#227

As the year draws to a close, a familiar pattern is emerging in the conversations I’m having with leaders.

With the sprint to the finish line, the targets, the deliverables, and the year-end silly season upon us - something important has quietly withered in the background:

Connection with colleagues

And I don’t mean that we don’t know each other… but do we really know what’s going on for each other?

Of course, it hasn’t been intentional or malicious.

Just slowly… silently… passively.

Task has overtaken relationship.

Again.

Leadership, as we know too well, is a constant dance between the two - task and relationship, doing and being, short term and long term, revenue and cost, execution and connection. When one gets too much attention for too long, the other fades.

But here’s the deeper truth we often avoid:

We can only go as far with someone else as we’ve gone within ourselves.

The depth of our relationships is almost always a mirror of the depth we’re willing to explore within ourselves.

If we want trust, we must be willing to notice where ‘we’ hold back.

If we want openness, we have to be open to the conversations we avoid.

If we want our colleagues to go deeper with us, we have to be willing to explore those depths within ourselves first - or at least be honest that we haven’t yet.

It’s not about being perfectly self-aware.

It’s about being willing.

Willing to look.

Willing to name what’s true.

Willing to admit what we can’t see.

Willing to admit where we’ve been running fast to avoid feeling slow.

So as the year closes, perhaps a few questions to walk with:

> Where have your relationships quietly thinned while the tasks loudly multiplied?

> What depth are you asking of others that you haven’t explored in yourself?

> Where might you reconnect - not by demanding depth from others, but by offering it?

> What conversation, if you initiated it, would shift the relationship?

Leadership isn’t just the work we do.

It’s the space we create.

And the depth we’re willing to inhabit within ourselves first.

Because people can only meet us where we’ve already gone.

And they often won’t go somewhere we haven’t been first.

Or at least we’d be willing to go with them.

As you wrap up the year, consider this:

What depth within yourself wants your attention… so your relationships can breathe and flourish again?