Michael Lee Stallard

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.)

Dennis Nally, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Chairman, recognized the need to connect with Millennials, in a Wall Street Journal interview entitled “PwC Chairman Aims to Keep Millennials Happy.”  In the interview Nally states:

“Connecting with your employees so they understand you can deliver the career they want is key…they want less-hierarchical structures, they want more flexibility, they want to work as hard but they want to define how they do their work. If you can’t figure out a way to accommodate that kind of flexibility, you’re not going to be able to retain that talent.”

Millenials are not the only employees companies need to connect with.  Research consistently shows that on average, 75 percent of employees feel disconnected at work. As a result they don’t give their best efforts or align their behavior with organizational goals.  Employers need to develop Connection Cultures so that employees thrive, individually and collectively.

Several facts recently caught my attention.

• In 1940, 7.7 percent of Americans lived in one-person households. By 2000, that number more than tripled to 25.8 percent.  (In Manhattan, 48 percent of all households were one-person households in 2000.)
• Between 1985 and 2004, the number of people with whom the average American discussed “important matters” dropped from three to two. During that same time period the percentage of people who had no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled to nearly 25 percent.
• A study by Norman Nie and his Stanford colleagues found that as people spend more time on the internet, they spent less face-to-face time with other human beings. (Who’s not spending more time on the internet these days?)

These facts all point to the conclusion that loneliness is on the rise in America. As we pointed out in our book Fired Up or Burned Out and in The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage, people need human connection to thrive.  We are human beings, not machines.  When we don’t experience sufficient human connection, we dysfunction. This may include experiencing feelings of emptiness, boredom and depression.  It may lead some to engage in substance abuse to numb the pain.  Others may pursue illegitimate thrills to feel alive again and in doing so develop addictions to pornography, sexual encounters with prostitutes and one night stands, or taking excessive business risks.  These paths never end well for the individual, their families and friends, or for their organizations.  To combat the pervasive loneliness that’s damaging American society and organizations, leaders need to create Connection Cultures that unite people and develop “relationship excellence” that supplements efforts to develop “task excellence” in organizations.

There are three general types of cultures in organizations when it comes to relationships and connection.   Read more »

My mind must have been on something else as I began to edge out a bit from a side street to make a left-hand turn onto a main thoroughfare.  At the same time, another driver was turning left onto the street I was on. I slammed on my brakes in time. Admittedly, the near miss was my fault and the driver I almost pulled in front of had every right to be upset.  What surprised me, however, was the intensity of his reaction.  He came unglued, turned blood red, repeatedly flipped me off and began spewing expletives and spittle.  The rage on his face is burned in my memory.  I kept an eye on him in my rear view mirror to make sure he wasn’t turning around to come after me.  Fortunately he didn’t.

Why are so many people angry these days? Read more »

Check out this article in the Atlantic entitled “Danger: Falling Tyrants.”  The article makes a good point: emerging democracies in the Middle East following the Arab Spring may not result in governments that promote freedom.  Influence, then, is all the more important, a point my friend Jeremie Kubicek makes in his fine book Leadership is Dead: Why Influence is Reviving It.

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.)

Should leaders care about employee happiness or is employee engagement a passing fad?  Let me frame this debate in a slightly different way that I believe provides the best answer.

As part of creating value, leaders need to be intentional about achieving both task excellence and relationship excellence because our research found that both are necessary to achieve sustainable superior performance i.e. Task Excellence + Relationship Excellence = Sustainable Superior Performance.  Both are also necessary if most employees are to experience a sense of satisfaction for the many hours they spend working.  If employees feel unsatisfied, they will not perform tasks at a level that reflects excellence for a sustained period of time.  They will likely be able to perform with excellence for a short period of time but eventually their lack of emotional energy will drag them down.

We are human beings, not machines.  Emotion matters, even in business.

We should also recognize that employee engagement affects strategic alignment i.e. disengaged employees show up for the paycheck but they don’t tend to put extra effort in aligning their behavior with organizational goals.

Here are two data points to consider.  Today in America, 75 percent of employees are not engaged in their work and of the 25 percent who are engaged, 60 percent of them are not aligned with organizational goals (this according to 2009 research from the Corporate Executive Board).   The bottom line is that only 10 percent of America’s workforce are mobilized (i.e. both engaged and aligned).  The opportunity to boost performance by improving employee engagement and strategic alignment is HUGE!!!

To learn more, 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 MD 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.)

Airports can be dull, uninspiring places where it’s easy to drift into a numb, trans-like state of mind. But what if a group of people decided to break through the cacophony of sounds and sights at one of the world’s busiest airports by orchestrating a beautiful symphony of human voices. Thanks to a stunning T-Moble advertisement, we don’t have to imagine what it might look like. Check it out in the wonderful video above.

Watching the video reminded me of the joy people experience when they become engaged in and feel connected to their work. They move from the drone of daily work to a life-giving state where work is like making beautiful music. This only happens when one’s work brings truth, beauty and/or goodness into the world. It is one aspect of the first element in a Connection Culture that we call “Inspiring Identity.” Learn more about Connection Cultures and Inspiring Identity in Fired Up or Burned Out.

I’m encouraged to see more leaders recognize that individuals and organizations need connection to thrive. Here’s a video of Polly LaBarre at MIX interviewing Ivy Ross, Gap’s Chief Innovation Officer, about the need for connection to innovate. To learn more about “Connection Cultures” download the Connection Culture Manifesto published by changethis.com. You can go even deeper into Connection Cultures by signing up for my new quarterly email newsletter after which you will receive an email that contains a link to a free download of Fired Up or Burned Out, the book that introduced Connection Cultures.

Check out this thought-provoking presentation by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle.  It’s about the topic of her book entitled Alone Together. She does an outstanding job of articulating the risks of becoming addicted to virtual connections.

As human beings we need to feel connected to other people in order to thrive. I’ve written extensively about this in the Connection Culture Manifesto and in Fired Up or Burned Out.  We are human beings not machines.  We need to develop intimacy, trust and affection with our family members, friends and colleagues at work. Absent meeting the need for feeling connected to others, we dysfunction.  The subtle allure of feeling connected online can develop into addiction so we must guard against allowing virtual connections to crowd out time for face-to-face connection.  Striking the right balance is key.

In her presentation, Professor Turkle points out that virtual connection represents another threat in that it can crowd out time to be alone with ourselves.  I couldn’t agree more.  We need time to reflect on our lives and who we aspire to be.  This is essential to develop strength of character and moral confidence.  Nelson Mandela, in a letter he wrote in 1975 while incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, expressed this so well: Read more »