While SRE is a concept I developed, it has many precedents. Several decades of a growing body of business literature supports the value of team-building, consensus building, and other relational activities for strategic leadership and successful organizational change management. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about the “beloved community.” His core belief was that increasing cooperation among allies and winning the friendship of opponents made it possible to live and work together productively.
King’s idea successfully launched an unprecedented measure of social change. Applying his ideas to business, bridging the gap even among those with opposing views can achieve consensus so each party gains something while the wider society also benefits. For companies, this has become the coveted triple bottom line in 21st century business: people, planet, profit.
When business leaders rise above their biases about the capacities, or even validity, of certain stakeholders they engage more effectively with a broader spectrum strengthening decision-making. Some believe status comes from fiercely protecting control and territorial power. But my experience shows that the more inclusive the style of leadership, the greater success the company achieves.
Roadmap Process
When executives learn and embrace the vital mechanisms of relationship-building, businesses can sustain Strategic Relational Engagement and more assuredly solidify long-term success. In doing so, they become engagement leaders. I’ve broken the SRE process down to three main pillars: (I) Create Value through SRE; (II) Overcome Obstacles to SRE; and (III) Sustain SRE for the long-term.
And I’ve mapped each of those pillars into three sub-categories. For example, to create value through SRE, leaders must understand: the capabilities they already have and which they need to acquire; the conditions they must create or eliminate; and the processes that will move them forward.
Making an honest, straightforward, assessment of your company’s SRE capabilities, conditions and processes allows you to properly evaluate strengths, weaknesses and untapped resources. As great ideas and insightful observations can come from the most unexpected sources, to begin creating SRE in your company, encourage managers and their teams to do this at each level of your operation.
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