoring & Coaching
Formal leadership development instructions are not enough to suffice the needs of today’s organizations. Companies need dramatically stronger mentoring and coaching programs whether they are formal or informal. Athletes and great entertainers that are already doing well hire coaches to take them to a new level and so should companies.
Formal and informal coaching and mentoring will challenge a lot of our assertions and assumptions about leadership as we continue to lead teams that work from anywhere.
About David Nour
A senior leadership/board advisor, educator, executive coach, and bestselling author, David Nour is internationally recognized as the leading expert on applications of strategic relationships in profitable growth, sustained innovation, and lasting change.
The author of eleven books, including bestsellers Relationship Economics® (Wiley) – forthcoming in its 3rd edition, Co-Create (St. Martin’s Press), and Curve Benders (Wiley, 2021), Nour serves as a trusted advisor to global clients and coaches corporate leaders.
He is an adjunct professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and was named to the Global Gurus Top 30 Leadership Professionals and the Thinkers 50 Radar Class of 2021 lists. A Forbes Leadership contributor on the Future of Work, and an Inc. contributor on Relationship Economics, Nour’s unique insights have been featured in various prominent publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Huffington Post Business, Entrepreneur, and Knowledge@Wharton. He’s also the host of the popular Curve Benders podcast.
Born in Iran, Nour immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager with $100, limited family ties and no fluency in English. He graduated from Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in business management and went on to earn an Executive MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He resides in Atlanta, GA, with his family. Learn more at www.NourGroup.com.
Hear What Global Clients Say about Working with Nour
To learn more about goals for leadership development, download this episode now.
Online Courses for Leaders Leading a Team From Anywhere:
Check out these online courses for remote leaders from the Team Anywhere Team.
