Michael Lee Stallard's Blog, page 15

Ford’s Alan Mulally and the Superpower of Connection: Story Featured in IndustryWeek

Check out my new article in IndustryWeek about the Connection Culture that Ford Motor Company’s former CEO Alan Mulally developed. Mulally’s leadership and the culture he created boosted employee engagement, productivity and innovation, and ultimately led to the company’s miraculous turnaround.

The post Ford’s Alan Mulally and the Superpower of Connection: Story Featured in IndustryWeek appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Is the “Silent Killer” Sabotaging Your Performance?

Is your energy level lower than you’d like? Do you feel you’re not performing at the top of your game? Are you so busy that it has crowded out time to truly connect with trusted confidants? If the answer to these questions is “yes,” you may be suffering from the effects of the “silent killer” of individuals, and it may also be holding back your performance and the performance of your organization. 

Recent research by Cigna, the insurance company, found that more than half of Americans are lonely. Earlier this year, Cigna surveyed 20,000 American adults using the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a scientifically validated survey that is commonly used to assess loneliness. Cigna’s research found the average response was above what is considered lonely, which is consistent with other research that supports the news that America is facing an epidemic of loneliness.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

The loneliness epidemic is significant because it acts as a silent killer in many ways. Loneliness makes us more vulnerable to chronic stress, which deprives parts of our brain, digestive system and immune system of the blood, glucose and oxygen needed to perform well and live a longer life span. Research has found that loneliness (feeling lonely, although one is around people) and social isolation (not being around people) are both associated with early death that is on par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness makes people less sociable, less cooperative and less collaborative, which further isolates them and makes them vulnerable to stress-induced anxiety, depression and suicide.

Organizations populated with lonely people experience lower employee engagement, poorer quality of decisions, and a reduced rate of innovation. Lonely people who work on the front lines directly with customers are not good for customer satisfaction and loyalty. These effects of loneliness sabotage performance and can shave years off of the lives of both individuals and organizations.

To Reduce Loneliness and Isolation, Boost Connection

To protect yourself and your organization, be intentional about developing and maintaining a “Connection Culture.” In my book, Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy and Understanding at Work, I make the case for connection and describe how leaders including Alan Mulally, the CEO who saved the Ford Motor Company from bankruptcy; Bono of the rock band U2; Frances Hesselbein, former head of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.; Ratan Tata, former head of the Tata Group; and Victor Boschini, Chancellor of Texas Christian University (TCU) led in ways that boosted human connection in their organization’s culture. In an earlier SmartBrief article, I wrote about Costco’s Connection Culture and how it helped the organization surpass Google to be recognized as America’s best large company employer (according to research by Forbes and Statista).

Human connection is boosted in cultures in which leaders communicate an inspiring vision, value people and give them a voice. An easy way to think of these elements is through this formula: Vision + Value + Voice = Connection.

Communicate an inspiring vision. If you are a leader or manager in your organization, communicate an inspiring vision by reminding people of how the work they do is helping others. Chuck Schwab inspired people who worked at the company he founded, Charles Schwab, by establishing a mission to provide the most useful and ethical financial services in the world. Costco inspires its people with the motto “do the right thing,” which is defined as obey the law, take care of members, take care of employees, respect suppliers and reward shareholders, in that order. Costco has a reputation for doing the right thing and its employees rightly feel proud, knowing that they are part of an ethical organization.
Value people. Show you value people as individuals by taking time to get to know their names, career aspirations and interests outside of work. Even simple gestures such as making eye contact and saying “hi” when you see them communicate your interest in them. Providing training or coaching to help them advance in their careers further shows that you care about them as individuals and want them to be able to succeed even beyond their current role with you.
Give people a voice. Sincerely seek the ideas and opinions of the people you lead, especially on matters that are of interest to them and on actions you are counting on them to implement. Be sure to follow up by recognizing them for their contributions.

Being intentional about connection with the people you lead will boost connection and performance, individually and across the team, as well as protect you and your organization from the loneliness epidemic.

You May Also Enjoy: 

Combating America’s Health Crisis from Loneliness

Protecting Your Employees (and Yourself) from the Stress-Connection Gap

10 Practices to Create a Workplace That May Lengthen Your Life

Article originally published on SmartBrief.com. Photo by Alex Ivashenko on Unsplash.

The post Is the “Silent Killer” Sabotaging Your Performance? appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Combatting America’s Health Crisis from Loneliness

News last week made me sit up and realize the growing extent to which people today are suffering from a lack of deep connection with family, friends and colleagues at work.

The research I’m referring to was released on May 1st by Cigna, the insurance company, as it announced that “most Americans are considered lonely.” Previous estimates of the loneliness of American adults were in the 26-40% range. The research findings, based on a survey of more than 20,000 U.S. adults who took the UCLA Loneliness Scale inventory, the gold standard of loneliness assessments, included these breakdowns:

54% said they always or sometimes feel like no one knows them well,
46% report sometimes or always feeling alone,
47% report sometimes or always feeling left out,
43% said they sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful and that they are isolated from others, and
only slightly more than half (53%) having meaningful in-person social interactions, such as having an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with family, on a daily basis.

Cigna’s national survey on the impact of loneliness adds to other research that points to an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation in America and other market democracies, including the UK, Germany and Australia. Research has shown that loneliness contributes to rising incivility and violence.

In contrast, human connection reduces incivility and violence. Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman has called connection a “superpower that makes us smarter, happier and more productive” and Julianne Holt-Lunstadt’s meta-analysis research found connection was associated with a 50% reduced risk of early death. A powerful property of human connection is that it converts toxic “killer stress” into “challenge stress” that is life-giving and makes us perform better (see this article).

Connection is more than a superpower for individuals. It’s also a superpower for organizations. It increases employee cognitive firepower, employee engagement, strategic alignment, quality of decision-making and innovation.

In releasing the results, Douglas Nemecek, M.D., chief medical officer for Behavioral Health at Cigna pointed out: “There is an inherent link between loneliness and the workplace, with employers in a unique position to be a critical part of the solution. Fortunately, these results clearly point to the benefits meaningful in-person connections can have on loneliness, including those in the workplace…”

Sometimes that loneliness on the job is a result of being in a culture of control or a culture of indifference that leaves the person feeling uncared for or left out. You can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely.

Over the last two weeks I’ve spoken about human connection and connection culture to audiences in Utah, Texas, New Jersey and California. Numerous times, individuals approached me afterward and shared their concern for family or friends who are suffering from loneliness.

The Cigna research should make us see that the epidemic of loneliness is an urgent matter that affects our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces and society-at-large. To combat rising loneliness, the UK government announced the creation of a minister of loneliness. It’s going to take more than government programs to make people feel connected. We can each play a part by making sure we stay connected, and that we are intentional about keeping an eye out for the lonely and socially isolated among us and reaching out to connect with them. Each of us needs to up our efforts to connect, in our personal lives and at work.

Nick Medley of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a superhero when it comes to connection. Take a look at this ABC News video that profiles Nick. While you are at it, look at these videos on superconnector leaders Frances Hesselbein, Howard Behar and Dr. Herb Pardes. Let their examples inspire you to develop the courage to connect and reach out to those around you. I’ve devoted more than 15 years to understanding the role of connection and its impact on individuals and organizations, and helping people create and sustain cultures of connection. ReadingFired Up or Burned Out, Connection Culture or our e-book “100 Ways to Connect” will give you practical steps you can take to boost connection around you.

The superpower of connection only comes where mutuality exists. In other words, you must care for and serve others and be cared for and served by others for the superpower of connection to manifest. Giving and receiving are part of the package.

I challenge you to mark this day, begin being more intentional about connecting and just watch what happens. You will experience greater productivity, prosperity and joy that comes from having an abundance of connection in your life.

You May Also Enjoy: 

Protecting Your Employees (and Yourself) from the Stress-Connection Gap

10 Practices to Create a Workplace That May Lengthen Your Life

Why Connection is a Matter of Life and Death

The post Combatting America’s Health Crisis from Loneliness appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Interview with New York City’s WCBS Newsradio

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 post Interview with New York City’s WCBS Newsradio appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Protecting Your Employees (and Yourself) from the Stress-Connection Gap

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.

Consider the following data. Research from Gallup shows a rising percentage of Americans who feel stress in their day-to-day lives. Nearly 80% of Americans now report being afflicted by stress. In addition, Americans report stress levels that are consistently above what they believe is healthy.

While most people are aware they have too much stress in their lives, they’re likely unaware of how having too little connection with others is contributing to job burnout and acting as a drag on their performance and the performance of their organization.

Looking at data on loneliness (feeling alone, even when others are present) and social isolation (being alone), Julianne Holt-Lunstad has cited compelling evidence that America is facing an epidemic of loneliness. Holt-Lunstad’s meta-analysis research found that participants who reported loneliness or social isolation were associated with a reduction in life expectancy on par with that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In contrast, participants who reported stronger social connections experienced a 50% increased likelihood of survival.

Evidence is piling up that the combination of high levels of stress and isolated lifestyles, what I refer to as the stress-connection gap, is causing harm to the emotional and physical health of Americans and people living in several other market democracies.

I am not the only one sounding the alarm. Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is calling on organizations to make boosting social connections a strategic priority. He argues that people are spending more time working and less time connecting, especially when you consider today’s more intense and relentless workplace culture in which people are expected to be available 24/7. Dr. Murthy recommends boosting social connections as an antidote to stress which will also help reduce incivility, bullying and workplace violence.

It’s worth noting that levels of stress, loneliness and social isolation differ across organizations. Although stress has been found in research to be lower among individuals who have greater leadership responsibility (as measured by the number of people reporting to a leader), still, more than half of CEOs report feeling lonely. The degree of social interaction in a job has also been found in research to affect loneliness. People in task-oriented jobs, including physicians, lawyers and engineers, are vulnerable to loneliness. Whereas, people in relationship-oriented jobs that include face-to-face interaction, such as sales, marketing and customer service roles, are less so.

The impact of human connection at work first came to my attention more than a decade ago. Working on Wall Street, I had become an “action addict.” Yes, I was surrounded by people, but I was consumed with work and leaning on caffeine, food and exercise to keep me going through demanding days. To unwind and slow me down so I could relax and sleep at night, I turned to moderate use of alcohol. I didn’t appreciate how these addictions crowded out my ability to have meaningful relationships with my family and friends. (This isn’t unusual as research has shown that 47% of Americans have one or more of 11 addictions that have serious negative consequences for their physical and/or mental health.) I wasn’t consciously aware of the stress-connection gap I was enduring until I had left the financial services industry and was focusing on helping my wife, Katie, survive advanced ovarian cancer, an experience I wrote about in Alone No Longer.

Having weathered a number of mergers over the years, I had experienced workplace and team environments that were energizing and productive, and others that were draining. I switched careers and co-founded a company to focus on the issue of culture and its effect on employees and performance. As my colleagues and I discovered the need for greater human connection in the workplace, we identified real benefits that having a “connection culture” brings both to individuals and the organization. In our 2007 book, Fired Up or Burned Out, we wrote:

“The bottom line is that connection is a necessity to any organization that aspires to achieve sustainable superior performance. Organizations with people who report they are more connected and engaged are also better performers across the board in a variety of measures from customer satisfaction to profitability… An overwhelming amount of evidence points to the need to increase connection in our organizations.”

Since that time, we’ve been working with a wide variety of organizations to boost connections in their cultures and guard against pockets of cultures of control or indifference. We’ve identified best practice attitudes, language and behavior that increase human connection. In our research, we’ve found that connection has contributed to the success of a wide variety of teams and organizations, including the rock band U2, Costco, the U.S. Navy (when Admiral Vernon Clark was CNO), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Texas Christian University where we co-founded the TCU Center for Connection Culture.

Immersed in this area for more than a decade now, we’ve learned key lessons about increasing human connection in workplace cultures. Below are three that are especially important.

Make the benefits of connection, the perils of isolation, and how to boost connection crystal clear so managers are motivated and equipped to act on it. Increasing human connection in a culture first requires educating managers to understand that connection matters to performance, and that isolation and loneliness diminish it. Managers also must learn what culture is in a way that makes it simple, memorable and actionable. Without making it clear, they won’t know how to create and foster a healthy culture and they won’t take the time to act.


Provide a list of ways for managers to connect and create connection culture, and help them identify which actions will have the greatest impact. We began doing this when we were working with the Engineering Section of the NASA Johnson Space Center and the engineers and rocket scientists told us they needed very specific language and behaviors to implement. It led us to develop the 100 Ways to Connect e-book (which you can get at no cost by signing up here).


Provide regular feedback to keep managers mindful of the ongoing need to connect, and provide encouraging mentors or coaches who energize them to change habits. Changing habits of thought, word and deed requires mindfulness and energy to make new connections between the synapses of our brain. As we put a halt to attitudes, language and behaviors that reduce connection and consciously undertake those that increase connection, our brains are rewired to form new and better habits. With time, the new habits become subconscious, at which point we call them part of our character.

Following the above advice, you can change your workplace culture to close the stress-connection gap. A connection culture will help you and your employees become healthier (mentally and physically) and perform better. Now that the need for greater human connection at work is becoming better known and the cost of unhealthy workplace cultures is being recognized, I’m optimistic that we can bring about positive change so that both individuals and organizations thrive going forward.

Image credit: photo by José Martín Ramírez C on Unsplash 

You May Also Enjoy: 

10 Practices to Create a Workplace That May Lengthen Your Life

Why Connection is a Matter of Life and Death

America’s #1 Health Problem is Not What You Expect

The post Protecting Your Employees (and Yourself) from the Stress-Connection Gap appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Danger in Healthcare Losing Its Very Essence: Human Connection

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.

For these reasons, we’ve been working with healthcare organizations for more than a decade to boost human connection by creating Connection Cultures.  Read more about it in articles we’ve written for Becker’s Hospital Review including “Creating a Life-Giving Connection Culture in Healthcare Organizations,” “3 Practices to Protect Your People from Toxic Stress and Burnout,” and this podcast on improving cultures in healthcare organizations that we did while speaking at The University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The post Danger in Healthcare Losing Its Very Essence: Human Connection appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

3 Steps to Improve Quality and Safety

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.

To address quality and safety issues, many “programs” adopted by organizations over the years have focused on tasks but overlook the important role that relationships play in these matters. When relationships in the workplace are disconnected, lukewarm, strained or even toxic, people don’t give their best efforts, they don’t align their behavior with the team’s goals, they don’t communicate or collaborate as well as they should, and they tend not to make the effort to be creative and innovate. These areas of sub-optimal performance sabotage quality and safety.

In general, most managers are intentional about achieving task excellence, but they fail to be intentional in achieving relationship excellence. This failure sabotages task excellence every time. When relationship excellence is present, however, everyone pulls together to make progress. This easy-to-remember model captures it: Task Excellence + Relationship Excellence = Sustainable Superior Performance.

Here are three steps to improve quality and safety by being intentional about achieving both task excellence and relationship excellence.

Step 1 – Begin With Humility

Begin the process with an attitude of humility. Improving quality and safety requires an individual and collective mindset that acknowledges the necessity of day-to-day continuous effort and realizes that losing focus is all that is required for mistakes and accidents to pop up like weeds.

It’s also important to recognize that “lone rangers” can’t do this; teams must work together to maximize quality and safety. Team members encourage one another to be diligent and help each other identify and address blind spots that might be compromising the team’s quality and safety efforts. Together, recognize that your team always needs to improve and that team effort is required to make substantial progress.

Step 2 – Track Key Metrics and Respond to Findings

Task excellence requires measuring quality and accidents, identifying gaps, seeking ideas and opinions of employees in how to close gaps, implementing the best ideas, and giving credit where credit is due.

Relying on your own intuition can result in self-deception. To measure is to be humble and realistic. Measurement is necessary to bring objectivity, although we should not idolize the resulting metrics.

When metrics are unfavorable and there is a gap from the desired number, it should trigger an investigation to understand why the gap exists and what is required to close it. Go to people on the front line closest to the activity, share the data, and sincerely ask for their ideas and opinions on how the team can close the gap. Implement the best ideas and be sure to give credit where it’s due. That simple step of acknowledging the contribution of others, especially if done publicly, will encourage future engagement.

When complex tasks are involved, checklists are necessary. The airline industry has developed checklists and it has reduced incidents of pilot error. There is a movement to use checklists in healthcare too. This also requires humility to acknowledge that we can easily forget mundane but essential steps.

Step 3 – Create a Connection Culture

Relationship excellence requires creating a “Connection Culture,” which research has shown reduces accidents by 20-48 percent.

Johns Hopkins Hospital developed a checklist for teams performing open heart surgery. One step on the checklist was for each person on the surgical team to introduce himself or herself, describe his or her role, and explain any potential complications to be on the lookout for. Research found that when surgical team members followed these steps, individuals with lower power and status on the team (typically non-physicians) were more likely to speak up if they saw problems, which helped the team perform better and achieve superior patient outcomes. These steps helped create relationship excellence and a Connection Culture among the surgical team members.

Hard data confirms the effect of connection on improving quality and safety. Gallup’s research of 49,929 work units, comprising 1.4 million employees within 192 organizations across 34 nations, found that top quartile units that self-reported being the most connected experienced 41% fewer quality defects and 48% fewer safety accidents versus units in the bottom quartile of connection metrics. Those are staggering differences in performance. Neuroscience helps explain why the degree of connection matters.

Chronic, continuous feelings of stress shift brain activity from the frontal lobes of the brain, where rational decisions are made, to the mid-brain, where rash decisions are more likely to be made. In addition, chronic stress enhances the performance of the “fight or flight” systems of the body (i.e. heart, lungs and big muscles such as thighs) but compromises these four important bodily systems: the part of the brain where short-term declarative memory is processed (i.e., the hippocampus), the digestive system, the immune system and the reproductive system. If we are stuck in stress response, then we don’t feel well, we don’t sleep well and our energy is drained over time. Eventually exhaustion sets in, which makes mistakes and accidents more likely to occur.

Team members who feel connected to each other are more likely to be protected from the corrosive effects of stress. Having supportive relationships in which individuals feel connected to one another and the work, feel valued for what they contribute and bring to the whole, and feel their voice is heard and appreciated fosters relationship excellence.

The Bottom Line

In summary, organizations that desire high levels of quality and safety must be intentional about creating a culture that achieves both task excellence and relationship excellence. If they do, sustainable superior performance is achievable.

You May Also Enjoy: 

Theory C: A New Theory of Management

How U2’s Extraordinary Team Culture Helps the Band Thrive

When Leaders Live the Vision

The post 3 Steps to Improve Quality and Safety appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

4 Steps to Improve Quality and Safety

Many industries must be highly attuned to eliminating mistakes and accidents. In healthcare, construction, aerospace/defense, airlines and automobile manufacturing, mistakes and accidents can be a matter of life and death.

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.

Many “programs” over the years have focused on tasks but overlook the important role that relationships play in achieving high levels of quality and safety. Here are four steps to improve quality and safety by being intentional about achieving both task excellence and relationship excellence.

Step 1 – Begin With Humility

Begin the process with an attitude of humility. Recognize that your team always needs to improve and that team effort is required to make substantial progress.

Improving quality and safety requires a mindset that acknowledges the necessity of day-to-day continuous effort and realizes that losing focus is all that is required for mistakes and accidents to pop up like weeds.

In addition, it’s important to recognize that lone rangers can’t do this. Teams must work together to maximize quality and safety. Team members encourage one another to be diligent and help each other see blind spots that can compromise the team’s quality and safety efforts.

Step 2 – Adopt a New Mindset

To improve quality and safety, adopt this mental model: Task Excellence + Relationship Excellence = Sustainable Superior Performance.

Most managers are intentional about achieving task excellence, but they fail to be intentional in achieving relationship excellence. This failure sabotages task excellence every time.

When relationships in the workplace are not excellent, people don’t give their best efforts, they don’t align their behavior with the team’s goals, they don’t communicate or collaborate as well as they should, and they tend not to make the effort to be creative and innovate. These areas of sub-optimal performance sabotage quality and safety. When relationship excellence is present, however, everyone pulls together to make progress.

Step 3 – Track Key Metrics and Respond to Findings

Task excellence requires measuring quality and accidents, identifying gaps, seeking ideas and opinions of employees to close gaps, implementing the best ideas, and giving credit where credit is due.

Relying on intuition can result in self-deception. To measure is to be humble and realistic. Measurement is necessary to bring objectivity, although we should not idolize the resulting metrics.

When metrics are unfavorable and there is a gap from the desired number, it should trigger an investigation to understand why the gap exists and what is required to close it. Go to people on the front line closest to the activity, share the data and ask for their ideas and opinions on how to close the gap. Implement the best ideas and give credit where its due to encourage future engagement.

When complex tasks are involved, checklists are necessary. The airline industry developed a checklist and it has reduced incidents of pilot error. There is a movement to uses checklists in healthcare too. This also requires humility to acknowledge that we can easily forget mundane but essential steps.

Step 4 – Create a Connection Culture

Relationship excellence requires creating a “Connection Culture,” which research has shown reduces accidents by 20-48 percent.

Johns Hopkins Hospital developed a checklist for teams performing open heart surgery. One step on the checklist was for each person on the surgical team to introduce himself or herself, describe his or her role, and explain any potential complications to be on the lookout for. Research found that when surgical team members followed these steps, individuals with lower power and status on the team (typically non-physicians) were more likely to speak up if they saw problems, which helped the team perform better and achieve superior patient outcomes. These steps helped create relationship excellence and a Connection Culture among the surgical team members.

Hard data confirms the effect of connection on improving quality and safety. Gallup’s research of 49,929 work units, comprising 1.4 million employees within 192 organizations across 34 nations, found that top quartile units that self-reported being the most connected experienced 41% fewer quality defects and 48% fewer safety accidents versus units in the bottom quartile of connection metrics. Those are staggering differences in performance. Neuroscience helps explain why.

Teams that feel connected to each other are more likely to be protected from the corrosive effects of stress. Chronic, continuous feelings of stress shift brain activity from the frontal lobes of the brain, where rational decisions are made, to the mid-brain, where rash decisions are more likely be made. In addition, chronic stress enhances the performance of the fight or flight systems of the body (i.e. heart, lungs and big muscles like thighs) but compromises four important bodily systems – the part of the brain (i.e. the hippocampus) where short-term memory is processed, the digestive system, the immune system and the reproductive system. If we are stuck in stress response, then we don’t feel well, don’t sleep well and our energy is drained over time. Eventually exhaustion sets in, which makes mistakes and accidents more likely to occur.

The Bottom Line

In summary, organizations that desire high levels of quality and safety must be intentional about creating a culture that achieves both task excellence and relationship excellence. If they do, sustainable superior performance is achievable.

You May Also Enjoy: 

Theory C: A New Theory of Management

How U2’s Extraordinary Team Culture Helps the Band Thrive

When Leaders Live the Vision

The post 4 Steps to Improve Quality and Safety appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Theory C: A New Theory of Management

With employee disengagement remaining at very high levels in America and 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.

As such, my colleagues and I recently submitted our paper titled “Theory C: Connection Culture as a New Theory of Management” to an award-winning leadership journal. The paper is based on ideas presented in our work, including our most recent book, Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy and Understanding at Work. In it we propose that the next step in the evolution of management theory is to develop an organizational culture that helps people feel a sense of connection, community and unity through the cultivation of universal character strengths taught with a simple, memorable and actionable 3V Leadership Model (Vision + Value + Voice = Connection). We refer to this approach as Theory C or Connection Culture Theory, as the next evolution in management theory after Theory X (directive style) and Theory Y (participating style). (If you are not familiar with Connection Culture Theory you can learn more by reading a summary in the Connection Culture Manifesto.)

NOW IS THE TIME

In 2007, we introduced Connection Culture Theory in our first book Fired Up or Burned Out. Since that time, our clients have helped us advance Connection Culture Theory by identifying many examples and best practices. We’ve also continued to follow developments in the science of connection and loneliness. This has resulted in an increasingly robust, integrated management theory.

Awareness of the importance of connection and the devastating effects of loneliness has been on the rise. Press coverage of connection and loneliness has soared. Last year there was extensive media coverage about Julianne Holt-Lunstad’s American Psychological Association presentation of her meta-analytic research review that showed actual and perceived loneliness were predictive of death and on par with smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Dr. Holt-Lunstad warned that chronic social isolation and loneliness is becoming a greater public health hazard than obesity.

More recently, the UK received a flurry of media coverage for establishing a Minister of Loneliness to help address its growing problem of chronic loneliness. Late last year Harvard Business Review published “Work and the Loneliness Epidemic,” written by Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General. In it, Dr. Murthy called on organizations to make boosting social connections a strategic priority. Last week, bestselling author Johann Hari’s book Lost Connections was published. The book makes the case that depression and anxiety are often caused by factors in one’s social environment. Lost Connections is sure to become a blockbuster.

Along with rising press coverage of loneliness, we’ve had more people from around the world encourage us that we are onto something important with Connection Culture Theory. Late last year I had a telephone conversation with Alan Mulally, the CEO who led the turnaround of the Ford Motor Company. Alan told me that he agreed with what we wrote about the culture at Ford. He also liked the “Connection > Culture > Thrive Chain” that appears in Connection Culture, which visually summarizes Connection Culture Theory. He said he was recommending Connection Culture to leaders he was mentoring.

Recently I spoke with the data scientist Veronica Smith, founder of data2insight. She shared with me how after years of working in organizations with cultures that were indifferent to the humanity of people she decided to create the type of culture she wanted to work in by starting her own company. Now, new employees of data2insight receive a copy of Connection Culture.  They also read our articles and discuss them in team meetings to help them stay connected as a team and avoid drifting toward indifference.

If you’ve been following our work you know that Costco purchased copies of Connection Culture for its warehouse managers worldwide and last August I spoke at Costco’s Annual Managers Meeting in Seattle. Costco was named America’s best employer last year in a Forbes/Statista research study of 30,000 employees. While I was in Seattle, I heard a senior leader at Costco tell the audience of managers that “connection is at the heart of our culture at Costco.” To further strengthen connection, Costco is encouraging its warehouse managers worldwide to train aspiring supervisors by teaching them how to create connection cultures.

Finally, Jay Morris, Vice President of Education and Executive Director for the Center for Excellence at Yale New Haven Health, encouraged me to claim “Theory C.” He explained connection is much needed today because progress that was made in valuing relationships in the workplace with the influence of National Training Laboratories (NTL) during the second half of the 20th century was diminished in the late 1980s with the reengineering craze. He said the 3V Leadership Model was a natural step into this space and concluded his advice with these words: “If not you, then who?”

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Please consider joining us in raising awareness of Theory C (Connection Culture). If you’ve read Connection Cultureand like it, we would greatly appreciate it if you would post a review on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Goodreds.com. Purchase copies for your family members and colleagues who would benefit from reading it so that they can more clearly understand what a healthy workplace culture looks like and actions they can take to improve the culture they work in. To purchase signed copies of Connection Culture, email me at mike@connectionculture.com.

Trainers/coaches can help by emailing me to let me know you are interested in becoming a certified Connection Culture Trainer/Coach when we launch that program later this year.

If you work in an organization, recommend bringing us in to teach a Connection Culture Seminar and Interactive Workshop. Contact me for information on what we offer.

We hope you will join us in growing the number of Connection Cultures to help individuals and organizations thrive.

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The post Theory C: A New Theory of Management appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Three Tips for Leading Your Team Into a New Year

As the current year draws to a close, now is the time to establish your plan to begin the new year on a strong note. Here are three tips for leading your team into a new year of goals.

STEP 1: REFOCUS

Review progress toward current year goals and define the top five priorities you want your team to accomplish in the coming year.

Why five priorities? Going beyond five annual priorities diminishes focus and jeopardizes effective execution by tending to overwhelm those responsible for implementation. In fact, neuroscientists have discovered that when people feel overwhelmed, brain function shifts from the frontal lobes of the brain, where rational decisions are made, to the mid-brain region, where rash decisions are more likely.

Here is an outstanding example from Chief of U.S. Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Vern Clark’s Top 5 priorities in 2003. Beneath each priority, the document details what the U.S. Navy accomplished. Consider using this format and color-coding the actions under each priority with green for already completed, yellow for on track and red for at risk as you execute the plan throughout the year.

STEP 2: RECONNECT

Get your team together to review the Top 5 priorities document created in Step 1. Present the document, explain your rationale, then ask your team to share what’s right, wrong, missing or confusing about your thinking. Don’t challenge people. Just listen to and thank each person who contributes to the conversation. Capture what they share in writing.

Take time to reflect on the feedback and circle back to individuals if you need further clarification. Decide on adjustments then pull your team together to present your finalized Top 5 priorities document.

STEP 3: REENERGIZE

It helps people to have clarity about their specific responsibilities. Once you’ve finalized your Top 5 priorities document, work with your team to brainstorm W4s for each item under the priorities. W4’s stand for: 1) What needs to be done; 2) Who is responsible; 3) When it has to be completed by; and 4) Who needs to know about it. By doing this, your team members will feel a greater sense of control and ownership in your team priorities and know their role in what remains to be done.

Throughout the planning meetings, be sure to give everyone on your team a voice in the conversation and show you value them by being approachable, friendly and helpful because doing so will help energize your team. If some participants are not speaking up, ask them to share their opinions and ideas and assure them that everyone’s ideas are necessary to get the best thinking.

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The post Three Tips for Leading Your Team Into a New Year appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.