The Intentionality of Relationship Building

“Honey, I hate to say it, but I think you need to exercise more,” my wife told me last winter.

“What do you mean?” I replied. “I’m refereeing four basketball games a night—and five of them every Saturday. That’s a lot of trips up and down the court!”

“Which is all well and good, but it doesn’t count. It’s not intentional exercise. You get far more out of a workout that’s done for its own sake rather than incidental to a hobby.”

She was right.

Intentionality is powerful. Whether in fitness, nutrition, friendship, or faith, there is a difference between something that happens incidentally and something we deliberately cultivate in service of a larger purpose.

The same is true of relationship building in public management.

Strong professional relationships rarely materialize at the moment we need them. They are built beforehand, through deliberate and sustained attention. Leaders should check in with employees, team leaders, colleagues, and external stakeholders—and continually look for opportunities to broaden those relationships—even when there is no immediate problem to solve or favor to ask.

Especially then.

That work can sometimes feel inefficient. Another meeting. Another phone call. Another conversation without an obvious outcome. At times, reaching out can even feel uncomfortable or imposing.

But intentional relationship building is the in-the-trenches work that creates the conditions for future successes and breakthroughs. It builds trust before trust is tested. It creates channels of communication before those channels become essential. And it establishes the relationships that allow opportunities to be recognized and seized when they emerge.

I’m reminded of a line delivered by Hal Wyler in Season 1 of Netflix’s The Diplomat:

“Communication isn’t the key. Diplomacy doesn’t open doors with a twist of the wrist. Diplomacy never works.”

“Until it does.”

Public management can feel much the same way. Building and sustaining relationships can mean endless meetings, hundreds of phone calls, unanswered messages, rejected ideas, and conversations that seem to lead nowhere.

And still, we keep showing up.

Because we cannot know in advance which conversation will matter. Which relationship will create an unexpected opening. Which person will pick up the phone when a crisis arrives. Which months—or years—of accumulated trust will suddenly make possible something that could not have happened otherwise.

Relationships are not something we build when we need them.

We build them intentionally so they are there when we do.