Michael Lee Stallard

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.

Happiness is much sought after these days. Book stores and magazine stands are full of titles that promise to unlock the secrets of happiness.  Positive psychology courses are all the rage on college campuses across America. Recognizing that happiness gets attention, I recently decided to title a chapter I’m writing “Should Leaders Care About Employee Happiness?” The chapter will be included in the American Society for Training and Development’s new Handbook of Management.

In my view, the primary reason happiness is on the decline in America and in many market democracies around the world is that we’ve become “achieve-aholics” who, as a result of our achievement-seeking lifestyles, lack sufficient human connection.  Lacking connection, we eventually dysfunction. As achieve-aholics move through adulthood, they feel a sense of boredom, emptiness and meaninglessness.  Many are mis-diagnosed as having depression when in fact they are just lonely (I wrote about this in an earlier post on the rise of loneliness in America). To feel better, achieve-aholics oftentimes seek illegitimate thrills (e.g. sexual affairs, pornography, extreme sports and extreme business risks) or they self-medicate to numb the pain, which leads to substance abuse. In my opinion, this is why America, with a mere five percent of the world’s population consumes half of the mood-altering pharmacological medications and two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs (a point that Joseph Califano, head of the National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, made in a video interview on the Atlantic’s website).

The bottom line is that we are human beings, not machines.  As I consistently present on this blog, and all the science makes it abundantly clear, we need human connection to thrive. Read more »

Apple is now the most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalization and U2’s recent tour just became the highest grossing of all time, crushing the previous record held by the Rolling Stones.  Learn about Apple’s remarkable rise in market cap in this New York Times article and learn about U2’s claim as the greatest band of all time in this article from the Atlantic magazine’s website.

Apple and U2’s continued success begs the question, “what’s their secret?” Read more »

Here’s a link to an audio interview Jason Pankau and I did with Jeremie Kubicek, CEO of GiANT (GiANT Impact, Catalyst and Chick-fil-A Leadercast).  Jeremie is the author of a great book entitled Leadership is Dead: How Influence is Reviving It.  During the interview we discussed how leadership affects employee engagement, strategic alignment, productivity, innovation and organizational performance.  Check it out at this link.

During our speeches and workshops we conclude the section where we present research from a diverse fields of knowledge that makes the case for connection to thrive at work and in life by stating:

“connection = life” whereas “disconnection = death” (we point out that this applies to both individuals and organizations)

Now we have additional research about the effect of connection on individuals in the workplace to prove it.  A 20-year study by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that workers who reported working in cultures where they experienced positive social interactions and felt emotionally supported to the people they worked with were 2.4 times less likely to die over the next 20 years than those who reported they didn’t feel emotionally supported at work.   The New York Times recently included an article about it entitled “Friendly Workplace Linked to Longer Life.”  (You can purchase the published research findings on Psychnet at “Work-Based Predictors of Mortality: A 20-Year Follow-up of Healthy Employees.”)

This provides additional evidence that the “Connection Cultures” we described in Fired Up or Burned Out are essential for people and organizations to thrive for sustained periods of time.  Connection boosts hormones and neurotransmitters that make us feel more alive, more energetic, more confident, more creative and better problem solvers.  Furthermore, during periods of stress, connection reduces stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine.  This helps us cope with stress and anxiety so that we are more likely to make rational decisions rather than rash decisions when our emotions overwhelm us.

Earlier this year my colleague Jason Pankau spoke at the HR Summit in Singapore.  We’re delighted to announce that next year I’ll be teaching workshops on leadership, teamwork, employee engagement, productivity, innovation and Connection Cultures at the Institute for Management Studies (IMS) in Amsterdam, Brussels, Edinburgh and London.   (Stateside I’ll be teaching sessions in 2011 for IMS in Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and San Francisco.)

We are human beings, not machines. We have emotions, a conscience, hopes and dreams. We need to be respected, to be recognized for our contributions, to feel a sense of belonging, and we need autonomy, personal growth and meaning in our work. When these needs are met, it is life-giving.  When they are not met, it drains the life out of us.

When people relate to one another in ways that fail to reflect our shared humanity, it results in disfunction.  Here are links to two recent articles that recognize the importance of emotions and the ability to connect with other human beings.  A New York Times magazine article entitled “The Korean Dads’ 12-Step Program” described a “Father School” where emotionally challenged Korean fathers learned to connect with their wives and children. And here’s a Wall Street Journal article entitled “On the Lesson Plan: Feelings” that describes business school efforts to help MBA students learn to connect relationally with others in the workplace.

To learn more about the importance of emotional connection to the success of organizations and individuals in the workplace, I encourage you to check out this article Jason Pankau and I wrote for the Leader to Leader Journal entitled “To Boost Productivity, Connect with the Core.”  To go even deeper, read the book that introduced the “Connection Cultures” that are necessary to achieve relationship excellence and sustainable superior performance.  It is entitled  Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity.  (Read what doctors at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s leading cancer research and treatment centers, are saying about Fired Up or Burned Out at this link.)

Here is a video from YouTube of a conversation I had earlier this year about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation with Dr. Homer Erekson, Dean of TCU’s Neeley School of Business.  Our conversation occurred as part of the Tandy Executive Speakers Series that featured CEOs of outstanding companies such as Nieman Marcus, Southwest Airlines and The Container Store.

During our conversation we discussed how most leaders don’t understand the importance of emotional connections to the success of the their organization.  Learn more about the “Connection Cultures” that great leaders create by reading Fired Up or Burned Out.

HRIQ just published a piece I wrote about how Google’s Project Oxygen research confirms the importance of Connection Cultures. You can read it at “Google’s Project Oxygen: A Case-Study in Connection Culture.”

Employee Engagement and Connection from David Zinger on Vimeo.

Yesterday David Zinger and I held a webinar on Employee Engagement and Connection.  You can see a recording of the webinar above and here is a link to the slides used during the webinar.

The webinar was hosted by the Employee Engagement Network, a 3,500 member online community founded by David.  It was my good fortune to be the first speaker for the Employee Engagement Network’s inaugural webinar! If you are not a member of the Employee Engagement network already, I want to encourage you to join.  David will be the host for future webinars on employee engagement-related topics that you will not want to miss.