Tag Archives: connection

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Leaders Can Learn From College RAs

TCU Logo

Most leaders can learn an important lesson from the RAs at TCU who are creating a sense of community in the residence halls on campus.  You can read about it in this excellent article entitled “Culture of Caring.”  The article makes an important point that creating a sense of community requires intentionality. Daniel Terry, TCU’s director of Community Renewal, puts it this way:

“We’re trying to create whole people here at TCU. [TCU has always had an emphasis on personal attention and mentoring relationships.] We’re implementing Community Renewal at TCU because, like all communities, there needs to be some intentionality around relating to the people around you.  Where there is no intentionality, people tend to take relationships for granted.”

So true.

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It’s More Than Business. It’s Personal.

Neeley







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.

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What to Do When You’re Stuck

There have been times in my life when I’ve been stuck.   Although I was giving my all, I wasn’t progressing.  Early in my career, I tried to figure it out on my own. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t.  What I learned over time was that I needed someone to coach me.  I simply couldn’t see where I was going wrong. It was a blind spot for me.  An outside expert’s perspective was required to put me on the right path.

Here’s an example.  When I first began speaking about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation, I was not getting the results I desired. The problem that I couldn’t see at the time was that I had learned to speak as an investment banker on Wall Street where I was analytical and showed little enthusiasm or emotion.  This doesn’t work so well when you’re speaking about leadership and people expect you to inspire and motivate them to become better leaders. Fortunately, a friend of mine with one of the nation’s largest speakers bureaus advised me to go to Twila Thompson at the Actors Institute where I would learn how to connect with an audience. Twila coached me to connect with individual audience members, to project my voice and presence. It required time and practice to get comfortable with this and make these behaviors second nature.

You simply can’t imagine the difference it made.   I achieved the result I desired.  In hindsight, I can now see that there was no way I was ever going to figure out on my own what Twila taught me.  Self-help was simply insufficient.

The point here is that when you’re stuck, get a coach or mentor who excels at what you’re trying to do.  Self-help may not be enough to get you over the hurdle. You might also want to hire a coach on an ongoing basis to help you achieve continuous improvement. Unfortunately, many people are reluctant to do this. That’s why greatness is so rare.  It requires the wisdom and humility to know when the help of others is required to be great.

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Developing Connections When People are Geographically Remote

At the heart of building community is developing a bond of connection among the members of a group. In other words, when the members of a group feel positive emotions related to being understood, respected, appreciated, and included by their group’s leaders and fellow members, it forms a bond that strengthens cooperation and commitment among group members.

Emotions are important to organizational effectiveness. Research by the Corporate Executive Board has shown that emotional factors are four times as effective as rational factors when it comes to the amount of effort employees put in their work. Emotional factors include how an employee feels about his organization’s identity and the people he works with whereas rational factors include what an employee thinks about his compensation.

Typically, an organization’s managers and stars feel emotionally connected while three-quarters of all employees do not. What happens to those who don’t feel connected? They stop caring. They stop giving their best efforts. They stop fully communicating and, as a result, decision-makers don’t get the information they need to make optimal decisions. This disconnection results in a gradual spiraling down of performance that may eventually threaten an organization’s survival.

Connection is grounded in human needs. I’ve found that two of these needs, recognition and belonging, can be partially met through participation in online communities. The need for recognition is in our DNA. It’s almost as if we have a “recognition battery” that needs to be charged regularly but the curious aspect of this battery is that its plug-in is located at a spot on our back that we can’t quite reach. As such, we rely on the people around us to charge our recognition battery. If it’s charged, we are energized; if not, we become drained and lose energy.

In addition to recognition, we have a need to feel that we belong to a group — to be in a place where “everyone knows your name,” as the popular theme song of the old comedy television show Cheers stated. Positive interactions on a regular basis with members of a group bring about this feeling of belonging.

There are a number of online capabilities that organizations can put place to help meet the needs for recognition and belonging, and bring about feelings of connection.

Online Personal Profiles that allow people to express their personal identities through posting photographs, hobbies and interests outside of work provide recognition. When co-workers inevitably comment on these personal expressions of identity, it provides recognition and a sense of belonging that makes people feel more connected. Giving employees a place to express who they really are helps them avoid feelings of isolation that occur when they begin to feel like cogs in a machine. Also related to personal identity are affinity groups such as book clubs and alumni groups. These groups can be encouraged and supported with online intranet websites and social media that increase connection among people with shared interests outside of work.

Social Media can be used to inform employees and invite them into conversations about corporate issues. Leaders who mine the resulting body of content for good ideas, implement them, and give credit where credit is due will discover that this helps employees feel more connected. This practice will also improve decision-making and innovation as decision makers gain access to new information and participants to identify new business opportunities, process improvements and product possibilities.

Podcasts and Webcasts are helpful tools to facilitate connection by reaching employees who have visual and auditory learning styles. They can also be used to increase awareness of thought leaders and experts in an organization. For example, Polly Pearson, former Vice President of Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement at EMC, interviewed thought leaders and experts on an internal webcast entitled “Culture Talk.” Polly helped several EMC employees to become internal bloggers and eventually to blog externally. As a result, EMC developed more than 40 bloggers.

These are but a few of the online means that can be utilized to foster connection among the members of an organization. By helping everyone to feel connected, organizations will increase the employee engagement, strategic alignment, productivity, innovation and overall performance.

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Emotional Connections Important to a Healthy Life

The emotional connections that Jason Pankau and I write, speak and teach about are in the workplace and in life outside of work.  Research has shown that Emotionally Focused Therapy for marriage helps couples develop and the maintain the emotional connections that have been shown to be the most important factor predicting marriage longevity (and emotional disconnection is the top predictor of divorce). Emotional connections are important to children too. Research has shown that teenagers who feel connected to their families and/or friends are less likely to become involved in sexual activity or drinking alcohol at an early age. Two books I recommend on this topic are Safe Haven Marriage and The Five Love Languages of Teenagers. These are outstanding books that will strengthen your relationships with your spouse and children, and improve your wellbeing in life.

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Cancer Free, Seven Years Today

Seven years ago today, my wife Katie had surgery for advanced ovarian cancer. The prior year, Katie had surgery to remove breast cancer. Today, she is cancer free.

I wrote an essay entitled “Alone No Longer” about how setting my work aside to focus on being with and helping Katie and our daughters changed my perspective on life.  The essay has been read by many individuals who want to know how they can help people in their lives who are battling a serious illness.  The essay also challenges readers to examine their own lives to consider if they are too focused on status and achievement and insufficiently focused on relationships.  I hope you’ll take time to read “Alone No Longer,” reflect on your life and share the essay with friends who might benefit from reading it.

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How Solitude Shapes Great Leaders

Take time to read this thoughtful speech entitled Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz given to this year’s plebe class at West Point. He describes how great leaders develop the courage of their convictions, which includes moral courage. Reflection, time alone with one’s thoughts, interactions with trusted friends and reading great books, as Deresiewicz says, are part of the mix.  What he didn’t adequately include is the impact of one’s experiences in life including one’s family of origin and periods of adversity and suffering that breed humility.  Despite its shortcomings, it’s a fine speech and well worth taking time to read.

Many thanks to David Books of The New York Times for bringing this thoughtful speech to my attention.  Brook’s recognized Deresiewicz’s speech as one of the best pieces of long journalism written in 2010.

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Are You A Life Giver or Life Drainer?






Many thanks to my friend Jeffrey Fry for sending me this wonderful video.  It’s encouraged me to be bolder in affirming my family members, friends and the people I meet day-to-day.

Validation, affirmation, recognition or whatever else you call it is relevant in the workplace and to life outside of work.  When I speak or teach about Connection Cultures I tell people that the need for recognition reminds me of a battery that every human being has and the plug-in to recharge the recognition battery is midway up our back and between our shoulder blades, a place we can’t reach so that we need to rely on the people around us to recharge our recognition battery. If it stays charged, we are more energized in life.  If it goes uncharged, we are drained of life.

Another point to remember is that recognition need to be genuine.   As my friend and co-author Jason Pankau says, give people sugar not saccharine (the fake stuff).

So here’s the question I’d like you to consider: are you charging or neglecting to charge the recognition batteries of the people in your life?

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Signals We Send in Relationships

Thanks to my friend Deborah Mills-Scofield for sending me this article from Science Daily entitled “Exploring How Partners Perceive Each Others Emotion During a Relationship Fight.”  It looks at how expressions of hard, flat or soft emotion are perceived and how such perceptions affect relationships.  This research suggests that a leader’s ability to express appropriate emotions at appropriate times is important to keep people feeling connected to the them (and emotional connections are essential to employee engagement and alignment).