Tag Archives: teamwork

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In Search of Happiness

Happiness is much sought after these days. Book stores and magazine stands are full of titles that promise to unlock the secrets of happiness.  Positive psychology courses are all the rage on college campuses across America. Recognizing that happiness gets attention, I recently decided to title a chapter I’m writing “Should Leaders Care About Employee Happiness?” The chapter will be included in the American Society for Training and Development’s new Handbook of Management.

In my view, the primary reason happiness is on the decline in America and in many market democracies around the world is that we’ve become “achieve-aholics” who, as a result of our achievement-seeking lifestyles, lack sufficient human connection.  Lacking connection, we eventually dysfunction. As achieve-aholics move through adulthood, they feel a sense of boredom, emptiness and meaninglessness.  Many are mis-diagnosed as having depression when in fact they are just lonely (I wrote about this in an earlier post on the rise of loneliness in America). To feel better, achieve-aholics oftentimes seek illegitimate thrills (e.g. sexual affairs, pornography, extreme sports and extreme business risks) or they self-medicate to numb the pain, which leads to substance abuse. In my opinion, this is why America, with a mere five percent of the world’s population consumes half of the mood-altering pharmacological medications and two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs (a point that Joseph Califano, head of the National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, made in a video interview on the Atlantic’s website).

The bottom line is that we are human beings, not machines.  As I consistently present on this blog, and all the science makes it abundantly clear, we need human connection to thrive.

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How Leaders Connect to Boost Employee Engagement

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Here’s a link to an audio interview Jason Pankau and I did with Jeremie Kubicek, CEO of GiANT (GiANT Impact, Catalyst and Chick-fil-A Leadercast).  Jeremie is the author of a great book entitled Leadership is Dead: How Influence is Reviving It.

During the interview we discussed how leadership affects employee engagement, strategic alignment, productivity, innovation and organizational performance.  Check it out at this link.

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Real Recognition Radio Interview

Today, Roy Saunderson and S. Max Brown of Real Recognition Radio are featuring an interview we did about Connection Cultures, leadership, employee engagement, employe recognition, productivity, innovation and achieving sustainable superior performance.  Roy and Max are both knowledgeable experts on employee recognition and they are delightful individuals to engage with in conversation.  I hope you’ll check out our interview at this link.

Last month, I appeared as a regular guest on Jim Blasingame’s nationally-syndicated radio program focused on small business owners.  Unfortunately, I forgot to post a link to the recording of the interview posted on Jim’s website.  You can listen to it here.

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PwC Chairman: Need to Connect with Millennials

Dennis Nally, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Chairman, recognized the need to connect with Millennials, in a Wall Street Journal interview entitled “PwC Chairman Aims to Keep Millennials Happy.”  In the interview Nally states:

“Connecting with your employees so they understand you can deliver the career they want is key…they want less-hierarchical structures, they want more flexibility, they want to work as hard but they want to define how they do their work. If you can’t figure out a way to accommodate that kind of flexibility, you’re not going to be able to retain that talent.”

Millenials are not the only employees companies need to connect with.  Research consistently shows that on average, 75 percent of employees feel disconnected at work. As a result they don’t give their best efforts or align their behavior with organizational goals.  Employers need to develop Connection Cultures so that employees thrive, individually and collectively.

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Rise of Lonely American Employees Undermines Productivity

Several facts recently caught my attention.

  • In 1940, 7.7 percent of Americans lived in one-person households. By 2000, that number more than tripled to 25.8 percent.  (In Manhattan, 48 percent of all households were one-person households in 2000.)
  • Between 1985 and 2004, the number of people with whom the average American discussed “important matters” dropped from three to two. During that same time period the percentage of people who had no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled to nearly 25 percent.
  • A study by Norman Nie and his Stanford colleagues found that as people spend more time on the internet, they spent less face-to-face time with other human beings. (Who’s not spending more time on the internet these days?)

These facts all point to the conclusion that loneliness is on the rise in America. As we pointed out in our book Fired Up or Burned Out and in The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage, people need human connection to thrive.  We are human beings, not machines.  When we don’t experience sufficient human connection, we dysfunction. This may include experiencing feelings of emptiness, boredom and depression.  It may lead some to engage in substance abuse to numb the pain.  Others may pursue illegitimate thrills to feel alive again and in doing so develop addictions to pornography, sexual encounters with prostitutes and one night stands, or taking excessive business risks.  These paths never end well for the individual, their families and friends, or for their organizations.  To combat the pervasive loneliness that’s damaging American society and organizations, leaders need to create Connection Cultures that unite people and develop “relationship excellence” that supplements efforts to develop “task excellence” in organizations.

There are three general types of cultures in organizations when it comes to relationships and connection.  

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Emotional Connections Essential to Employee Engagement

Here is a video from YouTube of a conversation I had earlier this year about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation with Dr. Homer Erekson, Dean of TCU’s Neeley School of Business.  Our conversation occurred as part of the Tandy Executive Speakers Series that featured CEOs of outstanding companies such as Nieman Marcus, Southwest Airlines and The Container Store.

During our conversation we discussed how most leaders don’t understand the importance of emotional connections to the success of the their organization.  Learn more about the “Connection Cultures” that great leaders create by reading Fired Up or Burned Out.

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Gap’s Chief Innovation Officer Recognizes Connection Required to Innovate

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I’m encouraged to see more leaders recognize that individuals and organizations need connection to thrive. Here’s a video of Polly LaBarre at MIX interviewing Ivy Ross, Gap’s Chief Innovation Officer, about the need for connection to innovate. To learn more about “Connection Cultures” download the Connection Culture Manifesto published by changethis.com. You can go even deeper into Connection Cultures by signing up for my new quarterly email newsletter after which you will receive an email that contains a link to a free download of Fired Up or Burned Out, the book that introduced Connection Cultures.

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New Research: Relationships Make Hospitals Great

The New York Times recently had an article entitled “What Makes a Hospital Great” that described new research concluding a hospital’s culture and the quality of relationships were the most important factors determining patient outcomes. This finding is consistent with our research that concluded leaders must be intentional about developing both “task excellence” and “relationship excellence” in order to achieve sustainable superior performance.  If leaders focus on task alone the eventual failure of relationships will sabotage excellence.

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Attend (Virtually) HCI’s National Human Capital Summit

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This afternoon I’ll be speaking at the National Human Capital Summit in Atlanta.  You can attend the event online at no cost by registering at the link below. Online attendees will be able to see my presentation as well as those of consultant and author Gary Hamel, Liane Hornsey of Google, Dr. John Fleming of Gallup, author Dan Pink, Vineet Nayar CEO of HCL Technologies and Suzanne Gordon of SAS Institute.

To sign up for this special complimentary pass into the live streaming conference, click on this link.

  • If it’s your first time visiting the HCI conference registration site, click “register” and create a new account by entering your information in the required fields and choosing a password (again, there is no cost to do this).
  • Please take the time to click the “Test Your System” icon and install Silverlight if you haven’t previously. If you need any help you may click “Live Chat Now” for instant, live support.
  • When you exit the virtual conference, re-enter by following the same link but click “login” instead of “register” when you return and enter your username and password.

And because it is a live streaming event, you then will come back at the time of the talks that you want to see. Click on this link to see the virtual conference agenda. There are MANY great talks to choose from. All times listed are Eastern Time.

Tomorrow night I will attend the awards ceremony for the Management Innovation Exchange’s HCI Human Capital M-Prize.  Congratulations to the ten semifinalists, three of  whom are friends of mine: Lisa Haneberg, Steve Todd and Drew Williams, my pastor at Trinity Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.