Leading Through Relationship

Cristina Stensvaag
Jun 23
3 min read

What is your team's behavior telling you about your growth as a leader?

June 23, 2026

Originally published in One More Rep, a weekly newsletter for people managers who want to get better through practice. Subscribe here — it's free.

Week 25. Rep 25. This month you named your standards, communicated them directly, and held them when it would have been easier not to. This week we'll look at what all of it built.

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The Moment

Three months ago we started Q2 with a question: how do I become someone people can rely on?

You spent April building consistency, May giving feedback that lands, and June holding the standards behind it.

If you've been doing the reps, have you noticed a shift? Maybe your team is bringing you problems earlier. Maybe a hard conversation happened faster than it would have in January. Maybe you held a standard you would have otherwise let slide.

That's what twelve weeks of deliberate practice looks like.

The Pattern

It is tempting to assess your own growth by how you feel about your performance. Did I handle that well? Was I fair? Did I say the right thing?

That's the wrong measure. The right measure is what your team's behavior is telling you. Are they bringing you the hard things, holding their own standards, embracing feedback?

Your team reflects your leadership back at you. What are you seeing?

Why This Matters

Q2 was about leading through relationship. Not managing tasks, hitting metrics, or running efficient meetings. You've been building the kind of trust that makes everything else easier. This week you find out how far it's taken you.

Rep

This Week's Practice

This week you're mapping what the quarter built. You'll look at your relationships, your team's behavior, and your own patterns across the last three months.

Your Rep

Answer these three questions in writing:

Where is your team showing you more trust than they were in April?
Where are you still the bottleneck: in feedback, in standards, in consistency?
What's the one thing you're carrying into Q3 that needs the most deliberate attention?

What to Notice

Success looks like:

Your answers are based on what you've observed, not how you feel about your performance
At least one answer is uncomfortable because it's accurate
The thing you're carrying into Q3 is specific enough to act on in July

Resistance looks like:

Answering based on your intentions rather than your team's behavior
Writing three things to carry into Q3 instead of committing to one
Treating this as a reflection exercise instead of a rep

It's working when:

You can point to a specific relationship or dynamic that is measurably different than it was in April

Common Mistakes

Mistake #1: Grading yourself on effort. How hard you worked on something isn't the thing to measure. What actually changed is. Stay focused on evidence, not intention.

Mistake #2: Skipping the uncomfortable answer. The thing that's still not working after three months of deliberate practice is the most important thing on the page. Don't bury it under what went well.

Reflect

What does your team's behavior tell you about the leader you've become this quarter? Is that who you intended to be?
What would Q3 look like if you carried one thing forward with the same deliberateness you brought to Q2?

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Cristina Stensvaag is co-founder of LeaderReps and creator of One More Rep, a weekly practice-based leadership newsletter for people managers.