Leadership Q&A with Arlene Scott, Ph.D.


Link&Learn: Arlene, as someone who has worked in the leadership field for over 20 years, what sets a successful leader apart in today's challenging business environment?

Arlene Scott: Complex, fast-cycle change requires a 21st century leader
to be able to capture the hearts and minds of people,
creating alignment for the future direction of the organization.
When results require people working together, relationship-building skills, often seen as "soft," quickly translate to measurable business outcomes. Whether you are making contact with one person or with a group, the challenges include: building trust quickly, creating a shared understanding of the compelling reasons for change, and painting a picture of the desired future together. With people working with people in ever changing paradigms, the successful leader builds relationships with attention to influencing both mindset and behavior in order to get results.


Link&Learn: What made you realize the significance of relationship building?

Arlene Scott: What is critical for any organization moving forward is alignment; relationship-building improves alignment.
People have different views and perspectives which often cause tension and distance. When change requires people to change their habits, we often see resistance.
It is only by exploring the resistance together (rather than pushing back) that people can get issues on the table.
You may be thinking, "What does relationship-building have to do with getting alignment?"
An example of complex change is shifting to an enterprise IT system. People need to shift their way of doing things to a corporate standard. Losses for these people include job changes and habits that are comfortable.
Getting people to talk through the rationale for changes and the losses is a key step for facilitating the change process. When people have relationships and trust, these conversations go better, saving time and increasing commitment (rather than sabotage).
You have to slow down the process to reach shared understanding -- and then are able to speed up the change implementation.


Link&Learn: From what you just said, building this skill should be a top priority for most organizations. How do you convince Senior Leadership Teams - or build a business case -- for the need to train employees on relationship building?

Arlene Scott: Generating revenues and increasing profitability both require effective interaction with others-externally, to retain and develop customers, and internally, to create congruent business goals, which requires working through differences with others and building agreements and common understandings.
You get senior executives' attention only in the context of critical business outcomes. Otherwise, when you talk about the people skills and relationships, they roll their eyes.
Start by talking about the business goals and then ask, "What keeps you up at night?" The executive response is most often related to difficulties in getting people aligned, particularly across boundaries.
Relationship skills become important in the context of the business goal. More recently the research on emotional intelligence validates the connection between relational competence and business outcomes. Currently, there is more willingness to accept the validity of relationships skills as a critical success factor.

Link&Learn: You have developed a program to this end (which you are currently partnering with Linkage, Inc. on) tell us a little about it.

Arlene Scott: The program is organized and designed to help people build trust and credibility. The most effective, and the fastest way to learn business-applicable relationship intelligence is in experience-based workshops. Self-awareness increases real-time. You learn about the impact you have on other people: what you do that influences effectively and what you do that doesn't work well. Examples of issues and how the program helps participants become more effective include:
Learning to speak up in a way that others do not experience as dominating
Realizing the need to be more forceful in getting across one's viewpoint, rather than being laid-back and having less impact
Dealing better with differences. Relationship building skills help you to manage differences without damaging relationships.

Link&Learn: I understand that you have an innovative way of getting these skills across that you call Interactive Skill Groups. Please explain how your Interactive Skill Groups work and what sets it apart from other training activities?

Arlene Scott: Historically the way people tended to work through relationship building skills was to be very clear about the steps and behaviors that people needed to relate more effectively. People would role play or get videotaped or just talk. Since the situation was artificial and strictly structured around the role-play and video feedback or remembered situations, people would get clear about a behavior they needed to practice, but they tended to find it difficult to apply learnings to on-the-job situations. In contrast, the Interactive Skill Group methodology we have developed is real-time. It is people relating to each other and receiving in-the-moment feedback. Participants express themselves and get feedback in a live 360-degree process, which quickly clarifies for each group member his or her impact on others. Real-time feedback is a catalyst for more effective post- program application in the workplace. Experience-based learning helps participants change rapidly.

Link&Learn: So your sense is that participants will receive not only tools and new models to understand how to build better relationships, but also receive real time practice.

Arlene Scott: Yes. The live learning experience supported by models and tools with a real-time practice helps participants experience what they do effectively and what they need to practice. It leaves them with a level of awareness and expanded capability. More importantly, it is also fun, engaging, and interactive. A real-time camaraderie comes out between and among participants -- it is not a role play, it is real people relating to each other, trying to build their relationships skills and in the process there is clearly a shift in the level of connection that people have with each other real-time. If people who work together participate together in the program, they walk away with their relationships enhanced. This unusual learning approach will change a company faster than any other. This type of workshop reaches into the hearts and minds of the people leading the company, and asks them to cut through the deadwood in their own leadership behavior. It demands openness and honesty in ways that are unusual to some organizations, and are extremely powerful. But it does so in a way which preserves safety for the participants.

Link&Learn: What drives your passion around teaching others how to build better relationships?

Arlene Scott: Part of what drives me is the possibility of building organizations where people feel a sense of belonging. This connection with other people serves as a foundation for being personally more satisfied and motivated, which, based on my own experience, is strongly related to performance excellence and business outcomes.


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Arlene Scott currently leads Linkage's Strategic Change Practice. She works with CEOs and executive teams to optimize their individual and collective capacity to lead their organizations amidst rapidly changing business environments. With more than twenty years experience, Arlene collaborates with clients to ensure the successful integration of new business strategy, the design and execution of structure, culture, work processes, and human capital systems that promote organization growth and performance.