Tag Archives: E Pluribus Partners

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Is Too Much Stress Damaging Your Chromosomes?

Too much stress, including stress in your workplace, damages “telomeres” on the ends of your chromosomes and causes rapid aging.  Interestingly, when people connect in supportive relationships it triggers the production of enzymes called “telomerase” that heal damaged telomeres.  Check out this outstanding 58 minute National Geographic documentary entitled “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” about this and other research on the effects of stress. It includes an excellent segment on the famous Whitehall research studies in the UK that established stress and mortality were inversely related to hierarchy in organizations.

Update: I recently returned from speaking, teaching and meeting with leaders of organizations in business, higher education and government in Houston, Fort Worth, Texas and Erie, Pennsylvania.   ASTD’s The Public Manager recently published a version of a case study I wrote about CNO Admiral Vern Clark’s improving the U.S. Navy’s culture.  The article is entitled “Great Leaders Connect with the People They Lead.”

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Courage, Connection and the Flow of Ideas

“Little of consequence is ever done alone.”

– David McCullough

Last week my wife and I went to see the historian David McCullough speak about his new book The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.  I’ve seen David McCullough speak twice before and always found his talks to be thoughtful and inspiring.

On this occasion, McCullough spoke on the courage of Americans who went to France between 1830 and 1900 because they were “in love with learning and advancing their abilities.” They made the difficult trip across the Atlantic that lasted anywhere from one to three months.  They remained there despite language differences and outbreaks of disease such as cholera.  Upon their return, they applied knowledge acquired in France to improve America.  Greater competence in their chosen fields was not all they gained.  Their character had changed as well.  Exposure to new people, new ideas, exquisite art and architecture, broadened their perspective, lifted their spirits and inspired them to make a difference.

The stories McCullough told were marvelous.  His enthusiasm was contagious as he recounted the tales of Harriett Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emma Willard and others.  James Fenimore Cooper, while writing in Paris, visited the Louvre every afternoon to speak words of encouragement that would help his friend, Samuel F.B. Morse, persevere in painting the masterpiece Gallery of the Louvre.  It was in France that Morse learned something that gave him the idea for the telegraph.  Charles Sumner, while studying at the Sorbonne, came to know black students who were his equal in their aspirations and intelligence.  He returned to America to become an influential voice for abolition despite threats against his life.  The flow of ideas and knowledge, reflected in these personal accounts, is something I’ve written about in Fired Up or Burned Out and in the article “Encouraging Knowledge Flow” that appeared in Perdido.

This summer I’ll be reading The Greater Journey and another of McCullough’s books, The Great Bridge.  If you’ve not already picked up books for summer reading, I encourage you to check out these titles.  I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend Brave Companions, John Adams and Mornings on Horseback, also by David McCullough.

Update

In early May I spoke at the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) International Conference and Exposition in Denver on the topic “Do Leaders Need to Make Employees Happy?”.

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Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

Check out this excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”  Some eye-popping statistics and quotes from the article include:

  • In 1950 less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person.  By 2010, nearly 27 percent had just one person.
  • A 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely as opposed to 20 percent a decade earlier.
  • Roughly 20 percent of Americans — about 60 million people — are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.
  • “Across the Western world, physicians and nurses have begun to speak openly about an epidemic of loneliness.”

The rise in loneliness has led to an explosion in the number of paid confidants.  A 2010 Hoover Institute paper stated in 1950 the U.S. had a combined 33,000 paid confidants including clinical psychologists, social workers and therapists.  By 2010 that number reached an estimated 1,091,00 paid confidants which includes new categories such as mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and life coaches.

Clearly, Facebook and other assorted addictions to media are not the only contributors to the epidemic of loneliness. The geographic spread of families, increased time spent working/commuting to work, and the decline of relationships in the workplace are also responsible.  Regarding relationships in the workplace, the push for productivity has contributed to a rise of cultures that label people who take time to build relationships as slackers.   Today, having lunch alone in your office is the norm.  Unfortunately, productivity and innovation take a toll when workers burn out from a lack of human connection.  They learn to play “face time” games that make it look like they’re working, when in reality they’re not.  Creating Connection Cultures in organizations to achieve “relationship excellence” is wise.  We most recently made the case for Connection Cultures in an article entitled,”The Science of Engagement,” that appeared in the Spring edition of  Training Industry Quarterly.

In addition to the The Atlantic article on Facebook making us lonely, here are two other readings I recommend.

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Articles, Media on Leadership, the Science of Connection, and Taking a Creative Risk

Last week I met Frances Hesselbein, head of the Frances Hesselbein Institute, over a delightfully long lunch at the Waldorf Astoria.  Peter Drucker once called Mrs. Hesselbein America’s best leader.  I’ve written about her remarkable leadership of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

At one point in our lunch I mentioned a quote from Psalm 78:72 about King David’s leadership of Israel.  The New Living Translation of the Bible states it this way: “he cared for Israel with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.”  It’s a variation of the “Task Excellence + Relationship Excellence” model we teach at organizations.  After hearing the Bible verse, Mrs. Hesselbein leaned over toward me, looking me directly in the eyes and said “and he cared for them first.”  I will never ever forget those words coming from a leader who lived them out.

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New Media on Connection

Tomorrow I fly back to the U.S. after a 10-day trip to Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Edinburgh where I taught seminars for the Institute for Management Studies, spoke at ITV, saw several friends and spent a couple days on vacation with my wife, Katie.

While here, I learned about several new items of media coverage related to connection. Several items came from my friends Sean Witty and Jay Morris. Here are the items below.

Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk’s research on the importance of connection to babies and their ability to connect

Mental Heath Foundation of the UK report on rising loneliness and declining connection in the UK

UNICEF summary report on meeting children’s need for connection in the UK, Sweden and Spain

Article in Entrepreneur magazine “Forget Networking. How to be a Connector”

Center for Creative Leadership article on introverts who connect well with colleagues

Dr. Stephen Jones on the need to connect with others to keep your mind and memory sharp

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Malcolm Gladwell, Atul Gawande on Connection

Several writers at The New Yorker understand how important the force of human connection is to help people thrive.  I’ve previously written about Ken Auletta’s masterpiece “The Howell Doctrine,” and, of course, there’s Jim Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds.  Two other writers at The New Yorker have made significant contributions on this topic.

In Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto, we learn that disconnection (the failure to communicate and connect) is the primary cause of aircraft accidents and a major contributor to medical errors.  Gawande, a surgeon, prescribes checklists to help improve performance as the work we do becomes increasingly complex.  Here’s one example.  Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital learned that surgical teams performed better when, prior to surgery, each member of the team introduced him or herself and shared any foreseeable concerns.  When surgical teams did this, lower status members were more likely to speak up if they saw mistakes being made.  This became a step on Gawande’s checklist he and his team developed for the World Health Organization.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, Outliers: The Story of Success, connection is a theme throughout.  In the introduction, we learn that several research studies found residents of the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania were healthier and lived longer solely because they were a more relationally connected community.  In the next chapter, we learn that 10,000 hours of intentional practice is required with coaching (i.e. connection) to achieve expert level performance.  Although Gladwell doesn’t explicitly make this point, the support of family and friends is necessary to persevere through the inevitable difficulties of  practicing for 10,000 hours, which is 10 years of practicing for 20 hours a week.

In a chapter on geniuses, Gladwell concludes they are often not very successful because they fail to connect with other human beings and it renders them less effective at getting things done.  Similar to Gawande’s book, we learn that the key to airline safety is to reduce human error by making sure pilots, co-pilots and air traffic controllers are connected in both a rational and emotional sense.  Gladwell describes how the crash of a Columbian Airlines flight a few years ago because it ran out of fuel was attributable to a failure of communication between the co-pilot, pilot and air traffic controller at JFK Airport in New York.  The problem was that the plane’s co-pilot used “mitigating speech” to be respectful to those he perceived as having great status and authority.  When he needed to communicate the urgency of the situation he should have been screaming like a New York cab driver to make his point clear.

Finally, we learn from Gladwell about the success of the KIPP charter schools in low income urban neighborhoods.  Eighty percent of KIPP students go on to attend college.  KIPP students learn a protocal called “SSLANT” which stands for smile, sit up, listen, ask questions, nod when being spoken to, and track with our eyes.”  All of these behaviors help kids connect with others.  Brilliant, isn’t it.  KIPP teaches its students academic competence and relationship competence.  It was so inspiring to read how KIPP was giving these kids hope for a bright future, I wanted to stand up and cheer.

I very highly recommend both of these books.  They are utterly fascinating and well written, so much so that I couldn’t put them down.

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Great Leaders: TCU’s Chancellor, Victor Boschini

TCU is on a roll.  It has been recognized by U.S. News as one a top 100 colleges in America.   Its athletics’ teams are generally among the top teams in Division I college sports.   More recently the Chronicle of Higher Education named TCU as one of the “43 best colleges to work for.” I could go on.

This is no accident. TCU has benefitted from having a string of great leaders over recent decades.  These leaders developed a vision for the school that inspired the TCU community.  They raised money to fund a sizable endowment that gives the school financial flexibility to weather the ups and downs of the economy.  They improved campus infrastructure.  They invested in identifying and attracting the best “teacher-scholars” who love teaching and connecting with students and also share a passion to advance the pursuit of truth through research and scholarship.

The current leader of TCU, its chancellor, Victor Boschini, is an impressive leader.  He’s brimming with energy and optimism while being grounded in reality.  He combines a passion for excellence in tasks and in relationships (Boschini refers to fundraising as “friend-raising.”) He’s curious, always seeking people’s opinions and tapping their  knowledge.  He has surrounded himself with a team that has the energy and intelligence I can only compare to the White House staff in Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing.

At present, Boschini’s focus is to strengthen TCU’s culture of unity, community and connection.  This is one reason I’m thrilled as a parent that my daughter Sarah is a junior at TCU, and beginning next Fall, my youngest daughter, Elizabeth, will be a freshman there.   Sarah is co-captain of TCU’s cheerleaders. She describes TCU as “a small school with big spirit.”  Like many students at TCU, she’s involved in the local community.  Sarah is the cheerleading coach of Nolan Catholic High School where she coaches and mentors girls to develop their competence as student-athletes and their character as human beings.

Culture and leadership matter.  Most academic cultures are indifferent to students as human beings.  Not TCU. That’s why I’m writing an article about TCU and spending a healthy sum to send my daughters there.   My hope is that more colleges will become Connection Cultures, especially during this time when research shows college freshman are experiencing record levels of stress according to recent research by UCLA.

To learn more about Victor Boschini, check out this great article entitled “Far from Normal” written when he was appointed chancellor and this inspiring convocation speech he gave earlier this year on TCU’s Connection Culture.

Another leader to keep your eyes on is Dr. Ronald DePinho, president of the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. DePinho has declared that M.D. Anderson, the world’s largest cancer center, is “in a moonshot moment” in the war on cancer. Take a look a at this inspiring article about him entitled, “Leader in Cancer Fight, and Son of an Illegal Immigrant.” My prediction: an highly-motivated leader who knows how to connect with people + the competence and resources at M.D. Anderson = very big things in the years to come.  (Full discosure: Both TCU and M.D. Anderson are clients of my leadership training and consulting firm, E Pluribus Partners.)

Finally, Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, is yet another leader who looks promising based on what I’m reading. Check out this great interview she did with The New York Times entitled “I Was Impossible, but Then I Saw How to Lead.“

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Best Practice: Stories to Encourage Good, Avoid Evil






In the workshops we teach, we use stories of great leaders in business, government, the social sector and sports who inspired people to do what’s right.  This is a best practice to strengthen the positive effects of an organization’s identity (i.e. mission, values and reputation).

Check out this outstanding TED video of Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo speaking on the topic of how culture encourages or discourages evil.  In the video, he recommends heroic stories that encourage people to do what’s right and shares a couple inspiring stories of his own.

What heroic stories have inspired you?  Please share below or feel free to email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com.  I’m going to write about some of my favorite stories in a forthcoming series of posts.

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Do Leaders Need to Make Employees Happy?

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 it 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.

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Recent Media Appearances

Here is a link to the article I wrote about Starbucks. The article is entitled “Have a Heart.”  It was published in Outlook Business for Decision Makers, a leading business magazine in India. In addition, below are links to three segments of a radio interview I did yesterday morning with Jim Blasingame, host of the nationally syndicated Small Business Advocate program.