What Matters More Than Your Credentials: The Relationship Factor

There is a quiet power in not trying to impress people. Most people think influence comes from being impressive, but it actually comes from making others feel safe. People are drawn to those they feel comfortable around. Making someone feel small, and the quickest way to create distance or damage a connection is to make someone feel small by weaponizing and comparing your accomplishments will create distance or damage a connection quickly. People rarely warm up to those who intimidate them, they either avoid them, resent them, or quietly root against them. 

If you want healthy relationships, the goal is not to lead with your accomplishments in conversation but to make others feel comfortable in the interaction. Let others shine and have their wins. Resist the urge to correct unnecessarily or one-up a story. Most people carry some degree of self-doubt, and the person who makes them feel seen, valued, and safe is the one they naturally gravitate toward.

I learned this lesson early in my corporate career. At the time, I assumed my position should command respect. I had more experience than many of my colleagues, a managerial title, and even a corner office. In my mind, these were clear markers of authority. I believed hierarchy alone would translate into influence, and quickly realised that assumption was wrong.

In many teams, there exists a kind of informal leader. This is someone without managerial authority but whose presence shapes the social dynamics of the group. Leadership author John C. Maxwell often emphasises that influence is built through relationships rather than only through authority, it is a form of social influence within emotional intelligence. This is the person others instinctively gravitate toward, the colleague everyone waits for before deciding where to go for lunch, the one whose opinion quietly sets the tone of the room.

Despite my title, I began to notice subtle signals that I was not occupying that role. I was often left out of casual “locker-room” conversations where trust within the group was shaped. When challenges arose, help was not always readily offered. This experience taught me an important lesson about emotional and social literacy, especially understanding emotions during conflict. Recognising how our behaviour makes others feel in everyday interactions was a valuable lesson that authority on paper does not automatically create trust. Respect is built through relationships, social awareness, emotional literacy and the ability to navigate human and team dynamics. Over time, I learned to be more intentional about how I presented myself. A friendly, warm, open demeanor matters by lowering defensiveness and encouraging collaboration. But more importantly, it changed how I understood connection itself as something not granted by position, but something built moment by moment, through how we make others feel. And so the question is not who you are on paper, but who you become in the spaces between people.

With that in mind, I leave with you with some questions to reflect on:

1. Who in your life makes you feel most at ease? What is it about how they show up that creates that?

2. Think of someone you admire but find hard to be around. What’s the dynamic that creates that distance?

3. When you walk into a room, what impression do you most want to leave people with?

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