Michael Lee Stallard

Jason Pankau and I recently recorded a podcast interview on happiness at work for Alter+Care, the healthcare real estate company.  You can hear the podcast at this link.

This week I participated in an interview about Connection Cultures, productivity and innovation with Dean Homer Erekson at a business breakfast sponsored by TCU’s Neeley Business School in Fort Worth, Texas. (Read the Fort Worth Business Press article about the event entitled “Speaker Promotes Emotional Connection for Business“).

The motto of the Neeley School is “It’s More Than Business. It’s Personal.” This phrase expresses what we found in research that’s described in our book Fired Up or Burned Out, i.e. sustainable superior performance requires achieving task excellence (the “business” part) and relationship excellence (the “personal” part).  In addition to speaking at the business breakfast I spoke to students in leadership programs and met with Neeley MBA students.

From all I observed, the Neeley Business School delivers its brand promise.  It hires teacher-scholars who spend time with and mentor students.  In addition, the Neeley School has first class facilities and diverse, energetic, enthusiastic and collaborative students.  It’s a powerful mix that has propelled Neeley to be ranked as the #30 B-School in American and an entrepreneurship program that’s ranked #1.    Neeley is on the move and I expect that it will continue to grow in national reputation and popularity with the best prospective business school students.

Jason Pankau and I were guests on a podcast for clients of The Alter Group, one of America’s leading real estate development firms.  The podcast host was Tom Silva, Vice President of the Alter Group. Our topic was happiness at work, leadership, employee engagement and employee motivation. You can check it out at this link or download it on iTunes.

This morning appeared as a guest on my friend Jim Blasingame’s nationally-syndicated “Small Business Advocate” radio program where we talked about leadership, employee engagement and productivity.  During the program, Jim and I discussed how the three core elements of a Connection Culture — Vision, Value and Voice — motivate employees to give their best efforts and align their behavior with organizational goals.  One of the ideas I shared was to bring employees together to read and discuss a management book including how it applies to their business.  To get them started,  I offered a free download of the digital version of Fired Up or Burned Out to listeners who sign up for my email newsletter.  To sign up for the newsletter and access the free book download click on this link.

Jason Pankau and I are speaking about maximizing employee engagement, alignment and productivity on several upcoming webinars. The webinars are based on ideas in our book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity (Thomas Nelson).

Here are the names of the organizations hosting the webinars along with the respectives dates and links to sign up:

December 7, 1:00 PM EST for Linkage

December 7, 3:00 PM EST for the Human Capital Institute sponsored by the ITAGroup

December 15, 12:00 PM EST for the New Talent Management Network

Wise organizations distinguish themselves from competitors by developing their heart and soul. Organizations that have heart and soul enrich their owners, customers and communities in both economic and non-economic ways.

What do I mean by heart and soul?  Let me explain.

While out running errands one day when we were relatively new to town, my wife stopped in at one of several jewelry stores on the main shopping street.  The cases were filled with beautiful pieces, new and heirloom.  The salespeople, however, were more than aloof.  They ignored her.  No eye contact.  No smile.  No “hello, my name is X, may I help you?”  This lack of connection made her feel as if they thought she was unworthy of their attention.  Not surprisingly, she has never gone back. These salespeople lacked the qualities I describe as heart and soul.

The absence of heart and soul in the workplace is not unusual.  This is the age of mind and strength. So often we focus on the tasks of our work and neglect the relational aspects.  As human beings we have emotions, hopes and dreams, a conscience, and deeply felt human needs.  Research from a variety of fields has shown that when we recognize these realities and treat others in ways consistent with them, we thrive. When we don’t, it is damaging to our mental and physical health and to the health of those around us. Read more »

Here’s an article entitled “Worker Engagement Holds Key to Success” that appeared this morning in The Connecticut Post, The Greenwich Time, The Stamford Advocate and The Danbury News Times.  The article briefly describes the “Connection Cultures” we wrote about in our book, Fired Up or Burned Out, and mentions that on Friday morning, November 5, I’ll be speaking about how Christians can help improve the workplace at the New Canaan Society’s Darien Connecticut Chapter.  Breakfast begins at 6:30 AM and my talk will start at 7:00 AM.  For details, click here.

The New Canaan Society is a group of men who meet to encourage one another to live out Biblical values. It was founded in 1995 by Jim Lane, a partner at Goldman Sachs, and has grown to 30 chapters across the United States.

On a related topic, Jason Pankau will be speaking at the New Canaan Society’s New York City Chapter in Manhattan on January 19th and at NCS’s Annual Retreat at the Homestead in Virginia on March 4-6.  You might also be interested to know that in the coming weeks, Jason and I are doing a series of webinars on leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation for Linkage, the Human Capital Institute, the DNA Global Network and the New Talent Management Network.  The webinars are free to the public.  Details and sign-up information will be posted in the upcoming engagements section on the left-hand side of the front page of our book website at this link.

Newstex just added MichaelLeeStallard.com to its sources of authoritative content.  The organization provides real-time news and commentary collected from the world’s best online and offline sources to customers who need information but don’t have time to gather it from a myriad of places.  Today, Newstex offers aggregated news and full-text feeds from thousands of premium blogs as well as Twitter, audio and video content from editorially-selected, authoritative news, corporate, and independent publishers.

Tomorrow I will be doing a podcast interview with Rena Reese on her Soul Salon program.  We will be talking about Connection Cultures, employee engagement, employee motivation and other ideas in Fired Up or Burned Out.  You can listen live and call in to participate at 1:00 PM Eastern.  Here’s the link.

We have podcasts and webcasts scheduled with organizations including Giant Impact (TBD), the New Talent Management Network (11/16) and the Corporate Executive Board’s Toolbox for HR (10/20).  Soon we expect to announce podcasts or webcasts with the Human Capital Institute and HSM.

Just to mention it, several articles on Connection Cultures were published are now available in online versions.

Outlook Business for Decision Makers (India) “Connect with Them”

The Economic Times (India) “Has SAS Institute’s Chairman Jim Goodnight Cracked the Code of Corporate Culture?”

Leader to Leader Journal (U.S.) “To Boost Performance, Connect with the Core.”

Hiring Smart (Canada) “The Case for Connection at Work“