Welcome to the February vibe shift. With the table setting of January behind us, February is the official kick-off of “go get stuff done” season. The clock is ticking and the race to delivering results is on.
Here’s the trap many leaders fall into in February: as the pressure to drive for results ramps up, relationships get downgraded from strategic priorities to tactical necessities. Meetings get shorter and more transactional. One-on-ones become status updates. The focus shifts almost entirely to the content of the work that produces results and away from the connections with other people that make the results both possible and sustainable.
It’s not surprising, really. When you’re driven to deliver, it’s easy to deprioritize relationship building and maintenance. But here’s what 25 years of coaching leaders has taught me: the leaders who consistently achieve sustainable results are the ones who refuse to make the false choice between driving results and building relationships.
The best leaders bring a balance of behaviors that do both. And when they do, they don’t just get better results, they live better lives, and, through their ripple effect, make the world a little bit better as well. In this post, I want to cover why all of that’s the case and what you can do to lead and live that way.
Let’s start with the basics.
Two Buckets of Leadership Behaviors
For years, I’ve observed that leadership behaviors fall into two big buckets: the behaviors that drive results and the behaviors that build relationships. If you mapped those on an x-y graph, you’d see four quadrants.
Leaders who are weak in both buckets are completely ineffective and don’t last long. Leaders who are strong in just one bucket hit ceilings. They either burn through relationships to hit their goals or are viewed as nice to be around but not as leaders who get stuff done.
The leaders who end up in the upper right-hand corner – strong in both results and relationships – are the game-changers who spark value-added and often innovative 1+1=3 outcomes. Why? Because creating the space to truly collaborate builds trust, and trust is the accelerant for creating results that matter and last.
Three Options for Engagement, Three Levels of Results
So how do you show up as that kind of leader – the game-changer who is equally adept at driving results and building relationships? I’d suggest you use two of the three basic options that I’ve concluded we have for engaging with each other – transient, transactional, and transformational. You want to avoid the first style as much as possible and be intentional about hitting the sweet spot between options 2 and 3.
Let me give a bit of definition for each so you can see what I mean.
Transient engagement is what happens when we’re distracted and impatient. Our focus is on ourselves. We interrupt, we tell, we use yes-or-no questions. We’re not really engaging because our mind and attention is somewhere else. Transient engagement delivers 1+1=1 outcomes – it’s value detracting. Almost all of us do it on occasion but it’s a dynamic to be aware of and avoid as much as possible.
Transactional engagement is the basic way stuff gets done in corporate world. Here, we’re purposeful and focused, trying to solve a problem or move something forward. We ask open-ended questions and set timelines. This is the work of getting stuff done, and it’s essential. It delivers 1+1=2 outcomes – value-added and solid, but not necessarily remarkable. If you only practice transactional engagement, you leave value on the table.
Transformational engagement is where the magic happens. We’re creative, connected, and fully present. We’re not just listening to what’s said but also noticing and attending to what’s not said. Our primary agenda is connection, not just completion. It’s to engage as humans and not just as functions of production. Because it nurtures and unlocks the power of relationships, the irony is you often end up with 1+1=3 outcomes when you engage in a transformational way.
The real leadership unlock is to become adept at toggling back and forth between transactional and transformational engagement – mixing the problem-solving, next-steps focus of transactional engagement, with the open-ended and curious stance of transformational engagement. When people feel genuinely seen and valued, they bring more of themselves to the work. Creativity rises. Candor increases. Problems get solved faster. Trust grows.
The Physiology You Can’t Ignore
And here’s another benefit of prioritizing relationships as high as you do results – you live longer.
The Harvard Longevity Study and decades of aligned research demonstrate that people with strong relationships have both longer lifespans and longer health spans. Why would that be?
One reason would be that strong relationships elevate stress-reducing hormones like serotonin and oxytocin while decreasing stress response hormones like cortisol. Game-changing leaders who hit the sweet spot between driving results and building relationships help reduce the state of chronic fight-or-flight that the external triggers and organizational pressures of 2026 induce in many of us. When you dial back the fight-or-flight response for yourself and your team, everyone thinks more clearly, interacts more productively, and makes better decisions together. And everyone is less likely to fall ill and, over the long run, more likely to live longer, happier, and healthier lives.
In addition to what you achieve at work, that’s a pretty great legacy to aspire to as a leader – one who contributes to making everyone’s lives better.
From I-It to I-Thou
I’d suggest that aspiration is grounded in a mindset I learned years ago from a boss who introduced me to the work of the Jewish theologian, Martin Buber. He believed there are two basic ways we can relate to people: through an “I-It” lens where we view people as functions of production and a means to achieve our goals or through an “I-Thou” lens in which we recognize and honor the sacred, unique humanity in each person.
What I’ve observed in my life in general and my coaching work in particular is that when you begin to treat relationships not as means to particular ends, but as ends in themselves, something shifts. Paradoxically, this approach often unlocks better results precisely because people can sense the difference between being valued instrumentally versus intrinsically.
What’s Next for You?
We’ve covered a lot of ground here, so what’s next for you on hitting the sweet spot between driving results and building relationships? Here are three suggestions:
First, take a few minutes to plot yourself on the results-and-relationships graph. Be honest with yourself – where are you trending as we shift to the “go get stuff done” phase of the year? How does your trend serve the sustainable success of you and your team? What, if anything, do you need to adjust about the way you’re leading and engaging?
Second, initiate at least one conversation this week where your only agenda is transformational engagement. No problem-solving, no hidden agenda. Just genuine connection where you learn more about the other person and give them the opportunity to learn more about you. There’ll be plenty of time to get back into transactional mode – give the transformational mode a little space to breathe.
Third, notice the ripple effects. Pay attention to how investing in relationship quality affects not just that specific relationship, but stress management for yourself and your team, the quality of your collective decisions, and ultimately the results you’re all accountable for. I’m willing to place a bet that the trend will be positive on all three factors.
Results and relationships. They’re not mutually exclusive; they’re mutually supportive. The opportunity you have as the “go get stuff done” phase of the year starts this month, and the pressure ramps up is to be the kind of game-changing leader who not only gets that point but acts on it.
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The post Results AND Relationships – How to Hit the Sweet Spot as the Pressure Ramps Up first appeared on The Eblin Group.
