How great leaders win relationships and build high-performing teams

Throughout this season of Pave It Black, we’ve explored the many dimensions leadership. In this episode, we turn to a voice outside the asphalt pavement industry for a fresh take on one of leadership’s most vital skills: relationship building. With the help of global business development expert Hilary Fordwich, we discuss what it really takes to lead in a universal and diverse world. With over 30 years of experience helping professional service companies gain and retain clients, Hilary breaks down what it takes to lead with clarity and directly.

At the heart of Hilary’s conversation is a simple yet powerful framework: the difference between what people want and what they need. She explains how leaders can apply this concept to strengthen both customer relationships and internal teams. She also shares the three key characteristics that set great leaders apart and how these traits help motivate diverse teams. Tune in to walk away with strategies that drive better business and better leadership.

Here’s a short preview of this week’s episode. Be sure to listen on your preferred platform to enhance your leadership skills. Listen now.

What are some of the key leadership skills that are necessary to succeed in a global business environment?

My entire principle and everything I do can be summed up in, it’s the difference between need and want. How do we make sure you are wanted? The number one thing is how can I make sure, as a leader, my firm is the one that is wanted. That’s the external want. The internal want is how can I make sure my people want to work for me. I always say you can pay people to work for you day in, day out, but you cannot buy their hearts. You have to make them want to work for you. And you know what? If you don’t win over their hearts and they don’t want to work for you,

You want to have your people get up every weekend say ‘TGIM, Thank goodness it’s Monday’ not ‘I’m waiting for Friday’. You want to have people on your team say ‘I will walk through fire for my leader. I am dedicated to my leader. I’m going to do everything to have their back. I’m going to work as hard as I possibly can for my leader.’ That’s your job as a leader externally, to make sure you are wanted and to make sure your people want to do everything and go to the ends of the earth for you. That’s your challenge as a leader.

What are some of the common mistakes leaders make when they try to establish strong client relationships?

Where things go wrong are when businesses try to be too transactional. Going back to my want pyramid, I said there were three pillars. Likability is the gatekeeper. If people dislike you, they’re not going to do business with you. People dislike you, they’re not going to hire you. People dislike you, they’re not going to promote you. But it isn’t enough just to be liked. I always call it the gatekeeper. What’s really important are trust and respect. Those two pillars are so important. You have to win people’s trust. Universally, a pitfall that businesses make is they don’t realize we have to be trusted and trust is an individual thing. It doesn’t matter how great your global brand is. People have an interaction with you as a person. 

What trends or challenges you think leaders are going to need to adapt to in the coming years?

There’s always this big discussion about the difference between boomers and millennials and Generation X and generation Y. We could spend a lot of time looking at all the differences, but I look at the universal truths that are never going to change. Otherwise, you spend too much time thinking what makes them completely different. I look at the universal truths and universal truths are the things that absolutely everybody wants. So a trend is, and you know, technology has enabled this. The trend is people have had the luxury of wanting more work-life balance than I’ve ever witnessed ever in my work history. Now, I do think with economic uncertainty and a tightening of an economy, that changes because people are more appreciative of their jobs in the first place. But that is a trend I’ve definitely seen. And that is universal. That’s across the globe. That is a universal concern that all leaders have to address.