How Do Busy Public Managers Learn the Art of Relationship Management?

Originally published Sept/Oct 2006

In a recent column we discussed the management of relationships as a key skill set for most public managers. Experienced managers seem to understand how critical relationships are to their success, but it often doesn’t come naturally.

I have been interviewing a number of city and county managers recently to learn their views on relationships at work. It’s clear that some managers have a natural talent for cultivating and nourishing relationships, for others it is an acquired art, often not learned until mid career. How do such people learn the importance of managing relationships when that isn’t obvious? And how do they gain the skills?

SMART MANAGERS WHO LEARNED TO SEE VALUE OF RELATIONSHIPS

Jim Ley, county administrator in Sarasota County, Florida is a very bright and conceptual guy. A conversation with him ranges from the Federalist Papers to the great French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville. Were relationship skills always part of his managerial repertoire?

“No, I grew in this area over the years. I really started to understand when I had a very special executive assistant. She was very open and candid with, and she counseled me to grow in this area. She would tell me, ’the staff and people who come into contact with you need to know more about who you are, not just what you are [e.g., his role and responsibilities].’ She pushed me to show people more of myself. I listened, thought about it, and worked on it. We could have this kind of conversation because we knew and valued each other as people, and we didn’t interact in an employee/employer power context. We talked as colleagues, and that freed up both of us to be so open with each other.”

Tom Mauk, chief executive officer, Orange County, California has spent over 30 years managing cities and counties. He’s seen a number of managers struggle for lack of relationship skills, including himself:

“Managing relationships isn’t easy for most local government managers. I know it wasn’t easy for me. I was most fortunate to have a spouse who was a true partner, and over the years she helped me learn the importance of relationships, and how to form them. Sometimes I’d come home dog tired at the end of a long day, and didn’t want to go to some event that night. She’d grab me and tell me ‘Tom, we are going to this event, it’s important!’ And we did, and she was right …it made a difference.

“My wife taught me a lot about how to form relationships …but what finally convinced me was seeing that, when I didn’t reach out and work well with key groups, inevitably the elected officials got the angry calls and emails. I realized long ago that an important part of my job is to make my elected officials’ jobs easier. And one of the best ways to do that is to take the initiative, get to know the key groups and individuals in town, listen to what they’re saying, show them you respect them.”

Merni Fitzgerald, director of public affairs, Fairfax County, Virginia looks at relationships from two different perspectives. In addition to her career as a local government manager, she spent eight years as an elected official on the Falls Church City Council.

“When I was working for the Fairfax County Park Authority I wrote a memo to the board of supervisors, and its tone offended someone on that board. There wasn’t a thing wrong with the content, but it had a tone that upset one of the board supervisors …and that led to some real problems for my office, and for me. It taught me not only that the tone matters, but that when it hits someone the wrong way, things can escalate.”Since then, Merni makes better choices about the ways in which she communicates. If the message can be easily misunderstood, she’ll pick up phone or go right to the person, giving her the opportunity for immediate feedback.

THE COMMON THREAD

You have been presented with three different managers, with three different stories. But they each came to see the value in relationships and how to manage them, when they saw it was necessary to achieve something important. For Jim Ley, it had to do with getting feedback on how he could be a more effective manager with his staff and with the citizens. Tom Mauk got the message through listening to his wife, and when he saw that, relationship management allowed him to help his governing board (the most critical stakeholder group to most city/county manager s). And Merni Fitzgerald’s eyes opened wide when her communications to the governing board created problems for her.And that’s how most adults learn important lessons: when we see that something (in this case, relationships) is critical to meeting an important need, to getting what we want. If we get this insight through a “tender failure,” a problem that catches our attention but isn’t overwhelming (like Merni’s note to the board), that is often the most powerful kind of learning. Merni was smart enough, and open enough, to step back and reflect on the situation. She realized that tone is a very subjective thing, and decided to contact people more directly, and put less in writing, when the message was important and could easily be misunderstood.

HOW CAN WE LEARN TO IMPROVE RELATIONSHIP SKILLS?

Insight, of course, is always helpful. But it’s often not enough to produce meaningful change. How do we learn and improve our relationship skills, once we see the importance and need? This is a highly personal decision, one that has to reflect our own learning style, our role in the organization, our psychological makeup. Here are some lessons from the field:

• Straight feedback and exchanges

  Jim Ley is a straight shooter, and he seems to thrive on very candid feedback from others (like the advice his former executive assistant gave him, about showing people who he was, not just what he was). He and his deputy have developed a creative approach that helps him with a key relationship skill: seeing the other’s point of view. When Jim and his deputy meet to discuss an issue, they’ve worked out a key ground rule: they deliberately take opposite stances on the issue. Where one strongly believes in doing X, they other will advocate for Y. Moreover, they will challenge the other’s thinking. Jim reports that this helps them both rethink their positions, and see another perspective more clearly.

• Modeling others

  Tom Mauk says he was blessed to be married for several decades to his late wife who was a strong partner, and who excelled in an area that Tom needed to learn: relationship skills. Tom was smart enough to see how talented she was, and by observing her with others (and listening to her feedback on his own efforts) he improved his own relationship skills considerably. Jim Ley also learned by modeling. One of his mentors was great at dealing with elected officials who were having trouble coming to agreement on an important issue. His mentor had great empathy and a willingness to listen, and thus could sense what others needed and were trying to say. He made himself available to people on all sides of the issue and didn’t take a stand on the issue; if he had a strong view on it, nobody knew that. His goal in such situations was to help the others solve the problem, and he was trusted in doing that. Jim has found his own way to adapt these skills when working with people in conflict.

• Inspiration

  Modeling involves learning by observing. Inspiration also involves learning from others, but in this case there is no visible model. Inspiration comes from hearing stories and from reading narratives about people we admire, and using their examples in our own behaviors.

  Bill Stuart, city manager in Winston-Salem, NC, is a no nonsense manager who places a high value on competence and smarts. Relationship skills didn’t come naturally to him. “When I was younger, this [relationships] was hard for me. If I didn’t take to the other person right away, things didn’t go so well. Then I read a biography of Lincoln, who once said, ‘I really don’t like old Joe, …so I need to get to know him better.’ That astounded me! And it made a huge impact on me. So I started looking more closely at others, trying to understand them.”

  Stuart’s huge respect for Lincoln opened him up to an approach he might never have considered: moving closer to someone he didn’t initially like, in order to learn more about him in the hope of finding something positive, something in common.

TRAINING/COACHING

It’s difficult for most managers to consider taking a course in relationship skills, for at least two reasons. First, it might seem like an admission of failure in an area that “should” be obvious. And second, many of us probably believe at some level that relationship skills are somewhat like athletic or musical skills: some folks are born with them, some aren’t. Both of those reactions are understandable, and both are unfortunate.

One of the most popular courses at the Federal Executive Institute is called “executive interactive competencies.” Sounds sophisticated, no?

In fact, this workshop is about the ABCs of communicating: active listening skills, asking open questions, and giving/receiving feedback. It’s powerful because of its excellent design: These three skills are demonstrated, participants practice the skills on pairs, then they practice and get video taped, they watch the video and get feedback from a small group of peers and facilitator, and then practice again. The video and peers, giving immediate feedback, is very powerful. The managers who take the course give it very high marks. I suspect few of them would sign up if it was called “communications 101!” So it needs a hook, a fancy title. But the point is, these relationship skills can most certainly be taught and learned, and a good training workshop is one way to do so.

Executive coaching is a growing trend and good coaches are able to help managers improve their relationship skills. Some coaches observe their clients in many different settings, seeing how the person acts and reacts under various challenges, and then debrief with the person who can reflect on his/her behaviors as the coach gives feedback and asks probing questions.

There are other ways to improve relationship skills. The key question is, do you see relationships as central to your job as a public manager? Many managers, including some of the most technically competent people I’ve ever met, have suffered huge setbacks in their careers because they didn’t see the importance of relationship skills. When Bob Stripling, recently retired Staunton, Virginia City Manager, says of his job that “it’s all about relationships,” he may be exaggerating. But not by much.