Tag Archives: E Pluribus Partners

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To Connect, be a Servant Leader

Starbucks Logo#23 Adopt a “Servant Leadership” Mindset

Here is a powerful truth:  To serve is to connect. This is the notion behind servant leadership. “Servant leaders” connect with the people they lead because they view themselves as serving the people to help them better serve the organization’s mission.

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was struggling to make Starbucks successful as it expanded outside of Seattle, he hired Howard Behar to be the president of Starbucks North America. Behar moved to Chicago, the first big city Starbucks expanded into, and he went store-to-store getting to know the people and teaching them how to connect with one another and with customers. That was an inflection point in Starbucks’ history. After spectacular growth in North America, Schultz made Behar the first president of Starbucks International and Behar led Starbuck’s international expansion. To learn more, read Howard Behar’s great book, It’s Not About the Coffee. (By the way, Howard Behar went on to become the chairman of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.)

This is the twenty-third post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, 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.

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Connect by Knowing Your Colleagues’ Stories

Two Friends Laughing at Work

#21 Know Their Stories

Take time to get to know the people you work with, especially your direct reports. Have coffee or a meal with them. Ask questions to learn about their lives and what’s important to them.

Questions unrelated to work might include “what are your interests outside of work?”, “what do you like to do during your free time?” or “where did you grow up?”.  These questions typically open the door for you to ask follow-up questions. This will give you insights into how they are wired, including what they value at work and in their lives outside of work.

Research by psychologist James Pennebaker has shown that when you get people to talk, they feel more connected to you, they like you more and feel they learn more from you.

This is the twenty-first post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, 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.

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Connection Requires the Right Attitude

Smiling coworkers with good attitudes

#14 Develop an Attitude of Commitment, Courage and Perseverance

To develop the strength of character that intentional connectors have requires commitment, courage and perseverance.

  • Commitment is required to develop the habit of connecting.
  • Courage is required because some people will reject your efforts to connect, whether due to circumstance or personality. When our efforts to connect are spurned, the part of the brain that feels physical pain becomes active and it triggers a sense of “social pain.” Understanding this natural response will help you be prepared for it.
  • Perseverance is required to reach the point where connecting is now part of your character.

This is the fourteenth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, 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.

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Connect with the Core

Leader with employees testing new management theory

#11 Connect with the Organization’s Core

Remember to make an effort to connect with people who have less power, control and influence because they are the ones who do most of the work when it comes to executing the tasks of your organization. Research has shown that higher status employees pay less attention to those with lower status and they are unaware of it. The famous “Whitehall Studies” in the UK established that workers who are lower in an organization’s hierarchy have less sense of control and suffer from greater stress and this contributes to ill health and higher mortality. The antidote to help people cope with stress is to connect with them and to delegate greater control to them.

This is the eleventh post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, 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.

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Seek the Unique

#6  Seek the Unique  – When meeting someone for the first time, ask questions to identify something that is both unique and positive about them.  Doing this will make you more likely to remember them and what differentiates them from others.

While teaching a leadership seminar in Boston, a participant from the American Red Cross told me that Elizabeth Dole, the former president of the Red Cross, practiced this and Ms. Dole frequently brought up in conversation what was unique about a person the next time she saw him/her. (This practice reflects the Connection Culture element of Value.)

This is the sixth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others.  Although the language, 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.

 

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Assessing Ballmer’s Leadership

Check out technology critic David Pogue’s “How Ballmer Missed the Tidal Shifts in Tech” which appeared on the New York Times’ website on August 24.

I believe the most relevant question to ask in assessing Ballmer’s leadership and why Microsoft missed the tidal shifts in tech is: did Ballmer and his leadership team develop a culture of control, a culture of indifference or a “connection culture?” (These are the three types of psychosocial cultures in organizations.) Connection Cultures are required to maximize innovation, employee engagement and productivity, a case we made in our book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity. 

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Say “Hi” and “Bye”

#5 Say Hi and Bye

When you enter a room and it’s appropriate given the context and number of people present, greet people by name.  When you leave their presence, say goodbye.  Not saying hi and/or bye, runs the risk of giving someone the impression that you are indifferent to them.  (This practice reflects the Connection Culture element of Value.)

This is the fifth post in 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.

Update: Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks North America and Starbucks International, and I co-authored an article entitled “Leadership Myopia” that appears in the August edition of Leadership Excellence alongside articles by well known leadership experts Gary Hamel, Marshall Goldsmith and Patrick Lencioni.    On October 10, I will give a keynote speech at the Retailing Summit held in Dallas, Texas.  The Retailing Summit is a premiere event for senior leaders in retail.  This year’s conference includes Karen Katz, President and CEO of Nieman Marcus, Maxine Clark, Founder of Build-a-Bear Workshop, Duncan Mac Naughtan, EVP, Chief Merchandising & Marketing Officer for Wal-Mart U.S. and Graham Atkinson, CMO & Chief Experience Officer of Walgreens.

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Neuro Wi-Fi: Power of Mutual Empathy

Happy Girl
#4 Feel Others’ Emotions

Mutual empathy is a powerful connector that is made possible by the mirror-neurons in our brains. These neurons act like an emotional Wi-Fi system. When we feel the emotions others feel it makes them feel connected to us. When we feel their positive emotions, it enhances the positive emotions they feel. When we feel their pain, it diminishes the pain they feel. If someone expresses emotion, it’s okay, and natural, for you to feel it.

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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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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?