For many managers, it is a daily reality: they feel under enormous pressure. This is no coincidence, as the demands placed on them and the complexity of their tasks have increased rapidly in recent years. They also have to adapt to working conditions that have changed significantly in a hybrid context. They have to develop solutions to problems that have never existed before. The previous understanding of the role, according to which the manager as the sovereign decision-maker always has a solution at hand, no longer applies. Instead, it is essential to use the know-how of everyone in the team to develop new ideas and solutions for the problems at hand. In theory, this is clear to many, but at the same time the old understanding of the role of leadership is still very much present - both as an expectation of themselves in the minds of many managers, but also in the expectations of employees, who are still waiting for the boss to show the way and say what needs to be done.

What is needed are strong leaders who can give their team direction without knowing the solution themselves. Leaders who are able to form strong teams, pool their expertise and find new ways forward together.

In this mixed situation, many managers feel that they are losing their own strength and motivation. The result is often weak leadership and, as a result, poor team performance.

What can managers do to break out of this negative spiral and regain their own power and (leadership) strength? The key lies in strong self-management. It's about strengthening your own inner resilience so that you can deal with all the pressure in a way that doesn't break you, but ideally makes you even stronger.

Trusting relationships strengthen your own leadership power

One of the pillars of strong self-management and resilience is trusting, honest relationships. In order to strengthen themselves time and time again, managers need relationships with people who understand and empathize with their situation. Where they can confidently and honestly show themselves as they are at the moment - with fears, doubts and all the thoughts that are bothering them. These are relationships with people who give them honest, well-meaning feedback and thus strengthen them and help them move forward.

As a rule, there are only a few people with whom you experience this quality in a relationship. Who are these people in your life? It is important to be aware of this and to cultivate these valuable contacts regularly.

You can use the following reflection exercise to take a closer look at your personal network and the quality of these relationships. To do this, record:

The diagram makes it easier to assess relationships.

© Leadership Choices

• Who do I rely on, not just on good days?
• How high is the level of trust/how good is the quality of the relationship? (X-axis)
• What is this person's understanding of my world?
• From whom do you receive honest, well-meaning feedback?

Trusting relationships as the basis for successful teams

The phenomenon of pressure is also evident at team level. In the hybrid work context, many people are fighting for themselves and there is often a lack of connection within the team. As a result, many employees also lose energy and feel overwhelmed. Performance decreases, sickness rates increase - another negative spiral.

Mutual trust is an absolute prerequisite for teams to be able to pool everyone's expertise and develop new solutions together. The be-all and end-all for building this trust is good relationships with one another. Relationships in which everyone in the team is honest, i.e. free from fear of judgment and mistakes, and can express their opinions. Only then is it possible to engage in constructive dissent and develop further instead of holding back one's own opinion and avoiding confrontation.

What can managers do to promote trusting relationships within the team?

Managers have a key role to play here. It is their task to repeatedly create a framework in which everyone can exchange ideas on a personal level and thus get to know and assess each other better. The better the relationships with each other, the greater the mutual trust. If everyone knows how the other person is doing and where they stand at the moment, it is easier for everyone to react to or support the behavior of their team colleagues. This enables the team to work together successfully like a cogwheel system. These moments often fall by the wayside, especially in hybrid collaboration. Managers can strengthen the relationship level here, for example by asking a corresponding check-in question at the weekly meeting. What talent do you have that probably few people here know about? What was the most surprising thing you learned last week? Where do you particularly enjoy working? Other options include virtual coffee or lunch breaks, mood checks or planned face-to-face meetings with a focus on social interaction.

As a manager, demonstrating how valuable and strengthening trusting relationships are is the most convincing way to put this topic into practice. Team members have fine antennae for how much value their manager places on this type of relationship in the team, how much time they give everyone in personal discussions, how much they agree on corresponding rules in the team and how consistently they demand them.

Trusting relationships are the powerful foundation on which substantive, professional work functions all the more easily. It therefore pays off in many cases to devote all your energy and enthusiasm to this topic.

The author

© Julia Bruns, einzigARTig Photography, Kaarst

Petra Basler, M.A., is a Professional Certified Coach (ICF), Teaching Coach, Future Mentor Coach, Banker, Associate Partner at Leadership Choices. As an expert in individual coaching, she has been supporting managers on the core topics of leadership, resilience and dealing with change since 2001. The focus is on developing the leadership personality and future viability of the individual.