Reflections on Connection-Centered Leadership - Issue 32: What Connections Carry
Most bridges connect two points functionally, often spanning an expanse or chasm and connecting people who might otherwise have to take the long way around or remain isolated. The Royal Gorge Bridge is a little different. Built in 1929 primarily as a tourist attraction, the crossing itself is part of the destination. I can vouch that the views from this pedestrian bridge are worth the excursion.
Darin, the girls, and I made the trek a few years ago. Some in our group had a hard time trusting the structure beneath us. Some took in the marvel of the whole experience. Others didn't think much about the bridge at all. They simply enjoyed what the crossing made accessible.
Years later, I learned more about what was actually beneath us on that family trip.
The Royal Gorge Bridge stretches 1,260 feet across the canyon, suspended 956 feet above the Arkansas River. Its two primary suspension cables contain thousands of individual strands of galvanized wire and together weigh approximately 300 tons. The bridge was designed to carry more than two million pounds.
No individual wire could carry that weight across the gorge. Even thousands of strong wires side by side would accomplish very little. Their individual strength becomes useful because they are connected, integrated into the larger structure, and securely anchored.
There is a difference between being together and being connected.
We see that distinction in our lives and organizations all the time. We can assemble talented people around a conference table, put diverse perspectives on a board, build expansive networks, and create teams filled with individual expertise. We can attend the same meeting, belong to the same organization, live in the same community, or accumulate thousands of connections on social media without ever becoming meaningfully connected.
Proximity does not guarantee connection. Neither does agreement.
I think we sometimes confuse the two. Agreement asks us to arrive at the same conclusion. Connection allows us to remain in relationship while bringing different experiences, perspectives, strengths, and even conclusions to the table.
In fact, difference isn't necessarily an obstacle to connection. It may be the reason connection is necessary in the first place. A bridge serves no purpose if there is no divide to cross.
That changes the way I think about some of the capacities we have historically called "soft skills." Listening gives us access to information we don't possess. Curiosity makes room for perspectives our own experiences cannot provide. Empathy helps us understand how decisions affect people beyond ourselves. Collaboration allows knowledge, talent, and resources to move between people rather than being isolated within them. Trust makes it possible to take risks together that few of us would attempt alone.
None of those capacities eliminates the need for expertise, decisiveness, ambition, competition, or individual accountability. They make those strengths more useful by connecting them to something beyond the person who carries them.
Connection has structural consequences.
It determines whether the strengths already present in a family, team, organization, or community remain isolated or become capable of carrying something larger.
This is where connection-centered leadership becomes much more than being relational, kind, agreeable, or good with people. Connection is not something we add around the edges of the real work. It changes what the work itself can become.
Think about what happens when trust exists within a team. Less energy is spent trying to determine what someone really meant. People can disagree without immediately threatening a sense of belonging. Asking a question isn't automatically interpreted as incompetence. Someone without positional authority can still possess information that changes a decision.
When those conditions persist over time, we begin to accumulate something else.
Relational capital.
Financial capital allows us to invest resources into what we want to build. Relational capital is accumulated differently. We build it when people learn they can trust our words, when we have enough history to tell one another the truth, and when opportunity moves through relationships instead of stopping with the person who first received it.
One introduction creates another. Someone opens a door that credentials alone couldn't. One person's access meets another person's idea. Someone's experience fills a gap in another person's knowledge. A leader creates room for a voice that changes the decision. One person believes in something another person is still learning to believe about themselves.
Something exists afterward that none of us could have built alone. I can see those strands throughout my own life.
There are people who taught me things I still use decades later. People who opened doors I didn't know existed. People who challenged me when agreement would have been easier. People who prayed for me, advocated for me, connected me to someone else, trusted me with an opportunity, or saw something in me before I had enough evidence to see it myself.
Some of those relationships have lasted for years. Others belonged to a particular season. I probably don't even recognize all of the people whose influence became part of the structure beneath something I eventually crossed.
That may be one of the most beautiful things about connection. We don't always know what part of someone else's structure we are becoming.
A conversation that feels ordinary to me may give someone else the courage to move. An introduction may eventually become an opportunity I never hear about. The time I spend listening may help someone make a decision differently. A door I hold open may lead somewhere I will never go myself.
Connection allows what we carry to move beyond us. It also requires something from us.
Last week, I wrote about attention as the front door of connection. We cannot connect deeply with people we never really notice. But attention alone isn't enough. Connection requires enough curiosity to allow what another person carries to affect us. It requires enough security to remain present when we disagree and enough humility to recognize that our own perspective may be incomplete.
That is where our vertical, inward, and outward connections continue to work together.
Our vertical connection anchors us in something larger than our own achievement, authority, or need to be right. My connection with God gives me the proper orientation to make other connections possible. Inward connection helps us recognize what we bring into the room, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Our strengths, talents, and gifts inform our ability to contribute and connect, which leads to confidence. But inward connection also requires awareness of the shadows we carry—fear, insecurity, ambition, the need for approval, or the desire for control—and how they can interfere with our ability to connect. Outward connection allows us to encounter what another person carries without requiring them to become more like us first. We can appreciate the diverse gifts among us and choose to celebrate them instead.
When those connections are strong, we don't have to choose between individuality and relationship.
The individual strands in a suspension cable don't become less important when they are connected. Their individual strength becomes part of something capable of carrying more.
Maybe ours does, too.
I keep returning to that day at Royal Gorge.
Some of us were aware of the bridge beneath our feet. Some were wondering whether it could be trusted. Some were taking in the magnitude of what had been built. Others were simply enjoying the experience on the other side of the crossing.
None of us was thinking about the thousands of individual strands helping to hold us 956 feet above the Arkansas River.
We didn't need to know the specifics. We simply needed the connections to hold.
I wonder how many crossings in my own life have been possible for the same reason.
How many people have become part of the structure and foundation beneath me without my fully recognizing their contributions? How many times has someone connected their knowledge to mine, their access to my opportunity, their faith to my uncertainty, or their strength to something I could not carry alone?
And perhaps the more challenging question is: where am I doing the same for someone else?
There is a difference between being together and being connected.
Together, we can remain a collection of individually strong people standing beside one another.
Connected, anchored, and integrated, we become capable of carrying something none of us could carry alone.
Questions I'm Sitting With This Week
Where in my life have I mistaken proximity for connection?
Who has become part of the structure beneath one of my own crossings, and have I ever thanked them for what they carried?
Is there a relationship in which disagreement has caused me to withdraw, when connection might allow us to hold the tension differently?
Am I creating environments where people simply have access to the room, or where what they bring can genuinely influence what happens there?
What am I carrying that might become more useful if I connected it to what someone else carries?
And what might become possible if I stopped asking only what I can carry and began asking what we could carry together? ~Melissa, The Architect of Connection-Centered Leadership The Sage Hill Project
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