There’s a growing awareness that success isn’t measured by outputs alone; experiences also shape it. We know this when we look outward: we measure customer satisfaction scores, we track Net Promoter Scores, we study what makes people stay loyal. But too often, organizations overlook that experience management begins on the inside.
An employee’s experience of your organization – whether they feel heard, supported, valued, or empowered – has a direct impact on their performance, retention, and overall organizational culture. When people think they’re just a number, they disengage. When they feel like their voices matter, they go the extra mile.
Experience is Emotional
At the heart of experience management is a simple truth: experiences are emotional; they can’t be managed purely with policies or processes. They’re shaped by how people interact, how leaders communicate, and how trust is built or broken.
Empathy plays a powerful role here by helping us see things from another’s perspective. When a leader takes the time to listen and respond with understanding, it creates psychological safety. That safety is the foundation for trust. Without trust, people hold back. They hesitate to speak up. They don’t feel connected to their work or the people they do it with.
So, if experience is emotional, and trust is built through empathy, then how do organizations make that real every day, beyond slogans on the wall?
The Missing Link: Business Relationship Management
This is where business relationship management (BRM) comes in to create a bridge between emotions, empathy, and achieving organizational goals and desired results. Many people still see BRM as just a role – a person with a job title. However, the truth is that BRM is far more powerful when viewed as a leadership capability.
At its core, business relationship management is about intentionally building and sustaining relationships that create value and deliver results. It’s the discipline of navigating needs, expectations, and emotions to strengthen trust and alignment. BRM is the glue between strategy and execution, because real work gets done through people, and people work best when they feel respected and understood.
Every leader needs this capability. Whether you manage a team, a project, or an entire division, your ability to build trust, listen with empathy, and turn conversations into collaborative action directly shapes the experience people have working with you.
What BRM Looks Like in Practice
When leaders embrace BRM as a leadership capability, experience management becomes tangible. For example:
- They don’t just set performance goals – they have regular check-ins to understand how people are experiencing their work, and what might be getting in their way.
- They create channels for feedback that go both ways, giving people a voice and demonstrating that what they share leads to real improvements.
- They navigate conflicts early, with curiosity and openness, rather than letting resentment build up quietly.
- They recognize that value is co-created; it’s not delivered to people, it’s built with them.
This is what healthy experience management looks like. It’s not a separate project or annual survey. It’s part of everyday leadership behaviour.
The Impact: Trust, Engagement, and Results
When leaders practice BRM well, the ripple effects are substantional. People trust more, so they speak up sooner. Teams feel safe to innovate because they know mistakes won’t be weaponized against them. Departments collaborate more effectively because relationships are built on mutual understanding, not transactional exchanges.
In the end, experience management isn’t just an HR initiative – it’s a leadership imperative. And BRM is the muscle that makes it work.
We’re Here to Help
Building this capability doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intention, practice, and sometimes, a trusted guide. That’s why we design our coaching sessions and courses to help leaders understand and strengthen experience management and BRM together. Whether you’re new to these ideas or looking to deepen your practice, we’re here to support you in creating an organization where people – and relationships – thrive.
Let’s make experience management something we don’t just measure but truly live every day.
Leadership Education, BRM Training, Courses, Coaching and Consulting
Lead the Pack Consulting specializes in business relationship management (BRM) leadership development. Our years of experience in Leadership Management Education, Training, Courses, Coaching and Consulting help us support business relationship management teams and provide them with the leadership skills needed to overcome their challenges. We have provided leadership coaching to business relationship managers, leaders, and teams in a variety of organizations and industries. Since 2013, we have been a registered provider of business relationship management certification workshops and coaching.
Our coaches, Elka Schrijver and Peter Lijnse, have both won the prestigious Arnie Award from the Business Relationship Management (BRM) Institute for their work to embody, enhance, and promote business relationship management knowledge throughout the global BRM community. They have been actively involved in the BRM Institute since it was founded in 2013 and have been contributing authors for several components of the BRM Body of Knowledge and certification courses. They are currently writing a series of practical, user-friendly books about mastering business relationship management leadership skills.
Lead and Succeed!
Peter Lijnse & Elka Schrijver
Lead The Pack Consulting
2025 Leadership BRM Courses