Michael Lee Stallard

Check out this excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”  Some eye-popping statistics and quotes from the article include:

• In 1950 less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person.  By 2010, nearly 27 percent had just one person.
• A 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely as opposed to 20 percent a decade earlier.
• Roughly 20 percent of Americans — about 60 million people — are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.
• “Across the Western world, physicians and nurses have begun to speak openly about an epidemic of loneliness.”

The rise in loneliness has led to an explosion in the number of paid confidants.  A 2010 Hoover Institute paper stated in 1950 the U.S. had a combined 33,000 paid confidants including clinical psychologists, social workers and therapists.  By 2010 that number reached an estimated 1,091,00 paid confidants which includes new categories such as mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and life coaches.

Clearly, Facebook and other assorted addictions to media are not the only contributors to the epidemic of loneliness. The geographic spread of families, increased time spent working/commuting to work, and the decline of relationships in the workplace are also responsible.  Regarding relationships in the workplace, the push for productivity has contributed to a rise of cultures that label people who take time to build relationships as slackers.   Today, having lunch alone in your office is the norm.  Unfortunately, productivity and innovation take a toll when workers burn out from a lack of human connection.  They learn to play “face time” games that make it look like they’re working, when in reality they’re not.  Creating Connection Cultures in organizations to achieve “relationship excellence” is wise.  We most recently made the case for Connection Cultures in an article entitled,”The Science of Engagement,” that appeared in the Spring edition of  Training Industry Quarterly.

In addition to the The Atlantic article on Facebook making us lonely, here are two other readings I recommend.

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New York City’s WCBS News Radio 880 ran portions of an interview I did with daytime host Pat Farnack.  Here are links to the segments and full interview:


Is your workplace killing you?

Worse than Toxic

Snakes in Suits

Nick the Doorman

How to Flourish

Full Interview (14 minutes)

Connecting with people requires empathy i.e. you feel the emotion another individual feels.  This is different from sympathy where you recognize the emotion but don’t feel it.

In Fired Up or Burned Out, I wrote about the company Cranium and how it designs “high five moments” into its games.  High five moments are times when people connect via the shared empathy of joy (remember that we define “the force of connection” as shared identity, empathy and understanding).  When you are interacting with people you want to connect with, feeling and expressing emotion helps.  When you feel someone’s joy or pain, it connects.

In the news

Here are a few recent articles related to connection that you might enjoy:

Walter Isaacson wrote about leadership lessons from Steve Jobs’ life for Harvard Business Review.  In the article, Isaason addresses issues relevant to Connection Cultures including the elements of Vision, Value and Voice.  Jobs was brilliant when it came to Vision, terrible when it came to Value and mixed win it came to Voice.  Fortunately, there are other members of Apple’s senior leadership team whose strengths helped overcome Jobs’ weaknesses.

David Brooks just wrote a column for The New York Times entitled “The Relationship School” that touches on aspects of Connection Cultures in schools.

The Atlantic had a piece entitled “Stress Makes You Sick: Exploring the Immune System Connection.” The article explores how stress weakens the human immune system and mentions the link between stress and connection. (Remember I shared with you that recent research over a 20-year period showed people who work in cultures with supportive relationships had mortality rates that were 2.4 times lower than people who worked in cultures with weak relational support. This supports the longstanding view that lifestyles with little relational support produce chronic stress will kill you.)

While teaching seminars on leadership and Connection Cultures at the Darden Graduate School of Business, Professor Marian Moore introduced me to the work of her colleague Jonathan Haidt, a social psychology professor at the University of Virginia.  Haidt just wrote The Righteous Mind.  Here’s a well-written review of the book entitled “Why Won’t They Listen?”  The book review clearly shows it addresses issues related to the Connection Culture elements of Value and Voice.  I’ve ordered a copy but not read it yet.

Finally, I recently spoke with Jim Blasingame about the competitive advantage of culture on his nationally syndicated radio program entitled “Small Business Advocate” that you can hear at this link.  Also, I wrote an article on the  ”Science of Engagement” for Training Industry Quarterly.

Last week I met Frances Hesselbein, head of the Frances Hesselbein Institute, over a delightfully long lunch at the Waldorf Astoria.  Peter Drucker once called Mrs. Hesselbein America’s best leader.  I’ve written about her remarkable leadership of the Girl Scouts of the USA.  At one point in our lunch I mentioned a quote from Psalm 78:72 about King David’s leadership of Israel.  The New Living Translation of the Bible states it this way: “he cared for Israel with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.”  It’s a variation of the “Task Excellence + Relationship Excellence” model we teach at organizations.  After hearing the Bible verse, Mrs. Hesselbein leaned over toward me, looking me directly in the eyes and said “and he cared for them first.”  I will never ever forget those words coming from a leader who lived them out.

Here are a couple updates on some things I’m doing and what I’ve noticed of interest in the media.

Training Industry Quarterly magazine invited me to write an article on the science of connection. You can read the article here.  Note on the article’s first page you have the option to click on a link and listen to a podcast version.

I hope you’ll check out my friend David Burkus’ new video on taking a creative risk.

On May 6-9, I hope to see old friends and make new friends at this year’s American Society for Training and Development’s International Conference where 8,500 training professionals will gather in Denver.  At the conference, I’ll be speaking on the topic “Do Leaders Need to Make Employees Happy?” which also is the title of a chapter I wrote for ASTD’s The Management Development Handbook: Innovations for Today’s Managers (edited by the talented and charismatic Lisa Haneberg).  Kevin Eikenberry, Alfredo Castro and I will join Lisa in a panel discussion at the conference and a book signing.

David Brooks of The New York Times continues to write on issues related to connection and character.  Check out his recent columns entitled “The Talent Society” and “The Rediscovery of Character.”

Finally, I just completed interviewing Anne Mulcahy, the former CEO of Xerox.  Ms. Mulcahy led a miraculous turnaround and shared with me her thoughts about how she kept the senior leadership team together and motivated people to give their best efforts for a decade long endeavor.  Ms. Mulcahy has much wisdom to share and I know you’ll enjoy reading her stories and advice that is extremely relevant to leaders in today’s challenging economic times.

Tomorrow I fly back to the U.S. after a 10-day trip to Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Edinburgh where I taught seminars for the Institute for Management Studies, spoke at ITV, saw several friends and spent a couple days on vacation with my wife, Katie.

While here, I learned about several new items of media coverage related to connection. Several items came from my friends Sean Witty and Jay Morris. Here are the items below.

Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk’s research on the importance of connection to babies and their ability to connect

Mental Heath Foundation of the UK report on rising loneliness and declining connection in the UK

UNICEF summary report on meeting children’s need for connection in the UK, Sweden and Spain

Article in Entrepreneur magazine “Forget Networking. How to be a Connector”

Center for Creative Leadership article on introverts who connect well with colleagues

Dr. Stephen Jones on the need to connect with others to keep your mind and memory sharp

TCU is on a roll.  It has been recognized by U.S. News as one a top 100 colleges in America.   Its athletics’ teams are generally among the top teams in Division I college sports.   More recently the Chronicle of Higher Education named TCU as one of the “43 best colleges to work for.” I could go on.

This is no accident. TCU has benefitted from having a string of great leaders over recent decades.  These leaders developed a vision for the school that inspired the TCU community.  They raised money to fund a sizable endowment that gives the school financial flexibility to weather the ups and downs of the economy.  They improved campus infrastructure.  They invested in identifying and attracting the best “teacher-scholars” who love teaching and connecting with students and also share a passion to advance the pursuit of truth through research and scholarship.

The current leader of TCU, its chancellor, Victor Boschini, is an impressive leader.  He’s brimming with energy and optimism while being grounded in reality.  He combines a passion for excellence in tasks and in relationships (Boschini refers to fundraising as “friend-raising.”) He’s curious, always seeking people’s opinions and tapping their  knowledge.  He has surrounded himself with a team that has the energy and intelligence I can only compare to the White House staff in Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing.

At present, Boschini’s focus is to strengthen TCU’s culture of unity, community and connection.  This is one reason I’m thrilled as a parent that my daughter Sarah is a junior at TCU, and beginning next Fall, my youngest daughter, Elizabeth, will be a freshman there.   Sarah is co-captain of TCU’s cheerleaders. She describes TCU as “a small school with big spirit.”  Like many students at TCU, she’s involved in the local community.  Sarah is the cheerleading coach of Nolan Catholic High School where she coaches and mentors girls to develop their competence as student-athletes and their character as human beings.

Culture and leadership matter.  Most academic cultures are indifferent to students as human beings.  Not TCU. That’s why I’m writing an article about TCU and spending a healthy sum to send my daughters there.   My hope is that more colleges will become Connection Cultures, especially during this time when research shows college freshman are experiencing record levels of stress according to recent research by UCLA.

To learn more about Victor Boschini, check out this great article entitled “Far from Normal” written when he was appointed chancellor and this inspiring convocation speech he gave earlier this year on TCU’s Connection Culture.

Another leader to keep your eyes on is Dr. Ronald DePinho, president of the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. DePinho has declared that M.D. Anderson, the world’s largest cancer center, is “in a moonshot moment” in the war on cancer. Take a look a at this inspiring article about him entitled, “Leader in Cancer Fight, and Son of an Illegal Immigrant.” My prediction: an highly-motivated leader who knows how to connect with people + the competence and resources at M.D. Anderson = very big things in the years to come.  (Full discosure: Both TCU and M.D. Anderson are clients of my leadership training and consulting firm, E Pluribus Partners.)

Finally, Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, is yet another leader who looks promising based on what I’m reading. Check out this great interview she did with The New York Times entitled “I Was Impossible, but Then I Saw How to Lead.“

For the second year in a row, 84 percent of American workers intend to actively look for a new job, according to new research by Right Management. Workplace incivility is also on the rise.  According to research presented at the 2011 American Psychological Association annual meeting, up to 80 percent of workers have experienced incivility.   Workers are struggling and have been for some time.  In 2009, The Conference Board published a report with the subtitle “America’s Unhappy Workers.”   The report concluded that employee satisfaction was at its lowest point since The Conference Board began surveying it more that 20 years ago.

The good news is that is doesn’t have to be this way. Leaders can develop workplace cultures that engage people. Engaging people makes them happy because they benefit from the positive emotions that come from being productive, learning and growing and working together with others to accomplish something of value.  This is what the Greek’s described as eudaimonia, the joy that we experience when we do good work.  The other type of happiness is hedonia.  It comes from pleasurable experiences such as when we see a beautiful sunset or enjoying a great meal. Leaders need to create work cultures where people experience eudiamonia. That’s the type of happiness that affects employee engagement, productivity and innovation.

Here’s another way to think it it.  There are three types of workplace cultures: Dog-Eat-Dog Cultures, Indifferent Cultures (cultures that are indifferent to people and treat them as human doings), and “Connection Cultures” where people experience eudiamonia because they feel connected to their organization’s identity (i.e. mission, values and reputation), they feel connected to their colleagues and supervisor, and they feel connected to their role in the organization (because it fits their strengths and provides the right degree of challenge).

Connection is the force that transforms a dog-eat-dog culture into a sled dog team that pulls together. Without going too far into the psychology of connection, let me just summarize by saying simply that we are humans, not machines. We have emotions. We have hopes and dreams. We have a conscience. We have deeply felt human needs to be respected, to be recognized for our talents, to belong, to have autonomy or control over our work, to experience personal growth, and to do work that we feel is worthwhile in a way that we feel is ethical. When we work in an environment that recognizes these realities of our human nature, we thrive. We feel more energetic, more optimistic, and more fully alive. When we work in an environment that fails to recognize this, it is damaging to our mental and physical health.

And when you think about it, that makes sense. Let’s consider how this plays out in the workplace. When we first meet people, we expect them to respect us. If they look down on us, if they are uncivil or condescending, we get upset. In time, as our colleagues get to know us, we expect them to appreciate or recognize us for our talents and contributions. That really makes us feel good. Later on, we begin to expect that we will be treated and thought of as an integral part of the community. Our connection to the group is further strengthened when we feel we have control over our work. Connection is diminished when we feel we are being micro-managed or over-controlled by others. If we are over-controlled, it sends the message that we are being treated like children or incompetents, and it’s a sign that we are not trusted or respected. Connection is also enhanced when we experience personal growth. In other words: when our role, our work in the group, is a good fit with our skills, providing enough challenge to make us feel good when we rise to meet that challenge (but not so much challenge that we become totally stressed out). Finally, it motivates us to know our work is worthwhile in some way and to be around other people who share our belief that our work is important. To the extent that these human needs of respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth and meaning are met, we feel connected to the group. When they are not met, we feel less connected, or even disconnected.

The bottom line is that connection plays a critical part in improving individual performance. People who are more connected with others fare better in life than those who are less connected. Connection, because it meets our human needs, makes people more trusting, more cooperative, more empathetic, more enthusiastic, more optimistic, more energetic, more creative and better problem solvers. It creates the type of environment in which people want to help their colleagues.They are more open to share information that helps decision makers become better-informed. The openness that emerges in a trusting and cooperative environment creates a robust marketplace of ideas that stimulates innovation. Connection among people improves performance in an organization and creates a new source of competitive advantage.

To learn more about connection cultures and employee engagement, listen to this podcast interview Jason Pankau and I did before we spoke at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. You can hear the interview at this link.

Update: In May, I’ll be speaking on the topic “Do Leaders Need to make Employee Happy?” in Denver at the annual conference of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). In addition, I’ve contributed a chapter to the soon to be published ASTD Handbook on Management edited by Lisa Haneberg who writes the Management Craft blog.

Here is a link to the article I wrote about Starbucks. The article is entitled “Have a Heart.”  It was published in Outlook Business for Decision Makers, a leading business magazine in India. In addition, below are links to three segments of a radio interview I did yesterday morning with Jim Blasingame, host of the nationally syndicated Small Business Advocate program.

The U.S.S. Montpelier Command Philosophy (below) is an outstanding example of values articulated in a clear and compelling way.  Remember that values at their best are a source of pride and guidance for employees.  To be the most effective, values must be communicated in writing and verbally because people usually learn by reading or listening.  A portfolio of simple yet compelling stories should be developed that can be told to help people remember your values.

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Apple’s announcement yesterday that Steve Jobs is stepping down as its CEO, is a poignant reminder of just how important it is to make cancer history. I learned of Jobs’ announcement yesterday while in Houston to share our work with leaders at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The combination of learning the news about Jobs and being at M.D. Anderson triggered a some emotions. I’ve followed Jobs closely over the years and written about him.  I’ve also written about the challenges facing cancer patients and their families from my wife Katie’s battles with breast cancer in 2003 and advanced ovarian cancer in 2004 (today, Kate is cancer free).

Being at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was inspiring and humbling. MDACC is the top-rated cancer center according to U.S. News and World Report. The people there think of themselves first and foremost as healers. Being with people who serve a cause greater than themselves always moves me.  Yes, they have to keep an eye on econonomic matters, too, in order to make their work sustainable, but money is not what motivates them.  This is an important distinction that makes a difference to affordable delivery of healthcare, as Atul Gawande noted in an excellent New Yorker article he wrote entitled “The Cost Conundrum.”

During our presentations at M.D. Anderson, we shared  the research and ideas in our book, Fired Up or Burned Out. We firmly believe that creating a culture that is intentional about developing both task excellence and relationship excellence is the only way organizations can achieve sustainable superior performance.  In the context of healthcare, research is showing that culture and relationships affect patient outcomes.  A recent article that appeared in the  Annuls of Internal Medicine, entitled “What Distinguishes Top-Performing Hospitals in Acute Myocardial Infarction Mortality Rates? A Qualitative Study,” supports our view.

Hospital cultures should be life-giving but the irony is that most are not.  We are human beings, not machines, and recent research shows that workplace cultures that are hostile or indifferent to human needs shave years off our lives.   We hope that more hospitals will get this important message and do something about it, like our friends at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center are doing in their pursuit to make cancer history.