Management is often painted as a discipline of strategy, efficiency and resource allocation. Leadership, in this view, is largely about positioning people effectively - much like moving pieces on a chessboard - and success is won by promotions and annual bonuses.
Authors
- Julian Barling
Distinguished Professor and Borden Chair of Leadership, Smith School of Business, Queen's University, Ontario
- Kaylee Somerville
PhD Candidate, Smith School of Business, Queen's University
This understanding is also reflected in how leadership roles are typically described and evaluated. Job status and responsibility are often inferred from the number of direct reports a manager oversees, with larger teams signalling greater prestige and organizational importance.
More than three decades ago, however, management scholar Henry Mintzberg challenged the main conceptions of managerial work. He argued that the role of managers goes beyond planning and control, and instead involves dealing with information, making decisions and managing relationships.
Despite this longstanding critique, the image of management and leadership as a largely technical and hierarchical activity remains influential, particularly as organizations undergo changes. One such change is "delayering" - a flattening of organizational structures by removing layers of middle management.
In 2025 alone, approximately 41 per cent of organizations reduced their middle management . This places more burden on leaders to manage larger and more complex teams.
While these changes may reduce administrative costs, doing so leaves little to no time for leaders to foster complex relationships among employees or their own peers.
Leading relationships, not people
As it turns out, leading relationships, not people, is more complex than we first think.
Consider a simple example of a leader who oversees eight employees. This leader is not merely supervising eight units of work, but is overseeing up to 28 different dyadic relationships - relationships between two employees, or between a leader and an employee.
The nature of dyadic relationships dramatically increases the cognitive and emotional complexity and workload inherent in leadership roles.
Once the broader network of workplace relationships - including coalitions and alliances - is considered, the complexity moves far beyond leader-employee pairs. Leaders manage interpersonal relationships and political dynamics , not just individuals, along with the provision of resources and task co-ordination.
Leaders should encourage friends at work
Workplace relationship complexity is further intensified by what are known as "multiplex relationships." These are relationships in which people share both instrumental and emotional ties with each other.
These relationships involve co-workers who support each other professionally while also serving as sources of genuine friendship and support. Such relationships are widespread in organizations and have been shown to be associated with higher work performance than either instrumental or social relationships alone.
These relationships are beneficial because employees are more willing to share complex and important information with peers who they trust.
An important caveat remains: the maximum number of multiplex ties for enhanced organizational performance is between five and seven . Beyond this point, the competing demands that make up emotional and instrumental relationships place further emotional and cognitive burdens on managers leading these relationships.
Leaders themselves can have multiplex ties with their employees, which is especially useful for team performance among teams that don't get along .
Rethinking leadership
Given their prevalence and potential benefits for employee job performance, leaders need to pay more, not less, attention to relationships between employees. Leaders can play a role in shaping positive workplace dynamics within teams and across organizations.
Leaders who are better at fostering relationships inside and outside of organizations are more likely to improve their reputations and improve group performance than those who micromanage interactions within and between teams.
This requires a change in mindset. Management has long been framed as the act of managing people. Increasingly, it needs to be better understood as the work of leading relationships.
Ironically, delayering provides an opportunity to rethink and replace "management" with "leadership." But leaders will only encourage and build multiplex relationships among their teams when they have received the training and resources to succeed in this new environment.
Yet, organizations have traditionally failed their leaders when it comes to training and development. Far too many people still get placed in leadership positions before they receive the training and development to enable them to succeed .
The new workplace reality demands that organizations support leaders not only to manage environments that reward individual performance, but in settings where complex and often messy relationships are central to leadership effectiveness.
Julian Barling receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
Kaylee Somerville receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
