Michael Lee Stallard

Today is Presidents’ Day in the U.S., a day in which we primarily celebrate our first president, George Washington. After reading the article “George Washington’s Tear Jerker” in The New York Times, one might ask, was Washington really the great leader he has been made out to be?  I asked myself that question during the summer of 2002 and began a journey to unpack truth from myth.  I went as far as contacting and speaking with Edward Lengel, the foremost historian on Washington’s generalship.  After doing my own research I wrote the following which became one of the chapters on 20 leaders in Fired Up or Burned Out.

First in Their Hearts

Richard Neustadt, Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, observed the following about George Washington: “It wasn’t his generalship that made him stand out . . . It was the way he attended to and stuck by his men. His soldiers knew that he respected and cared for them, and that he would share their severe hardships.” Read more »

The writer Jeff Benedict just emailed me some beautifully written and wise words he posted on his blog about staying connected with his son.  I hope you’ll take the time to check it out at this link.

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.

Michael Lee Stallard and Jason Pankau

K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues famously concluded that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are required to achieve excellence and expert status.  Malcolm Gladwell popularized Ericsson’s 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers.  What many forget is that Ericsson’s research also concluded the experts benefitted from coaching and mentoring by people who told them the truth, even when it was painful to hear.

The point here is that no one becomes great at anything without coaching and mentoring.  Do you have coaches and mentors in your life who help you learn, grow and develop into the person you want to become?  Do you want to be better at exercising and eating healthy?  Why not ask someone you know who is good in those areas to mentor you.    Do you want to be a better listener?  Ask a good listener you know to give you suggestions about how to improve.  Want to be a better parent and spouse?  Ask your children and spouse how you can improve.

Michael Lee Stallard is president of E Pluribus Partners.  Jason Pankau is the president of Life Spring Network, a Christian ministry.  They write, speak and teach workshops on leadership and employee engagement. Michael and Jason are co-authors of the bestselling book Fired Up or Burned Out.

A couple years ago I had the good fortune to meet Malcolm Gladwell at a Rotman Business School event and tell him how much I enjoyed his work. One of my favorite stories in Malcolm’s latest book entitled Outliers is about Roseto, Pennsylvania.  As it turns out, residents of Roseto were outliers in terms of their good health. A curious doctor set out to understand why.   After a methodical study he concluded that it wasn’t diet or exercise that mattered.   The reason Rosetans were living longer was the culture they lived in.  As Malcolm wrote:

In transplanting the paesani culture of southern Italy to the hills of eastern Pennsylvania the Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills.

“I remember going to Roseto for the first time, and you’d see three generational family meals, all the bakeries, the people walking up and down the street, sitting on their porches talking to each other, the blouse mills where the women worked during the day, while the men worked in the slate quarries,” Bruhn said. “It was magical.”

Thanks to The New York Times, you can read the wonderful story Malcolm wrote about Roseto, PA at this link.

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.

In this blog, I consistently describe new research and case studies that collectively prove beyond any reasonable doubt that connection = flourishing and life and disconnection = disfunction and death.  This applies to both individuals and organizations.  (For additional information on Connection Cultures read the Connection Culture Manifesto or my book Fired Up or Burned Out.)  That’s why I’m excited about what I saw at TCU last week when I spoke on campus and met with university administrators, faculty and students.  TCU’s motto is “learning to change the world.”  By developing citizens who value connection and community and know how to create it, TCU will indeed be living up to its aspiration.  This comes at an important time given that the emotional health of many college students is at a low. With 75 percent of American workers not feeling connected to their supervisors or colleagues at work — and, as a result, not giving there best efforts — American business leaders need to learn a lesson from these RA’s who value connection and are intentional in bringing it about.

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.

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.

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.

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.