According to a recent MIT/Sloan Management Review article, what really distinguishes high performers from the rest of the pack is their ability to maintain and leverage large, diversified networks that are rich in experience and span all organizational boundaries.

Ironic, isn’t it? Here we are, smack in the middle of the Information Age, discovering that our greatest advantages aren’t coming from what we know but rather from whom we know – and that the high achievers of today are not so much a product of superior expertise as they are a product of superior networks.

Not that it should have come as a surprise to those of us who study organizational behavior. Flattened hierarchies and virtual enterprises have increased workplace complexity while reducing institutional support. We’ve gone from relying on organization charts to depending on social networks. So now, more than ever, professionals must leverage their relationships.

Which makes me wonder about the relationship between personal networks and organizational change . . .

In the pursuit of “hard skill” competencies and formal strategies we may have failed to notice that the most effective change agents are those individuals who have placed themselves at the center of intricate webs of relationships. How to build and maintain these unique relationships may become the most effective change-management “technique” a leader could learn.

The new business fundamentals include an increasing focus on knowledge, trust, relationships, and communities. And social networks – those ties among individuals that are based on mutual trust, shared work experiences, and common physical and virtual spaces are in many senses the true structure of today’s organizations. Anything you as a leader can do to nurture these mutually rewarding, complex and shifting relationships will enhance the creativity and readiness for change within your team or throughout your organization.

But, in order to capitalize on the potential in these relationships, trust has to be established. Trusting is not a matter of blind deference, but of placing – or refusing to place – trust with good judgment. In what are called “dense” relationships, the strength of connection is such that trust is taken for granted. In newer, less dense relationships, trust must be built.

Trust is the belief or confidence that one party has in the reliability, integrity and honesty of another party. It is the expectation that the faith one places in someone else will be honored. Or at least that is the definition of trust in its “benevolence-based” form. Another type of trust, “competence-based,” describes a relationship in which one party believes another to be knowledgeable about a given subject. When building personal networks, both types of trust are essential. People have to believe that you know what you’re talking about, that you have accurate information and expertise, but they also have to believe that you’re taking their perspectives and concerns to heart.

Another ingredient of trusting relationships is consistent credibility. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that you can talk until you’re blue in the face, but you will never create trust unless your sustained behavior parallels what you say. That’s why building trust can take so long. People are waiting to see a long-term, consistent pattern of behavior that is congruent with what you’ve been telling them.

High-trust relationships are also very personal. Beyond the link of work-related issues, we develop relationships through finding things in common: loving the same music, rooting for the same team, having children in school together, liking the same kind of food, or playing the same sport. And sometimes a leader has to create experiences that enable individuals to get to know one another as fellow human beings.

A story I often tell in my Creative Collaboration program is about Jeff Garbin, whose first management assignment was to help facilitate John Deere’s change from the “cell concept” of manufacturing in which employees merely performed one or two operations on a component before passing it on to the next cell to a “modular production system” in which all employees working on a given component would share equal responsibility for the finished product.

Along with the other new module leaders at Deere, it was Garbin’s job to help his employees through the transition – and he had inherited a problem. In Garbin’s words: “We had ten people working the early shift and five on the late one. There were people on the two shifts who had never spoken to one another before. They didn’t know each other, they came from different manufacturing disciplines and they had a reputation for not getting along. I had to build some kind of relationship between the two shifts – and I had to do it quickly. What I thought of was pretty simple, but it turned out to be very effective. I got everyone together in a room for a couple of hours, with no limits on what they were to discuss, except that it couldn’t be business-related. That was the beginning. Within three months, people started coming in early or staying late just so that they could talk with people on the other shift about what was happening at work.”

Another issue leaders should be aware of has to do with motive. Ron Burt, of the University of Chicago, discovered through numerous studies that certain patterns of connections that individuals build with others brings them higher pay, earlier promotions, greater influence, better ideas, and overall greater career success. But the MIT study found that high-performers didn’t develop and maintain these networks because it was “political” or self-serving – but rather because it was a natural consequence of the most effective way to get work done. And the connections made with others worked in ways that were mutual and reciprocal.

I’m not saying that leaders should throw out all formal change-management strategies. But I am suggesting that leaders should understand that the “soft” side of change – which includes building social capital and developing trusting relationships – might end up being the most powerful strategy of all.

I was in Germany last week, working with a group of “high potential” European employees. Their organization had identified these professions for intensive leadership development. It was quite an event, beginning DOG SLEDDING as the team-building event the night before my session started. (Although a challenge for this Californian who doesn’t even own snow boots, it was great fun.)

During my program (on Creative Collaboration) I talked about Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as one of my favorite strategies for finding strengths and positive qualities that already exist in a team, and building on those.

AI was developed at Case Western Reserve University by David Cooperrider, professor of Organizational Behavior. I use my own version of AI - tailored for my clients and focused on collaboration and knowledge sharing. While I also work with gap analysis and After Action Reviews, I especially like AI’s shift from identifying problems to looking at successses.

AI can be used in a personal self-inquiry model, with questions such as:
• Think of a time in your career when you were the most engaged and collaborative.
• What were the circumstances/elements that made collaboration so successful?
• How could you replicate some of these circumstances/elements in other situations?

In a team setting, the leader sets the stage by stating the goal: “Our goal is to create a highly collaborative team experience.” Questions are posed to the whole team:
• When is it that this team is the most collaborative and engaged?
• What do we agree are our greatest strengths and successes?
• Building on these strengths, what would an ideal future look like?
• What are the principles and behaviors we need to focus on to make this future a reality?

If you haven't used this kind of process before, you may be amazed by the positive energy for change that it unleashes.

After speaking at a conference on the East Coast, I was approached by an executive who handed me his business card as an introduction. I was startled when he abruptly snatched it back. He explained that he wanted to cross out the word senior in front of his vice-president title. He went on to tell me that he was only temporarily acting in the senior position and that, as soon as possible, he wanted to return to his old job. He said that five years earlier his ambition had been the presidency of the company, but not anymore: "Being a vice president suits me just fine. I'm good at it, and I could do it in my sleep. I don't need the added pressure of a higher position. Besides, I've got a family and a couple of interesting hobbies. This gives me time to play."

Just the week before, an audience member had shown me a drawing he'd sketched of his career objectives. His goal was to become the head of corporate communications for his present employer - an international firm that had already identified him as a "high potential" candidate. But the young man went on to say that he also wanted to live on the family ranch in Montana. While the company had been looking at ways this employee might commute home on weekends, he'd drawn a picture of himself working from the ranch and coming into an office only periodically.

Like many other talented professionals I've met and interviewed, these two were developing their own lifestyle formulas to compensate for the demands of the workplace. And while the strategies differ from person to person, they almost always reflects a desire for autonomy and freedom.

Some leaders are paying attention - and responding to this trend. Last year I worked with a company's senior management team. They were looking to center their organizational reengineering efforts on the key question: What gets in the way of your doing a great job and having a great life?

It wasn't an idle question. A 2005 ISR study of 50,000 workers found a clear link between good management practices, good work-life balance for employees, and an improved bottom line that included more satisfied customers and lower rates of absenteeism and safety incidents.

So ask your staff about their scheduling conflicts, and then involve them in co-creating timetables and deadlines. Be as understanding and supportive as you can when your workers have major personal issues. Find creative ways to help employees balance the work-life seesaw - and watch the positive effects on retention, customer loyalty, and profits!