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“[relationships are] the connective tissue of the organisation, over time… they become the glue that holds us together.”1
Introduction
The introduction of integrated care systems2 and policy encouragement for more collaborative and inclusive care present leadership challenges, especially under increasingly constrained resource environments. Leaders are now required to engage public, staff and providers to determine how services are delivered and how quality is improved.3 4 These challenges were made even more problematic by the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, where wide scale disruptions emphasised the need for systems leaders to break down barriers and silo working across boundaries.5 This has brought increasing focus on the significance of relationships and the concept and practice of relationality for leaders. This learning zone piece focuses on relationality—or a deeply ‘connected’ perspective on leadership—to provoke greater understanding of what relational leadership means for systems working and practice.
What is relational leadership?
Decades of debate trace leadership and management theory and practice as a distinctly individual activity, focusing on an individual’s skills and competence.6 In contrast, relational leadership is a thread of leadership that brings the significance of relations in leadership processes to the fore,7 focusing on patterns of relationship and associated impacts on the people and organisations around those relationships, see figure 1.
Towards a relational orientation of leadership (an adaptation).11
Although grounded in the work of Hosking,8 Dachler and Hosking9 and Uhl-Bein,10 it is the challenge of systems working that has brought the need to work effectively in complex relationships into sharp focus. The introduction of the integrated care system, for instance, has added an additional layer of complexity in co-ordinating services across traditional boundaries, emphasising the decentralisation of power and shared responsibility. In this relational thread, leaders are looking increasingly for ways to collaborate, bring multiple …
Footnotes
Twitter @rachelhawley3
Contributors Both authors have contributed equally to the writing of the article and response to feedback. TW is the coauthor.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.