Don't call me uncle - How formality can benefit leadership relationships

When I was nine years old, I travelled with my mother and three sisters from North London to a far corner of the United Kingdom. We were on our way to meet my mother’s god father - a second world war army veteran and Special Forces Operative widely thought to be the model for Ian Fleming’s fictional character James Bond.

I don’t remember many adults from my childhood, but I remember him as perhaps the most formal man that I had ever met.

I distinctly remember driving on to his property and glancing up at a surveillance camera monitoring the entrance, as our car rattled over a cattle grate to keep out local livestock. After driving up a windy, wooded road we were met by an elderly man stood outside prepared to greet us. He told my mother that he had a movement sensor on the gate that alerted him to our arrival.

It was my first time meeting him, and after saying hello he clearly stated that we were to refer to him only as Mr. Richard. This struck me as strange because all the adults and family friends I knew were referred to as ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunty’ and unlike the awkward embraces or small talk I encountered with other adults; he had simply laid down a firm relational boundary in our first meeting, it all felt remarkably formal. As I walked into his house I looked at the war memorabilia displayed in glass cabinets and the thick war books on the coffee table and felt confused by Mr. Richard. I was further confused when I tried to go in to his kitchen which was locked with an alarm on the outside - keeping out hungry young intruders.

As an adult I realise that Mr. Richard’s relational formality was perhaps representative of an older generation’s approach to adult-child relationships, but one that inevitably would have been significantly shaped through him spending the majority of his adult life in the army - the most rigid and formal of human organisations. As a leader who would have needed to direct men and women into enemy fire and encourage them to perform their duties in the face of existential threats, I imagine his formality and rigid hierarchical control served him well in combat.

When I recall my interactions with him, I am struck by how formality is increasingly rare within the modern workplace; especially management relationships between leaders and their subordinates - where they most clearly manifest. Formal relationships that are pre-determined with procedural rules for how people relate to each other have largely disappeared with cultural shifts towards flattened hierarchies; the removal of titles and vulnerability and transparency being encouraged in our leaders. The positive aspects of this informality are workplaces and leaders that are more focussed on the socio-emotional needs of their employees, and places where ideas are shared freely with less bureaucratic red tape in decision making processes. Organisations are becoming less driven by maintaining traditional structures and are more interested in understanding how to release the disruptive potential of their employees to help them evolve and remain competitive.

When I first entered the workplace I didn’t tend to like incredibly formal leaders; whose emotional distance I could experience as cold and unnerving. Like many people that I encounter in organisations, I often automatically equated formality with a person being disinterested in me and unwilling to reveal aspects of themselves. When I later trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist I was hugely resistant to the formalities that are typically followed in terms of precise timings; the lack of personal disclosure and explicit relational rules about how we practice. I had imagined that an effective therapeutic relationship within which clients are sharing the most intimate aspects of their lives would need to be one in which I reciprocated the openness and transparency they were invited to display.

But after practicing as a psychotherapist and training leaders in formal and informal organisations, I have realised that formality doesn’t necessarily mean coldness as it is often portrayed. It exists for more that the desire to be distant, non-transparent or relationally rigid and has a purpose when employed intelligently. Formality in relationships is related to how we boundary our relationships to maximise the effectiveness of the interactions with them. It is the ability to lay aside self-expression for the purpose of creating a relationship that has a special purpose for yourself and another person. It is not depriving a relationship of warmth but attuning ourselves to a person’s needs within a prescribed relationship. Boundaries can offer stability, emotional containment and provide spaces to develop focussed relationships.

Whilst Mr. Richard’s formality was too cold, rigid and emotionally distant, especially for a nine year old boy, what could be the benefits of introducing formal boundaries and relational processes within management relationships in your workplace?

1. Formality can be a powerful demonstration that your management relationship matters. Often the most important human interactions or moments are surrounded with formal proceedings. Think of the carefully choreographed moments in a weddings or milestone birthday parties. These events are often planned meticulously as a way of showing care and importance and people have clearly defined roles. Guests don’t simply turn up but they arrive on time and dress in their best attire. Formality is a way to show respect for people and for the interpersonal space that you are creating together.

2. Formality sets clear relational expectations in management relationships. Formality enables leaders to set clear boundaries and create explicit agreements about how their relationship will be defined. Within informal management relationships the boundaries can be ambiguous and there is a higher opportunity for implicit bias to have an impact on the dynamics. When two parties in a management relationship have misaligned expectations there is the potential for frustration and dissatisfaction when needs are unmet.

3. Formality removes relational anxiety in management relationships. Formality often provides people with emotional containment and offers predictable, safe relational interactions. Within dependent or power relationships the psychoanalytic concept of ‘transference’ is often prevalent. This describes a situation where a supervisee or line report may unconsciously transfer previous experiences from past dependent relationships (personal and professional) on to the leader - distorting the relational dynamic. If a relationship is left unboundaried then it can drift ambiguously down unhelpful unconscious relational routes that can interfere with the production of a healthy working relationship.

4. Formality creates functional focus in management relationships. In formal relationships you are more task focused and it is easier for both parties to think objectively about the relationship and their respective roles and remits. Conversations about a person’s functional performance can be challenging and clear boundaries mitigate against the risk of powerful emotions dominating or derailing conversations. They enable leaders to address sensitive issues regarding behaviour and performance that run the risk of being experienced as personal attacks or threatening in an informal relational context.

So perhaps you are interested in introducing more ‘formality’ in to your relationships, here are four ways that you can start to do this.

1. Schedule regular meetings and stick to them. The first steps to increasing formality in your relationships would be to simply schedule regular meetings with line reports; stick to these meetings; arrive on time and conduct them using a predictable procedural template. Booking meetings haphazardly, cancelling them or arriving late will likely be experienced as disorientating and uncaring by an individual.

2. Create formal spaces to further embed relational boundaries. Creating formal physical spaces for supervisory conversations has the ability to reinforce the procedural rules that you intend for that relationship. The leader needs to be intentional about creating a space that has privacy and where the room layout is appropriately formal to set the right relational tone for the conversation being had. For example, a coffee shop would not be the right setting for a performance review where emotions are often heightened, difficult conversations may need to be had and confidentiality is essential.

3. Collaboratively set expectations with others. Reflect on the relationships that you have as a leader and think about the boundaries of them according to the role of the relationship, their personality/needs and their position within the organisation. Sit down with that person and think collaboratively about the boundaries of your relationship and how you can most effectively work together.

4. Maintain an interest in the socio-emotional needs of others. Being formal does not mean being cold, it means defining the relationship and ensuring that it is of benefit to the individual. Some of the most formal, boundaried people are those that often create the most space to focus on the wider holistic needs of the person that they are managing.

5. Remain flexible and open to renegotiating boundaries. Relationships change over time and within a changing context your management relationships people will require different types of boundaries. These should be fluid and negotiable and the use of ‘formality’ should be intentional and used to serve the aim and focus of the relationship.