Building Bridges Is Not Stakeholder Management
There is a concept that comes back regularly in my thinking, often without me actively looking for it. It surfaces in conversations, in complex situations, and sometimes when things do not go as planned. That concept is what I call building bridges.
Building bridges can happen internally, within the company or the group you are working in. It can also happen externally, with stakeholders, partners, or actors in the broader ecosystem in which your business operates. Most people would describe this as stakeholder management. I think that description falls short.
Stakeholder management often implies control. Information flows in one direction. Influence is exercised carefully. The objective is to shape outcomes in a way that benefits your position.
Building bridges is something else entirely.
A bridge is not built to manage the other side. It is built to connect. And the connection only works if it holds weight in both directions.
True bridges are two-way by design. They imply give and take. Sometimes the balance is equal. Sometimes it is not. It might be fifty-fifty. It might be seventy-thirty. What matters is not symmetry, but mutual benefit. Both sides must feel that the relationship creates value, otherwise the bridge will eventually collapse under its own weight.
This is something I have always believed in, both as a person and as a manager. Even early in my career, before I had any formal leadership responsibility, I found that relationships mattered more than processes. Perhaps it was influenced by the fact that I started in smaller environments, where proximity forced you to engage with people directly. You could not hide behind structure or hierarchy.
I learned early that trust is the foundation of any meaningful bridge.
I know the common saying: trust must be earned. There is truth in that. But there is also a risk. If you wait for trust to be earned before offering any, relationships can take a very long time to form if they form at all.
My own preference has always been to start by trusting. Not blindly. Not naively. But deliberately. I choose to give trust first, with clear boundaries, and then let the relationship shape itself over time. Trust evolves. It deepens, or it narrows, depending on behavior and context. But it needs an initial signal to exist at all.
That initial trust allows bridges to form on solid foundations.
Building bridges is also something I genuinely enjoy. I enjoy working with people. I enjoy understanding how they think, what motivates them, and what constrains them. I enjoy being open, not because openness is a virtue in itself, but because it creates clarity.
Clarity reduces friction. And reduced friction allows things to move.
But bridges are not built for their own sake. They need to support action.
This is where many leaders make a mistake, myself included.
At one point in my career, I invested a significant amount of time and energy in building strong internal relationships. I established trust across the group I was working in. I had stakeholders who relied on me and whom I relied on in return. Those bridges were real. They were solid.
On that basis, I developed and promoted a business plan. The plan was approved. The momentum was strong. Execution started, and with it came opportunities, challenges, and constant demands on time and attention.
And this is where I made a mistake.
I became so absorbed by the execution of the plan that I stopped maintaining the bridges I had built. Not intentionally. Not out of disregard. Simply because I ran out of time and mental space.
I assumed the bridges would hold.
They did not.
When headwinds arrived, as they always do, the absence of maintenance became painfully visible. Relationships that had once been strong had weakened. Some bridges were no longer there. Rebuilding them under pressure was extremely difficult, in some cases impossible.
The result was not just emotional discomfort. It created real obstacles. Decisions became harder. Support was thinner. What could have been resolved through dialogue now required formal escalation or defensive positioning.
That experience taught me something essential: bridges require discipline.
Building them is not enough. They need to be maintained, consciously and continuously. This maintenance is rarely urgent. That is why it is so easy to postpone. But when it becomes urgent, it is often too late.
Maintaining bridges does not mean keeping all of them forever.
Some bridges must be dismantled.
Interests evolve. Strategies change. Trust can be broken. A relationship that was once mutually beneficial may no longer be so. In those cases, maintaining the bridge out of habit or sentiment is not healthy.
Ending a business relationship does not need to be dramatic or hostile. It does not need to burn everything behind it.
In my career, I have ended relationships internally and externally when they no longer made sense. I always tried to do it in a way that was respectful, ethical, and honest. Not because it is comfortable, but because it is responsible.
A business bridge can be removed without turning the relationship into a battlefield.
If you meet the same person again in a different context and in business, this happens more often than we expect, the history matters. Ending a relationship properly preserves optionality. It allows future interactions to start from a position of mutual respect, even if the previous chapter has closed.
I have always believed that cutting a business relationship should not automatically mean cutting human contact. You should still be able to have a conversation, a meal, or a call. You should still be able to explore whether a different kind of bridge might make sense in the future.
There is another dimension to building bridges that is often underestimated: it is not an individual sport.
If your leadership approach relies on strong internal and external relationships, your organization must be able to carry those relationships, not undermine them.
You cannot have a strategic partnership that is constantly put at risk because part of your team does not understand it, does not support it, or feels excluded from it. Bridges built at the top but ignored below are fragile.
That is why communication matters. Not as a formality, but as alignment. Your team needs to understand why a relationship exists, what it brings, and what it requires. They need to see how it connects to the broader strategy, and how their own behavior contributes to strengthening or weakening it.
Building bridges at leadership level without embedding them into the organization creates dependency. Embedding them creates resilience.
When bridges are truly integrated, teams begin to live the relationship themselves. They build their own connections. They solve issues before they escalate. The bridge becomes part of the operating fabric, not a personal construct tied to one individual.
Not everyone is comfortable building bridges.
Some leaders prefer transactional clarity. Some prefer formal distance. Some operate best through structure and authority rather than relationship. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But it needs to be consistent with the strategy.
If your strategy depends on ecosystems, partnerships, internal alignment, and long-term collaboration, then bridge-building is not optional. It becomes a leadership capability that must be developed, supported, and sometimes learned the hard way.
For me, building bridges has never been about being agreeable or avoiding conflict. It has been about creating conditions where difficult conversations are possible, where trust allows disagreement without destruction, and where action is supported by relationships rather than blocked by them.
That is the difference between managing stakeholders and building bridges.
One is about control.
The other is about connection.
And in complex environments, connection is often what makes execution possible.
François Jacquemin
P.S.: Want to watch the video version of this article? Go to https://www.francoisjacquemin.com/covered/building-bridges-that-endure