What kind of relationship do you cultivate with your team ...

Building Developmental Relationships as a Leader

Dear leaders,

First, let me wish you a joyous and heartwarming Merry Christmas! This festive season is a time for gratitude, connection, and reflection—the perfect moment to think about how we, as leaders, can nurture meaningful growth in those we lead. Today, let’s explore the concept of developmental relationships and how they shape extraordinary leaders.

Leadership isn’t merely about achieving targets; it’s about enabling others to discover their potential and thrive. A developmental relationship is a cornerstone of this mission, blending intentional actions and thoughtful approaches to help others grow. Let’s delve into the four key roles leaders can adopt and how they transform lives:

Sponsorship: Advocating for Growth

Sponsorship is about being a champion for your team members. It involves leveraging your position and influence to create opportunities for them—opportunities they might not access on their own. It’s externally driven, focused on actionable support, and answers the crucial question: How can I help you move forward?

Great sponsors don’t just point to open doors; they actively open them, enabling career advancement and fostering confidence. Sponsorship is often outward-facing and involves visible, tangible actions that demonstrate trust and belief in the potential of the individual.

Mentoring: Guiding Through Insight

Mentorship is the art of sharing wisdom to illuminate the path ahead. Unlike sponsorship, which provides direct support, mentoring focuses on developing perspective. By asking reflective questions like, What lessons can you take from this? or How does this align with your goals?, mentors encourage self-discovery and thoughtful growth.

Mentoring is externally oriented but introspective in its approach. It emphasizes creating an environment where individuals can reflect on their experiences, supported by the mentor’s insights. Through this exchange, mentees gain clarity and direction, making mentoring a blend of guidance and exploration.

Advising: Offering Clarity Through Expertise

Advising addresses specific challenges by providing clear, actionable guidance. It’s internally driven, aimed at solving problems and offering solutions. When team members face uncertainty and ask, What should I do?, advisors step in with their experience and expertise to provide well-considered answers.

Advising facilitates an internal process by addressing immediate concerns and equipping individuals with practical solutions tailored to their unique situations. It’s less about exploring possibilities and more about delivering clarity and actionable steps, enabling individuals to move forward confidently.

Coaching: Empowering Through Questions

Coaching is perhaps the most transformative of all. It focuses on unlocking potential by guiding individuals to find their own answers. By asking powerful, introspective questions like, What’s holding you back? or What does success look like for you?, coaches inspire self-reliance and personal growth.

Coaching is internally driven and centered on facilitating deep, meaningful dialogues. Unlike advising, it avoids offering direct solutions. Instead, coaching nurtures an individual’s ability to think critically and independently, fostering long-term growth and self-awareness. It’s about empowering individuals to trust their intuition and harness their inner strengths.

The Leader’s Blueprint

Exceptional leaders seamlessly transition between these roles—sponsoring, mentoring, advising, and coaching—based on the needs of their team members. Sponsorship and mentoring focus outwardly, creating opportunities and sharing wisdom to navigate external landscapes. In contrast, advising and coaching facilitate internal dialogues, helping individuals address challenges, gain insights, and grow from within.

Knowing when to advocate, guide, advise, or empower is the hallmark of a leader who prioritizes the growth of others. It requires emotional intelligence, adaptability, and a genuine commitment to the success of the people you lead.

As we prepare to step into a new year, let’s embrace the opportunity to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with those we lead. By committing to their growth, we inevitably grow ourselves. After all, leadership is a shared journey.

Wishing you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with opportunities to lead, inspire, and evolve!

With warm regards and festive cheer,

Lt Cdr Sadhanaa Giri

Founder LEADerSHIP LaBs