What Does Relational Leadership Look Like?

All right, man. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and today we are talking about what relational leadership actually looks like. So recently I posted a video and a podcast all about how important it is for you as a man to lead within the context of your relationship. Got a ton of traction, lots of questions, and there were so many questions, in fact, that I decided to do a four part follow up segment. And this is part one of four in that series. So let's just dive straight in. The first thing that I want to talk about within the context of what does it look like to lead within your relationship is the definition of leadership. So by definition, leadership is a process of social influence where you influence one or many people towards a common goal, task or vision. Now, within the context of the relationship, leadership, for me, as I'm defining it here, you might have your own definition, other people might have their own definition. But for me, leading within the context of relationship is being able to influence yourself and your partner, when necessary, towards the vision of the relationship. Now this presupposes one thing, obviously, which is that you have a vision for your relationship. And that vision should be what does your dynamic look like with your partner, not who they are, because a lot of guys will be like, oh, I want a woman that looks like this and does this and talks like that and behaves like this. Those things are fine, right? But what I'm talking about is what's the vision for the relationship, right? Do you want to be in the type of relationship that challenges you, that pushes you to be a little bit of a better man? Do you want to be in the type of relationship where you travel often, where you share goals together and bucket, bucket list experiences? Or does the relationship, does the vision that you have for your relationship serve a very different purpose, Right? Is that person there to support you as you pursue some of your dreams and achievements? Right? So for every man, their vision is going to be a little bit different. But one of the things that you want to start to carve out is what's the vision that you have for your relationship? Because if you don't have a vision, just like if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have a vision or a mission for your business, it's probably not going to go very well, right? You're going to create all kinds of products that, that you maybe shouldn't be having or producing. You know, your business is going to move in all kinds of directions and there's not going to be the structure that it needs in order to succeed. So you need to have a vision for your relationship, not just for the type of woman that you want to date or be with, but where's the relationship going? What are you doing? What does it stand for? What are some of the agreements that hold the relationship together? When you think about what the relationship looks like in a decade from now or a year from now, what have you done? Who are the two of you? How do you interact, right? What's the vision that you have for your sex life? What's the vision that you have for your communication with your partner? What's the vision that you have for how you and your partner move through conflict or deal with arguments? All of those things are important because if you don't have that, it's very challenging to lead in any way, shape or form within the relationship. So that's, number one, understanding what leadership means to you, and then what your vision is for the relationship itself, because that's going to give you at least a little bit of direction that you can aim towards. The next thing is knowing how to build structure versus when you're trying to control. This is arguably one of the biggest mistakes that most people make when it comes to just leadership in general. They're trying to exert control over the other person to get the result that they want versus being able to create structure for the other person or for the dynamic to move in a certain direction, right? So I'll give you an example. Say that you and the woman that you're dating or that you're married to get into an argument, right? Get in some conflict, maybe you've screwed up, maybe you haven't. But she's pissed off at you and she's coming at you and she's angry, and she's letting you know that she's angry. And at some point she crosses the line, right? She starts attacking your character, belittling you, making fun of you, disrespecting you in some way. And that's very clearly not okay, right? It doesn't fit in with the vision of the relationship, the agreements of the relationship. And if you are operating from a place of control, you're going to do a couple things, right? One, maybe you freak out, maybe you flip out and you say, you know what? Screw you if this is how you're going to act, and I don't want to be in this relationship. And so you use the thought threat of ending the relationship as a means of trying to control her behavior. So that's number one. Number two is that you might shut down entirely, right? You might say, like this, I'm out of here. I'm not dealing with you. When you like this, and you use checking out, you use actually just tuning out entirely as a means of trying to communicate, inadvertently communicating your behavior isn't okay. But what both of those things do is that they communicate shame, judgment, and they don't actually say, hey, your behavior is not okay. It's unacceptable what you're doing, what you're saying, not okay. The other option is that you might just take it, right? Some men will just take what that person's saying. They won't talk back to them. They won't stand up to them. And in the words of my good friend Dr. Robert Glover, when a man doesn't stand up to the woman that he's with, she'll never trust him to stand up for her. And that's a very important phrase that I think that we all need to understand, because we have to be able to stand up to the women that we're dating. And there's a number of reasons for that, right? One, it builds respect. It builds trust. Two, it creates structure and order within the context of the relationship. So what does it look like to create structure in a conflict where somebody's disrespected you? It would probably sound something like, hey, I get that, you know, you're pissed off. I understand you're angry. You're upset with me right now. That's okay. And the way that you just talk to me, that's not okay, right? That's unacceptable. I won't tolerate that in the relationship. I am totally fine with being pissed off and angry, but that's not okay. So some iteration of that where you're very clearly saying your experience is okay, you can be pissed off, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. But I do take offense to this, right? You won't talk to me in this way. You won't be disrespectful to me in this way. That's not okay. I won't tolerate that in this dynamic. Now, the caveat here is you have to be abiding by the structure that you create, right? Say that again. You have to be abiding by the structure that you create. So if you're with somebody that calls you names and you say, hey, that's not okay to do, but you just did it yesterday, and you do the day after, then they're not going to trust your leadership. They're not going to trust the structure that you're implementing within the relationship. So very important. All the structure that you implement within the relationship, you need to make sure that you're adhering to. You need to make sure that you're abiding by. So that's the big piece. So being able to understand your vision, being able to distinguish the difference between creating structure in the relationship versus trying to control. And then the last piece is your decisions. So making decisions that inform the other person of what you want and need that also move you towards the vision of the dynamic. So your yeses and your nos, right? What you say yes to and what you say no to are going to communicate to your partner what you want and what you need, and you need to be able to follow through with that. Right? Perfect example. I had a client that I was working with last year, and this guy loved being outside. He loved going on hikes, he loved going kayaking, and he wanted the woman that he was dating to come along with him sometimes. But she was a little afraid, right? She was a little anxious. She had never done those things before, especially like being out on the water, ocean kayaking. It was confronting for her. And so whenever he would say, hey, let's go for a hike or let's go kayaking, she'd be kind of wishy washy and she would say, you know, I don't know if I want to go do that. And eventually he just stopped doing it altogether. He stopped going hiking, he stopped kayaking. And what happened was, is that his. Yes, what he wanted to do collapsed. Right? He stopped leading within the context of the relationship because he stopped leading himself and he stopped saying, what I want to do is important. What I'm choosing to do is important. So just because your partner says no to something doesn't mean that you shouldn't go ahead and do it. Just because they have some resistance or are afraid doesn't mean that you shouldn't pursue it anyway. So make decisions that make it clear what you want and what you need, and then make decisions that also move the relationship towards the vision that you have. So if being out in nature, as an example, is incredibly important to you, and every time you say, hey, let's go kayaking, and your partner's like, oh, I don't know, like, I don't think I want to go this weekend. And then you don't go, what you're communicating is that your decision actually doesn't carry weight because you don't follow through with it. Right? You might say, I've decided that we're going to go do this this weekend or I, I decided that I really want to go do this this weekend, on Saturday, I want to go kayaking. And then she says, well, I don't want to go do that. And then you just don't go do it at all. Your actions then speak louder than your words. So you have to be able to follow through with that. The last thing about what it looks like to lead within the context of your relationship is being able and consistently being able to take responsibility for your failures. So any leader worth his salt, any person in the position of leadership, has to be willing to be fallible, has to be willing to say, you know what, I was wrong about that, that was a mistake. Or the way I behaved was, that wasn't good. You know, I stepped over the line. I stepped over my own agreements for how I want to operate in the relationship, and that's my fault. You know, I acted out of line. I let my anger get the best of me. You know, I shut down. Whatever the case may be, I made the wrong decision. And we have to be able to take responsibility for our failures. Because if you don't, then trust in your decisions, trust in your capacity, trust in your capability to lead, to do the right thing. Because at the end of the day, leadership is about doing the right thing based on the vision that you say that you have. Right again, whether that's for your business or for your relationship. So you need to be able to circle back around and say, you know what, I messed up. You know what? I said the wrong thing. You know what, I made the wrong choice. You know what, I did. Forget that. And then you need to be able to course correct through your actions, through your behaviors, and allow those things to speak for themselves. So that's what leadership and relationship looks like. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.