Category Archives: Ways to Connect

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Stay Aligned With Core Values

Ritz Carlton Values on Card#20 Stay Aligned with Core Values

Take your direct reports through the final core values you decided upon. Discuss which values are most important to your team’s success, which values your team is strong in, which values it needs to develop and what can be done to live them out. Follow up with a written summary of action items, responsibilities and due dates that come out of the meeting. Meet periodically to review and revise the action plan. Ask your direct reports to do the same with their direct reports.

Consider having your core values printed on a small card that can fit in a wallet. Each Ritz-Carlton employee receives a card with the organization’s core values (called “Ritz Basics”) printed on the front and back sides of the card. Teams meet briefly every day to review one of the 20 Ritz-Carlton values and each week one example of a Ritz-Carlton employee who lived out a value is shared with all Ritz-Carlton employees worldwide.

This is the twentieth 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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To Connect, Communicate Meaningful Core Values

Woman looking into distance whilst thinking#19 Reflect Upon, Write Out and Communicate Your Core Values

Take time alone to reflect on the values you believe in and want to live out in your life. For inspiration, read Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz’s excellent book Pour Your Heart Into It and read the Montpelier Command Philosophy in Fired Up or Burned Out. Write out your core values in a manner that is similar to the Montpelier Command Philosophy, i.e name the value, explain what it means and why you believe it’s important. Ask trusted friends whom you respect to read your values and provide feedback about “what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s missing” from them. When you believe your draft is in good shape, share it with your direct reports and ask them to provide feedback about “what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s missing.” Consider the feedback, make the changes that you believe improve it and then circulate the final to your direct reports.

This is the nineteenth 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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To Reinforce Connection, Replenish the Vision

Group of people raising arms in air in excitement

#18 Replenish the Vision

Vision leaks, so look for ways to keep your organization and team’s mission, values and reputation in front of your team. Take employees out to visit customers or bring customers in to talk with employees about how they use your products or services and how it benefits them. Keep up with articles and press releases on your organization then circulate those that reinforce the mission, values and reputation.

This is the eighteenth 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 Cascading Your Vision

Leader Discussing Plans with Team

#17 Cascade Your Vision

When Frances Hesselbein led a remarkable turnaround of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. she implemented an inclusive annual planning process. Frances communicated the vision, mission and annual objectives then explained why each objective was selected. She gave people a voice to provide feedback about “what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s missing” from the vision and annual objectives. Her leadership team considered the feedback, made adjustments and communicated the final plan.

You should do the same. At some point in the year, repeat the process after you’ve factored in how well your plans are working and what adjustments are warranted given more current information. An inclusive process to establish annual objectives and action plans engages people and helps them align their behavior with the plan. If you want to learn more about a detailed process to implement this approach, read Michael Kanazawa and Robert Miles’ book Big Ideas to Big Results.

This is the seventeenth 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 Through a Greater Vision

The Body Shop Logo#16 Develop a Vision That Serves a Cause Greater Than Self

Leaders who view themselves as serving a cause greater than self connect with people who share their desire to serve that particular cause. A shared cause connects people to one another by bringing greater beauty, goodness and/or truth to the world, and, by doing so, helps people.

Here is an example. Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, started a company to help women-owned businesses in developing countries market their natural personal care products to consumers in wealthy nations. Roddick was passionate about it, employees and customers of The Body Shop loved it, and the company grew rapidly to become a global success story.

Research by Wharton’s Adam Grant has shown that connecting to a Vision of serving others (pro-social, as Grant calls it) boosts employee productivity. Research by UCLA’s Stephen W. Cole, et al., has shown that people who feel connected to their work because it has a higher purpose or service to others exhibited gene-expression profiles that were associated with a lower risk of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

This is the sixteenth 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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Don’t Get Caught in the “Knowing-Doing Trap”

Word "Goals" on Whiteboard#15 Don’t Get Caught in the “Knowing-Doing Trap”

Many people know they need to exercise and eat right to be healthy but they fail to DO it. They become caught in the knowing-doing trap (a term we adapted from the “knowing-doing gap” coined by Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton). That can happen with connection, too. Don’t let it. Make sure you create a plan to take at least three actions and share your plan with someone who will encourage you and hold you accountable, such as a mentor or coach. If you take action, you will find that it increases your level of understanding about connection. Mark this day, begin connecting and watch what happens. You will experience the productivity, prosperity and joy that come from having greater connection in your life.

This is the fifteenth 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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Practice Five Minute Favors

five minutes on timer

#13 Practice Five Minute Favors

In his excellent book Give and Take, Wharton professor Adam Grant advocates the practice of “five minute favors,” i.e. you should be willing to help anyone if it takes only five minutes. Grant argues that helping others connects them to us and helps develop a supportive network.

This is the thirteenth 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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Reach Out to the Disconnected

Hand Reaching Out to Help

#12 Connect with the Disconnected

People who are disconnected need our help. Throw them a lifeline by taking action to connect with them. Perhaps you can encourage them with a smile, a kind word, an offer to buy them a cup of coffee or by holding open a door for them. There are hundreds of ways to connect and small things can make a big difference over time.

People who become disconnected and feel left out suffer. Neuroscientists call what they feel “social pain” because feeling left out activates the parts of the brain where human beings feel physical pain and it causes people to become more anxious, more stressed, less social, less energetic, less rational and diminishes their self-control. Disconnection is not only unproductive, it is potentially dangerous if the isolated individual becomes angry and decides to retaliate. This is why we need to show mercy and reach out to help the disconnected reconnect.

This is the twelfth 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.