Tag Archives: connection

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THANK YOU PFIZER for Saving 800,000 Children’s Lives

A recent announcement by Pfizer caught my attention.  The firm is selling its Prevnar 13 vaccine at a fraction of its normal price so that 260 million young children in poor countries will be protected from pneumonia and meningitis.  This is a disease that kills 800,000 children annually, nearly all of whom live in poor countries according to the World Health Organization.  800,000 children!  As a father myself, I think not only of all of those children’s lives but also the heartbreak, trauma and suffering that their families will avoid.  This is truly something worthy of celebrating and I for one want to say “thank you, Pfizer.”

I hope the leaders at Pfizer make their employees and the family members of employees well aware of this because they  should feel proud of their company for alleviating the suffering and deaths that would have otherwise visited these children and their families.  Communicating the good deeds of an organization reflects Vision and Value, two of the three core elements of a Connection Culture that boosts employee engagement, productivity, innovation and overall performance.

The news media today provide a constant drum beat of of stories about corporate misdeeds and rightfully so because the press plays an important accountability role in free market democracies.  I do wish, however, that the press would give more attention to positive stories like this that reflect good corporate character and reduce time spent on trivial matters.  Corporations bring skilled people together and provide the capital and resources necessary to solve some of the most challenging problems facing humankind.  Pfizer’s action in this announcement is a great example.  By celebrating the good deeds of corporations like Pfizer, we encourage them to be good citizens.

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Attention is Oxygen for Relationships

#2 Be Present in Conversations

It’s been said that attention is oxygen for relationships. When interacting with people, be present in conversations. Get in the habit of staying focused on them and giving them your full attention. Be engaged and curious by asking questions and then asking follow-up questions to clarify. Listen carefully to words and observe facial expressions and body cues. Don’t check your smart phone, don’t look at your watch, don’t look around the room or let your mind wander.

Want to learn more? Watch the video above as Katharine P. Stallard shares tips for being present.

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French Hero of the American Revolution

LafayetteVersallis

Since today is Bastille Day, I’m posting the chapter from Fired Up or Burned Out entitled “French Hero of the American Revolution.”  The subject of the chapter, Lafayette, was a key figure in both the American and French revolutions, and by his action he helped create and sustain Connection Cultures where cultures of dominance or indifference formerly existed.

French Hero of the American Revolution

Visiting historical sites in the state of Virginia, you might be surprised to see recurring tributes to a Frenchman whose name and story remain unknown to most Americans today. At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s hilltop home near Charlottesville, you’ll find a portrait and sculpted bust of the Frenchman. At Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home on the Potomac River, you’ll learn that Washington thought of him as a son, and you will find the key to the Bastille on display, sent by the Frenchman to Washington after he ordered the notorious Paris prison torn down during the French Revolution. Perhaps most surprising of all, in the Hall of Presidents beneath the rotunda of the Virginia capitol where a statue of George Washington and busts of the other seven Virginia-born presidents reside, you’ll find a bust of the Frenchman who was neither a president nor born in Virginia.

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100 Ways to Connect: Develop the Courage to Connect

This post begins our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others.  Although the attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

#1 Develop the Courage to Connect – It requires courage to make the effort to connect because not everyone will reciprocate.  You may hold out your fist to invite a “fist bump” only find you are left hanging or you may say “hi” to a passerby and receive no response.  When our efforts to connect are spurned it triggers “social pain” in our brains (the part of the brain that feels physical pain becomes active when we are left out of a group or our efforts to connect with someone are turned down).  That’s why it’s necessary to be prepared by knowing that not all people will connect with us.  In such cases, we need to recognize that we made the effort and had the courage to do so.  Of the three core elements of a connection culture, this practice reflects “Value,” which is also known as “human value.”

Update: It’s been a busy beginning to the summer.  I just returned from speaking at conferences and teaching workshops in Chicago, Dallas and New Orleans.  People in attendance at the workshops represented a wide variety of organizations including Allstate, AAA, Blue Cross Blue Shield, FINRA, the U.S. Government Services Administration, Leo Burnett, Liberty Mutual, Northern Trust, and United Airlines. Recently, I also spoke with Jim Blasingame on his radio program entitled The Small Business Advocate.  You can hear recordings of topics we covered during the conversation at the links below:

Who feels the most stress in the workplace?

Is there such a thing as good stress?

Practice the three V’s to reduce stress in the workplace?

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New Mummy Movie: Connection is Life-Giving



Recently I was speaking at a university about the importance of connection and Connection Cultures to help students, faculty and staff thrive in institutions of higher education. After I spoke, the president of the divinity school came up to me and said I needed to see a great new comedy entitled Warm Bodies.  He informed me that the movie is about mummies who are brought back to life by human connection.  How great is that!  Check out the trailer above.  I plan the watch the movie on iTunes this weekend.

It’s been said that artists have their finger on the pulse of the culture.  Warm Bodies is a case in point, even if its protagonist had no pulse to speak of.

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New Insights on Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

In Untangling the Mind: Why We Behave the Way We Do, D. Theodore George, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health, describes a new model for understanding America’s surge in emotional and behavioral disorders.  Earlier this year, a report by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine of the National Academies found that comparing a peer group of 17 wealthy countries, Americans under 50 now have the lowest life expectancy and fall at the bottom (i.e. were the worst) of nearly every morbidity category from deaths by substance abuse, sexual-related diseases, infant mortality, violence and sedentary lifestyles that contribute to diabetes and cardiovascular problems. The report points out that in the years following World War II, America was near or at the top of the peer group.  It rightly concludes that something clearly is wrong but, unfortunately, fails to provide a satisfactory explanation.  The problem has become so acute that earlier this month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released figures that show suicide rates haven sharply increased so that more Americans now die from suicide than from motor vehicle accidents.

Fortunately, Dr. George’s book helps us understand what’s going wrong.  In his view, traumas experienced by 75 percent of the population result in faulty brain wiring that makes people vulnerable to the stressors, threats and fears we experience in modern life, including the chronic stress many people experience in today’s workplace.  The faulty wiring misinterprets threats and fears by blowing them way out of proportion.  This results in emotional and behavioral disorders.  When people don’t feel well emotionally – i.e. they are angry, anxious, withdrawn, bored, depressed, etc. – they frequently cope in ways that result in addiction (e.g. substance abuse, promiscuity, porn addiction, eating disorders, cutting).  Although these addictive behaviors provide temporary relief, they hijack the brain’s reward system and eventually kick in the anti-reward system so that people need a fix of the coping behavior to feel better from the unpleasant sensations of withdrawal.   

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Former Cab Driver Helps Liberate WWII France

After American and British troops took control of the beaches on D-Day, they got stuck in France’s hedgerow country. Sergeant Curtis Cullen, a former cab driver from Chicago, came up with an innovation that General Omar Bradley, commander of America’s First Army, credited with helping to liberate France.  Watch the video to learn about this extraordinary story of innovation and the leaders and culture that made it all possible.

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Harvard Study: Happiness = Positive Relationships

Check out this Atlantic article about Harvard professor George Vaillant re-visiting the research from his study of human thriving, which happens to be the longest longitudinal study on the topic.  Vaillant’s study concludes that happiness comes from experiencing love in relationships over the course of one’s life.  To learn more, I encourage you to read the fascinating article entitled “What Makes Us Happy?” written by my friend Joshua Wolf Shenk (it was the Atlantic’s cover story in June 2009).