About Approachable Leadership

Welcome! I’m Phil Wilson and I’m the Chief Evangelist of Approachable Leadership. We’re really glad you’re here.

Approachable Leadership is a division of the Labor Relations Institute, where I’m President, General Counsel, and occasional barista (if putting water in the coffee machine counts as being a barista).

LRI was started by my dad in 1978 and over the last 36 years our firm has helped improve relationships between managers and their employees in over 10,000 different companies. We’ve done a pretty good job. We are one of the most successful and fastest growing leadership consultancies in the country (we’ve made the Inc. 5000 list multiple times).

Most of the time we are called in to help a company in crisis. Employees have gotten so sick of things they’ve basically “filed for divorce” from their managers. Relationships are frayed to the breaking point.

When relationships get this bad it effects every aspect of a company. Productivity plummets. People quit helping out. Going above and beyond to help a coworker or a customer? Forget it. People are at each other’s throats. Stress is through the roof, profitability down the toilet.

After twenty years of watching this scenario play out over and over, I felt there had to be more we could do. I looked back. How do companies get themselves into this position in the first place? What is the root of the problem?

The answer is leadership of course – that much I knew right off. But I have seen all kinds of leaders over the years. I’ve seen “leaders” who could teach a masters class on management but couldn’t get people to follow them out of a burning building. Then I’ve seen others who don’t know “come here from sick ‘em” about management (as my dad likes to say – usually about me). Yet when you see them in action you realize people will run through a brick wall for them.

What’s the difference? What behavior or way of looking at the world predicts whether someone will succeed or fail as a leader?

And so the research began.

I went on a quest to try and answer this question. I read virtually anything I could get my hands on about leadership. After two years of open browser windows, highlighted articles, dog-eared books, and hours-long calls with clients and friends, I found it. The “one ring” of leadership that rules all the others. (It is worth noting here that while this ring does wonders for your professional and personal life it does not make you invisible – in case I failed to mention it I’m also a nerd).

The key? Leader Approachability.

Think about your best boss and the leaders you respect most. I guarantee if you start naming behaviors you admire you’ll end up with a list of approachable behaviors.

Many managers – especially new ones – commonly adopt behavior that is unapproachable. Companies often make this worse by expecting so much of managers that there is no time to actually lead. Even when there is a little time, managers are asked to supervise so many people that they only have time to put out fires. They end up pulling back and avoiding people, hoping to get through a day without adding more to their already ridiculous to-do list.

This is called a power-distance gap. It kills work relationships.

Leaders must constantly try to shrink this gap. You do that by being approachable. It is a two-way street. You must seek out others and create an environment where people feel comfortable coming to you. There are specific, easy-to-learn behaviors that help leaders shrink that gap. But in today’s “always on” workplace, it isn’t easy. Some days it’s darn near impossible.

Since discovering the connection between approachability and successful leaders, I have been evangelizing it to anyone who will listen. My team and I have worked tirelessly to develop tools for teaching this valuable skill to others. We are spreading the word through our Keynote presentations, Workshops, our Learning System, and my forthcoming book.

Our goal is big. We want to teach approachability to one-million leaders. But as Lao Tzu teaches, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. That’s why we are happy, proud, and excited to share these ideas with the world – one leader at a time.