Karen Gebbie-Smith

Leaders of change and improvement don't typically fail because they lack technical skills. More often, they fail because they never built the relationships that make change possible, or didn't give those relationships enough attention during the change process. A new research-based report, "The Space Between People," by @CCLdotORG defines leadership as a social process: "[Leadership] lives in the trust formed through repeated interaction, the shared understanding that allows people to act without constant realignment and the informal networks through which leadership travels." The authors call this relational infrastructure: "the human foundation that makes leadership possible". For most of organisational history, relational infrastructure developed largely on its own. Proximity and stability built trust as a byproduct of working alongside one another. That condition has gone. AI-mediated communication ("the net effect is more communication but less connection"), hybrid working, global expansion and continuous urgency now actively work against connection forming. Many organisations haven't grasped the implications for leadership, change leadership or leadership development. The symptoms are playing out everywhere: staff survey "engagement scores" keep falling; leaders make decisions based on what the system reports rather than what's actually happening; agreements reached in the room unravel days later; trust that looked solid collapses under real pressure because it was built on role rather than relationship; leaders see only the polished, delayed version of events because they lack the close ties to fill in the gaps; setbacks hit harder and last longer without strong relationships to absorb the shock; and people who feel psychologically unsafe hold back, instead of contributing fully. What should we do? Connection is an interpersonal capacity. We can't build relational infrastructure by developing individual leaders in isolation, however capable they are. We have to build leadership development around the social architecture that makes leadership possible at scale. Four suggested ways to do this: 1) Examine leadership development activities through a relational lens, creating conditions for leaders to work together, not just perform better individually. 2) Design connection deliberately into leadership transitions, when relational infrastructure is most fragile. 3) Invest in the human capabilities AI can't replace: listening, trust-building and boundary-spanning become differentiators, not lower priorities. 4) As senior leaders, visibly model the connected behaviours we want from everyone else. My own reflection (amongst many): we've long assumed that building "shared purpose" or "shared aims" is enough to generate the relationships that change and improvement depend on. This research suggests otherwise. Connection has become something we must deliberately design for, not something we can rely on emerging. Access to the paper: ccl.org/articles/guides/conn….

Creating the relational conditions for effective change: part two Summary of comments in response to my last post on relationships that enable change to emerge from across multiple social platforms. Six themes surfaced: 1) Relationships ARE the mechanism: many are living this The strongest theme was direct confirmation from practice. Ish Ahmed described frontline teams that fail to progress "not because of a lack of ideas, but because the environment & relationships are not set up to support change." Diane Gudmundson stressed: "change does not move at the speed of strategy alone. It moves at the speed of trust, safety & relationships." Alana Ruakere described work at Tui Ora, where the opportunity now is to name & invest in relational infrastructure more deliberately. 2. The challenge of measurement & making the case Several commenters identified the same problem: how do we demonstrate relational quality when “delivery” metrics are easier to measure? Antonia Field-Smith asked how to give it "a credible footing when positioned against easily measurable operational & financial metrics." Kenny Ajayi named the paradox: there is an upfront cost to building relationships, yet systems are not set up to value that investment. Ted Toussaint flagged that the "environment" is hard to sell to leadership focused on hard business impact. 3) Productive challenges to the framework Anthony Lawton pushed back on "design for connection before content," arguing that "the strongest relational bonds form through the work itself, not before it." Matt Wyatt stressed "the phrase is prepare for emergence" — a small difference in wording but a significant difference in insight and experience required. 4) Remote & distributed environments Rebeccah Marsh stressed "we can't leave relationships to chance when we're not co-located." Rebecca Blackwood argued that in hybrid environments "structures have to work harder to create the conditions for connection & trust to develop" & that designing for relational quality & measuring it may be two sides of the same coin. 5) Real-world applications & tools Lesley Parkinson shared how the RCN-accredited Relationships for Change course is building capacity in relational & restorative practice across 50+ NHS Trusts. Helena Jackson connected the framework to Bill Sharpe's Three Horizons model. Amanda Jeppesen recommended Future Search as a method for bringing stakeholders together to create emergence conditions. 6) Relational competence as core leadership capability David Pendleton framed relational competence as central: leadership operates across strategic, operational & interpersonal domains, with the interpersonal holding & enabling the other two. Jamie Lackie argued that relational infrastructure helps teams "update inherited patterns" - so interactions stop reproducing the past & start generating genuinely new ways of working. The comments confirm both the resonance of this approach & the genuine tensions leaders face in applying it. Thanks to all commenters.

The inability of leaders to delegate is one of the most significant blockers in workforce productivity & in making change happen. So I appreciated this new article by @RoFernn that offers a refreshing perspective & practical actions. Teams often don’t see the pressure that their leaders carry. Leaders fear that if something goes wrong, it will ultimately fall back on them. That’s why delegation feels risky: when we delegate, we can no longer control every action or thought. We can only have influence. The shift from control to influence triggers more fear. Most leaders don’t struggle with delegation because they don’t know they should delegate. They struggle with the daily symptoms of not delegating. The core problem is often a lack of clarity, trust & good processes. But because leaders are constantly firefighting, they rarely get the chance to step back & see it. Effective delegation focuses leaders on controlling what they can control: providing examples of what good looks like; leading by example - creating shadowing & learning opportunities; continuously improving clarity; designing systems with built-in visibility so fewer status meetings are needed & setting clear principles & fair rules. What actions can we take to enable both oversight (direction/control) & autonomy (delegation)? 1) Define the outcome & success criteria: don’t tell people how to do something - make the “what” crystal clear 2) Create visibility without micromanagement: build check-ins, dashboards & visual cues 3) Systematise autonomy: Build templates, process checks & decision prompts so teams can act effectively without leader presence 4) Multiply effort with repeatable systems: delegation through systems (templates, shared steps, clear rules) supports sustainable delegation 5) Use the “Five levels of delegation” to build autonomy: The author suggest using the @MichaelHyatt model to work out where current levels of delegation are & how people can move up stages as capability & systems improve Article: medium.com/@rociofernn/the-b… The Michael Hyatt "levels of delegation" model: fullfocus.co/the-five-levels… Graphic via @hosseini_samira