Is youth work too task focussed?

I have the privilege of working alongside a fantastic colleague in the project we're setting up. She's a volunteer and works her *rse off for the young people and the project, and has the confidence to challenge me when she thinks I'm off on one or doing things the wrong way or my practice could be better.

The other day she pointed out how focussed on objectives I was. Always wanting to sit down at the start of the evening and work out what we wanted to achieve that evening, and then evaluate at the end, often focussed on the outcomes of Every Child Matters and Plymouth's youth work curriculum. She suggested that I was focussing too much on these, to the detriment of building relationships with the young people. When I started in youth work this was my main objective- a relationship of trust where I can get alongside the young person in whatever they need me alongside them in, but since I've trained professionally, I think I agree I have become very outcome focussed.

So is youth work that is as outcome focussed as we are encouraged to make it today doing so at a detriment to the supportive relationships we can build with young people? Have we become too outcome focussed? Are we trying to take young people on a journey of our own agendas (or Every Child Matters' agendas) too quickly these days? What would happen if we went back to making our main objective 'building positive and supportive relationships with young people'?