Intentional Connection – The Practice of Showing Up for Others
- Brainz Magazine
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Jonathan Rozenblit is a Professional Certified Coach (ICF-PCC), author, and podcast host who specializes in helping corporate professionals discover and develop their unique practice of leadership. His focus is on the inner work of leadership, creating conditions for people to be, bring, and do their best.
Creating conditions for others to thrive requires more than good intentions or generic support. It requires genuinely understanding who they are, what they need, and how they work best. Intentional connection, the practice of deliberately building deeper understanding and relationships with others, gives you the insight needed to truly help people grow. This article explores why creating conditions for others starts with connection, how common mistakes like offering help without understanding can actually hinder growth, and what becomes possible when you practice showing up for others with genuine intention and patience.
Why creating conditions requires connection first
Two colleagues notice their teammate struggling with a complex project. The first jumps in immediately with solutions, shares what worked for them last time, and offers to take over the difficult parts. They mean well, but their help falls flat. The teammate feels misunderstood, maybe even diminished.
The second colleague takes a different approach. They've been practicing intentional connection, paying attention to how this person works, what overwhelms them, and what energizes them. So instead of offering generic help, they ask a specific question that unlocks the teammate's own thinking. They create space for the person to find their own solution, offering support that actually supports.
If you recognize yourself in the first colleague, you're not alone. Most of us default to this approach, especially when we care deeply about helping others succeed. It's natural to offer what has worked for us and want to remove obstacles for others. This impulse comes from genuine care. The issue isn't your intention, it's that without connection, even the best intentions can miss the mark.
This difference illustrates a fundamental truth about practicing leadership: you cannot create conditions for others to be their best, bring their best, and do their best without first understanding who they are and what they actually need.
Without connection, you're guessing who they are and what they need. Instead, you project your own understanding of them and their needs. You offer what would help you, not what would help them. Your good intentions translate into actions that miss the mark, sometimes making things worse. The person you're trying to help feels unseen, their actual challenges unaddressed.
But when you practice intentional connection, deliberately building understanding of how others think, work, and thrive, everything changes. You stop imposing solutions and start creating genuine conditions in which the other person can thrive. You move from helpful to actually helping. You gain the insight necessary to support others in ways that truly serve them.
The common mistakes of helping without connection
When you want to help someone succeed but haven't invested in understanding them first, certain patterns emerge. You see them struggling and immediately think, "I know exactly what they need." You share the solution that worked brilliantly for you. You offer to handle the complex parts so they can focus on the basics. You give advice based on how you would want to be supported.
These approaches feel helpful. They come from genuine care and good intentions. Yet they often leave the other person feeling smaller rather than stronger.
Consider what happens when you solve problems for someone instead of with them. You might fix the immediate issue, but you've also sent a message: "I don't trust you to figure this out." When you offer generic solutions without understanding their specific context, you communicate: "I haven't really been paying attention to your unique situation." When you assume what they need based on your own preferences, you say: "I see you as an extension of me, not as your own person."
The impact runs deeper than hurt feelings. Without understanding gained through connection, your help might actually create new problems. The generally extroverted team member you're trying to support by including them in more meetings might actually need quiet alone time to think strategically. The detail-oriented colleague you're protecting from big-picture discussions might be craving the bigger-picture details of those discussions. The person you think needs clearer direction might actually need more autonomy.
Real support requires real understanding. And real understanding only comes through intentional connection through watching, listening, and learning who this person actually is, rather than who you assume them to be.
Building your practice of intentional connection
Building intentional connection starts with a shift in focus. Instead of rushing to help, you pause to understand. Instead of assuming you know what someone needs, you become genuinely curious about their reality.
This practice begins with observation. You notice patterns in how your colleague approaches problems. You pay attention to when they seem energized versus depleted. You observe what types of support they accept readily and what they resist. Each observation adds to your understanding of who they are and what conditions help them thrive.
From this foundation of observation, you can extend meaningful invitations. Not "Let me know if you need anything," that puts all the burden on them. Instead, specific invitations based on what you've noticed: "I saw you light up when discussing the strategic aspects yesterday. Would you like to lead that portion of next week's planning session?" Or "I noticed the afternoon meetings seem to drain your energy. What if we moved our one-on-ones to the morning?"
These specific invitations do more than offer help. They show you've been paying attention. They demonstrate that you see the person, not just the role. They make it safe for someone to accept support because you've removed the guesswork and the vulnerability of having to ask.
Each interaction deepens your understanding. When they accept an invitation, you learn what kind of support resonates. When they decline, you learn about boundaries or preferences you hadn't seen. Even their way of declining tells you something rushed rejection might mean overwhelm, while a thoughtful explanation might mean they trust you enough to be honest.
This is a practice that builds slowly. You won't understand someone deeply after a week of paying attention. But over time, through consistent intentional connection, you develop the insight needed to create conditions where they can genuinely thrive.
Meeting resistance with patient invitation
Not everyone will welcome your attempts at connection immediately. Some people have been burned by "help" that came with strings attached. Others protect their privacy. Still others might not yet trust that your interest is genuine. When you encounter resistance, the practice of intentional connection becomes even more important.
A declined invitation or a deflected question doesn't mean "never." It means "not now" or "not in this way." This is valuable information, not rejection. The person who turns down your offer to collaborate might be overwhelmed this week, but receptive next month. The colleague who keeps conversations surface-level might need to see consistency in your actions before opening up.
When you meet resistance, return to connection. Continue observing without intrusion. Notice what they do accept, perhaps they decline meetings but engage in casual hallway conversations. Maybe they won't discuss challenges, but will share successes. These patterns teach you how to adjust your approach.
Your next invitation might be smaller, less threatening. Instead of offering to review their entire project, you might share a relevant article with a simple "thought you might find this interesting." Instead of asking directly about their struggles, you might share your own challenge first, creating space for reciprocal vulnerability.
The key is patient consistency. You keep showing up with genuine intention to understand and support, without pushing when they're not ready. You demonstrate through actions over time that your interest in their success is authentic and without agenda. You prove that "no" is safe with you, that declining doesn't damage the relationship or stop future invitations.
This patience often transforms resistance into partnership. But even when it doesn't, even when someone maintains their boundaries, your practice of intentional connection ensures you're creating whatever conditions you can for them to succeed, respecting their limits while remaining available should those limits shift.
When connection becomes partnership
Sometimes, through consistent practice of intentional connection, relationships evolve into something remarkable. You develop such a deep understanding of how someone thinks and works that you can anticipate their needs before they voice them. You become the person who remembers they have a critical presentation next week and blocks time on their calendar for preparation. You notice when they're heading toward burnout and create space for them to reset before they crash.
This depth of connection enables you to become what you might feel as a "second brain," someone who catches what they miss, remembers what matters to them, and asks the question that unlocks their thinking. You help them go places they couldn't reach alone, not by pushing or pulling, but by creating exactly the conditions they need to exceed their own expectations.
When this happens, something unexpected often emerges: reciprocity. The person you've been creating conditions for starts doing the same for you. They begin noticing your patterns, anticipating your needs, and offering support that actually supports. Not because you asked or expected it, but because experiencing someone truly showing up for them inspires them to show up for others.
This mutual elevation, where both people actively create conditions for the other to thrive, transforms what's possible. Problems get solved before they become crises because someone noticed the early warning signs. Innovation happens naturally because people feel safe bringing incomplete thoughts. Work becomes generative rather than draining because everyone is operating with support that matches their actual needs.
But here's what matters: you don't practice intentional connection to get this reciprocity. You practice it because creating conditions for others to be their best is what it means to practice leadership. The mutual partnership, when it emerges, is a beautiful byproduct, not the goal. Your focus remains on understanding and supporting others, regardless of what comes back to you.
Your practice begins with seeing
The difference between helping and truly helping, between support and genuine support, lies in how well you see the people around you. Not just their roles or their output, but who they are as whole humans with unique needs, pressures, and potential.
Take a moment to reflect on your current relationships at work. How many people do you truly see? Not just their job performance or their personality at meetings, but their patterns of thinking, their sources of energy and depletion, their unspoken struggles and unnamed aspirations. How often do you offer help based on assumptions versus understanding?
The practice of intentional connection begins with choosing one relationship and committing to seeing that person more clearly. This week, instead of jumping to help, pause to observe. Notice when they seem most engaged. Pay attention to what types of tasks they embrace versus avoid. Listen not just to what they say but how they say it.
From this observation, extend one specific invitation that shows you've been paying attention. Make it small, concrete, and easy to accept or decline. Remember that this is a practice, you're not trying to transform the relationship overnight. You're beginning the slow, patient work of building a connection that enables you to create real conditions for their success.
Some relationships will deepen quickly. Others will take months of consistent presence. Some may never move beyond cordial professionalism, and that's okay too. What matters is that you're choosing to practice seeing others, understanding them, and using that understanding to show up in ways that serve their growth.
This is how you practice leadership, not through position or authority, but through the daily choice to create conditions for others to be their best, bring their best, and do their best.
Want to continue this conversation?
If this article resonated with you and you'd like to continue the conversation, or if you'd like to get regular insights on practicing leadership like this, consider joining the Leadership Practitioner community on Substack.
There, I challenge the traditional notions of leadership as a title or position and instead redefine it as a practice, a way of showing up, of choosing to lead with purpose and vulnerability. As such, I don’t prescribe a single way forward. Instead, I endeavour to share reflections and gentle invitations to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of leadership, no matter your experience level.
Read more from Jonathan Rozenblit
Jonathan Rozenblit, Professional Development Coach
Jonathan Rozenblit guides corporate professionals through their journey of discovering and developing their unique practice of leadership so that they can create conditions for themselves and others to be, bring, and do their best at work. Jonathan holds Professional Certified Coach credentials from the International Coaching Federation, is the co-creator of the Leadership Practitioner program, a program that equips individuals with practical tools to inspire trust and cultivate collaborative cultures where people can bring their best selves to work every day, co-host of the Leadership Practitioner podcast, and co-author of 'The Essential Leadership Practitioner: A Framework for Building a Meaningful Practice of Leadership'.
