The Art of Connection. Michael J. Gelb
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on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions, important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.
Beyond the obvious intrinsic value of the process of aligning with this center of strength, our commitment to the process of growth and change, as May suggests, has a powerful effect on others. Business guru Peter Drucker observed that in the workplace a leader “who works on his own development sets an almost irresistible example.”
The example you set and the influence you have by working on your own development and reflecting on questions pertaining to your self-knowledge may be even more important in parenting and partnership than they are professionally.
Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) quipped, “Only the shallow know themselves.” He’s right. Genuine self-knowledge isn’t a static state, but rather a continuous quest, a never-ending journey.
The Seven Relationship-Building Skills
I thought we were going to be together forever. Then right out of the blue she sends me a “John Deere” letter…something about me not listening enough. I don’t know…I wasn’t really paying attention.
— From the film DUMB AND DUMBER
Positive relationships are fundamental to leadership and business success. But as Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence observes: “Western business people often don’t get the importance of establishing human relationships.”
Although individuals from many other cultures put relationships first, in the United States there’s still a tendency to focus more on the transaction than the connection. In many professions we are initiated into the use of various kinds of jargon, codes, and insider acronyms without necessarily learning how to genuinely connect with others. Whatever the field — information technology, biochemistry, engineering, psychology — there’s an increasing tendency for people to speak in a language understood only by their immediate professional tribe. A partner from a Washington, DC, law firm once told me his wife complained that he always spoke to her like a lawyer. When I asked him how he responded, he replied, “I requested that she present the evidence behind that assertion.”
In a recent seminar for a New York–based construction management company, we were exploring the role of the art of connection in the functioning of the company’s safety effort, in marketing its services, and in its ability to manage huge construction projects — coordinating the efforts of carpenters, electricians, and architects in the midst of other workers pouring concrete and operating giant cranes in the crowded Manhattan landscape. As the seminar participants contemplated the key to success in all these endeavors, it became clear that the quality of communication was the most important element in their work. One of the participants experienced this as an epiphany. He exclaimed, “Oh my God. I get it! We’re not in the construction business — we’re in the relationship business.”
We are all in the relationship business! Now, leaders who cultivate the art of connection will have an increasingly powerful advantage over those who don’t.
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
— ST. AUGUSTINE (354–430), author of The City of God
Even before the advent of the internet, “communication” was the number-one problem identified in surveys of organizational challenges. It’s usually at the top of most lists of personal challenges as well. Let’s begin with a simple exercise that illuminates the problem.
Word-Association Exercise
Please get a piece of blank paper and a pen or use your computer or digital device to make a list numbered 1 to 10. In a moment you’ll get a word to write at the top of the list.
As soon as you’ve written that word, please write the first ten words you think of related to the word at the top. Put down your first ten associations with that top word as quickly as you can, without judging or editing. In a word-association exercise there are no wrong answers.
Ready? The word is: art.
After you complete your ten word associations, consider the associations that might have been written for the same word by one of your peers, your spouse, your best friend, or your boss. How many words would you have in common with that person? Most people are surprised to discover the differences that appear when they compare their results with others’. It’s rare for a group to have much in common at all.
In one group, for example, Jane’s first word was Warhol, the name of her favorite visual artist. Jim’s first association was Garfunkel, a singer whose first name is Art. Dinah wrote martial, as she had just begun studying martial arts, while Roger, an aspiring poet, wrote heart and nine other rhyming words. The group was surprised to discover just how different their associations were.
When a group of accountants did this exercise with similar results, they became very upset. They prided themselves on their uniformity and felt that the diversity of their responses to the word mocked their standardized procedures. In their words, “We’re not artists; we’re accountants.” They insisted that they be given a word that had something to do with their work and that they would then produce greater commonality. When they were given the word money, however, they had even less in common.
Occasionally, people do get one or two words in common, but when you explore the results further and ask them to associate ten words with the shared word, you find that they usually meant something different by the common word after all.
The Paradox Every Leader Needs to Understand
Our associations are unique. Even if we belong to a group classified in some way — accountants, artists, teachers, carpenters, secretaries, doctors, lawyers, or Cajun chefs — each of us is an individual. Each of us, as a result of heredity combined with individual experience, construes the world in our own unique way. We each are gifted with a special ability to experience and express the wonder of being alive. There is no one else like you, no one who can think and create exactly as you do.
This diversity is an important expression of the evolutionary process that helps ensure the survival of the species. Given any type of adverse circumstance that may befall humanity, there is probably someone with the special ability to overcome the challenge.
According to the Population Research Bureau (PRB), approximately 108 billion humans have populated the planet since the advent of the species. Each person who has come and gone was unique, and each of the 7.5 billion people alive today is unique. There’s no one like you in all of human history. The combination of your genetic endowment and the way that genetic material is influenced by your life experience results in a one-of-a-kind phenomenon.
And yet, in so many ways, we are all the same. Our basic human needs — for air, food, shelter, security, esteem, love, and so on — are universal. Everyone, everywhere, in every culture wants respect. Leadership is the art of skillfully meeting universal human needs, including the need to be appreciated for being unique and the need for a sense of belongingness and connection.
UNIQUENESS AND BELONGINGNESS
Jeanine Prime and Elizabeth Salib, of the Catalyst Research Center for Advancing Leader Effectiveness, highlight an important paradox: “Our research was also able to isolate the combination of two separate, underlying sentiments that make employees feel included: uniqueness and belongingness. Employees feel unique when they are recognized for the distinct talents and skills they bring to their teams; they feel they belong