I’m excited to share a podcast discussion I recently participated in for Manage Smarter, a SalesFuel production that focuses on data-driven management. In it, we talk about how culture can be a competitive advantage for sales organizations. Listen to the full episode.
This week, New York City’s WCBS Newsradio 880AM is playing excerpts from an interview I did with daytime host Pat Farnack for her “Health and Wellbeing Report.” In the interview Pat and I discuss the impact of loneliness on health, the performance of individuals, and how loneliness leads to self defeating behaviors and makes acts of violence more likely. Listen to the full interview here.
The nature of modern work has caused stress to rise to unhealthy levels at a time when people are also struggling with increased isolation. When you add up the hours spent on the job, commuting and doing additional work at home on our laptops and smartphones, many of us are devoting more hours to work than we ever have. It’s been reported that the average American adult spends in excess of 10 hours per day in front of a screen. These and other factors have squeezed out time for face-to-face human connection, which has contributed to a public health crisis that is even more deadly than the crisis from rising obesity.
In workshops and seminars we teach on creating a Connection Culture, we like to show videos that bring the points we make to life. One type of video we use is to show great leaders in action so people can observe their language and behavior. It gives them a vision to aim toward. To that end, we are going to be posting video of great leaders who connect on YouTube and using the #greatleadersconnect hashtag. If you have video of a great leader that shows him or her connecting, please join us in posting it on Twitter and using the #greatleadersconnect hashtag.
Our first tweet is going to be this fantastic video of Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks Coffee Company, accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Seattle Business Magazine Executive Excellence Awards. Starbucks co-founder and executive chairman Howard Schultz introduces him. In articles we’ve written, we’ve described Howard Behar as Starbucks’ secret weapon. In this video, you’ll see why.
Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO of Ruder Finn, wrote a compelling article in Fortune about how the healthcare industry is slowly losing the very essence of healthcare: human connection.
Like Ms. Bloomgarden, we’re concerned about the decline of human connection in the patient experience. We’re also concerned that a decline of doctor-patient connection is contributing to alarming rates of physician burnout which research has shown is associated with medical errors.
Mistakes and accidents can literally be a matter of life and death in certain industries. Workers in healthcare, construction, aerospace/defense, airline and automobile manufacturing, for instance, must be highly attuned to eliminating mistakes and accidents. Presently, the healthcare industry is experiencing alarming rates of physician burnout, which research has shown contributes to accidents that affect patient outcomes. In hyper-competitive industries such as manufacturing and retail, minimizing the waste from mistakes is essential to maintaining price competitiveness. For others, mistakes and accidents can negatively impact the customer experience or damage the organization’s reputation.
Many thanks to Forbes.com contributor Blake Morgan, host of The Modern Customer podcast, for interviewing me about how connection cultures positively influence customer experience. Read the article on Forbes and check out the link to the full podcast interview.
Date:
February 28, 2018
Appearance:
Forbes Article: How Having a Culture of Connection Can Impact Your Customer Experience
Can identifying and helping lonely and disconnected children prevent future school violence? Reader’s Digest shares one teacher’s simple yet thought provoking strategy for helping her students to connect.
I had the pleasure of participating in the No Bad Bosses Podcast, which is hosted by MANAGEtoWIN CEO David Russell. No Bad Bosses features conversations with business leaders on how to be a great boss, how to hire great people, and how to avoid common leadership mistakes.
In this podcast, we discuss the importance of connection in the workplace and common leadership challenges. Listen to our full conversation.
With employee disengagement remaining at very high levels in America as well as globally, and growth in significant new scientific findings that shed light on conditions necessary for human flourishing, it’s time to reconsider management theory and our approach to maximizing the performance of individuals and organizations.
Can identifying and helping lonely and disconnected children prevent future school violence? Reader’s Digest shares one teacher’s simple yet thought provoking strategy for helping her students to connect.