Michael Lee Stallard

I’ll be speaking about how Connection Cultures help employees and organizations thrive at Communitelligence’s Innovating Employee Engagement Conference held at the Catalyst Ranch. The companies who have representatives speaking at the conference include Google, IBM, McDonalds, Allstate, Lowe’s, H&R Block, Servicemaster, Navistar, Aon, CVS Caremark and Sabre Holdings. It’s going to be a terrific group to learn from so I hope you’ll consider attending. Communitelligence is offering two-for-one admission if you register by Friday July 18.

It’s wise to begin your day on a positive note by saying “good morning” to your colleagues at work.  Failing to recognize them is to communicate indifference.  It’s also wise to begin every meeting with a positive comment.  Research has shown that beginning a meeting with a positive comment makes group participants better listeners and makes the group more constructive.  These benefits of starting your day and meetings off on a positive note are consistent with the findings of Professor Barbara Frederickson’s research on positive emotions.

I learned the foregoing from my friend Alex Kjerulf.  Check out his Chief Happiness Officer blog and his book entitled Happy Hour is 9 to 5: Learn How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at Work. 

A friend’s email just reminded me of Benjamin Franklin’s words to his fellow signers of the Declaration of Independence.  ”We must hang together, or we shall surely hang separately,” opined Franklin following the Continental Congress approval of the Declaration.  Franklin’s words conveyed a literal meaning in that signing the Declaration was treason according to King George III and therefore punishable by death.  Since that time, “hanging together” has kept America strong.   Adolf Hitler, Nikita Khruschev and, more recently, Osama bin Laden, proclaimed that America’s diverse ethnicities and creeds would result in disunity in the face of adversity.  They missed the real source of America’s unity. Read more »

Consultant and blogger Michael DeWitt just posted an insightful video on his Spooky Action blog about how the human brain works and its implications for organizational change efforts.  He concludes that leaders should create Connection Cultures to help members of organizations accept and implement change.  Check out DeWitt’s blog.  It’s one of the blogs I frequently read for its wisdom on topics such as leadership, organizations and employee engagement.      

Vistage, the world’s largest organization for chief executive officers, has established a course to help its members create Connection Cultures and increase employee engagement, productivity, innovation and profitability.   E Pluribus Partners will conduct the course for Vistage.  

On September 17, I’ll be giving a presentation  to members of the Wharton Alumni Club in New York City.   The presentation will be about how Connection Cultures meet universal human needs to thrive at work and in life outside of work.  Details can be found at this link. 

When seven year-old Sierra Boggess first saw The Little Mermaid, she fell in love with Ariel. After Sierra learned that the woman who provided the voice of Ariel studied performing arts at Millikin University in Central Illinois, she announced to her parents that’s where she would be attending college.  Sierra graduated from Millikin in 2004. Recently, she made her Broadway debut as the first actress to play Ariel in the Broadway production of The Little Mermaid. Read more »

An interesting article appeared in yesterday’s New York Times about the explosion of tech-enabled communication in our lives. My friend Dr. Edward Hallowell, the well-respected psychiatrist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School,  says that people need human, face-to-face connection on average about every four hours. Tim Ferriss in his 4-Hour Work Week book has some good advice on this topic too.There’s no question in my mind that Hallowell’s guideline in spot on.

I advise leaders to encourage the people they are responsible for leading to connect with their colleagues over coffee breaks and lunch. It’s a must to maximize employee engagement.

I’m very interested in learning how individuals manage the torrent of electronic communications and face-to-face connection in their lives. Any thoughts?

In this series of posts I’m identifying the traps that I warn leaders to avoid when they are involved in mergers or acquisitions.  Each of the traps I identify affect employee engagement.  By avoiding the traps leaders will also help develop the Connection Culture that all organizations need to achieve sustainable superior performance.

The Superiority Trap.  In all mergers, one party usually feels superior in status and reputation to the other. The subordinate party’s employees are likely to be hypersensitive to this status gap. Managers from the dominant organization who act the slightest bit condescending will offend employees from the subordinate organization.  These employees will be less likely to cooperate with members of the dominant organization.   On the other hand, managers from the dominant organization who look for ways to affirm their new colleagues and show that they have confidence and high expectations for their future performance will be rewarded when their new colleagues live up to their aspirations.

Over the course of my career I’ve had the good fortune to have been involved in several mergers. At first, I was fascinated by the process of identifying a compelling rationale for combining companies, negotiating the deal, planning the integration of people and systems and then executing the plan. The dizzying array of tasks that must be accomplished to complete a merger is challenging to say the least. In time, however, I learned that even greater challenges arose after the investment bankers and lawyers had packed up their briefcases and moved on to the next deal. Read more »