The Art of Connection. Michael J. Gelb
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as you watch people go about their everyday activities, how much of their self-talk, or internal conversation, is on automatic pilot?
3. What percentage of people’s values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations (VABEs) do you think is habitual? In other words, how aware are people of the deeper motivations underlying their behaviors and accompanying internal dialogue?
Jim Clawson begins our seminar at the Darden Graduate School of Business by posing these three questions to our group of executives. Jim and I have taught this “Leading Innovation” program together for more than ten years, and each time these questions stimulate lively conversation. In every class the somewhat surprising consensus is that most people are functioning on automatic pilot most of the time. The last class agreed that at least 80 percent of visible behavior and 80 percent of internal dialogue were proceeding unconsciously and that a whopping 98 percent of people’s deeper motivations was playing out below the surface of their consciousness.
In the industrial age many organizations were influenced by behaviorism, a school of psychology based on the idea that all that matters is what can be observed and measured. Behaviorists aim to reinforce behaviors deemed desirable through reward, or “positive reinforcement,” and discourage those deemed undesirable through punishment, or “negative reinforcement.” Clawson refers to the attempt to manipulate visible behavior as Level One, and his research over decades shows that it usually doesn’t work very well. Rather than causing people to buy into a change or innovation, the carrot-and-stick approach may compel short-term compliance, but frequently results in either active or passive resistance.
Level Two is the realm of appealing to people’s internal dialogue through reason, data, and argument. When the CEO cited earlier gave his webcast announcing the force reduction, he offered a carefully considered, well-reasoned case for its necessity. Many large corporations operate on this level, and what they get, according to Clawson’s research, is either apathy, compliance, or at best agreement.
At Level Three the appeal is to people’s deeper motivations and sense of higher purpose. Level Three leadership is the art of connecting with others to liberate creative energy by aligning values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations (VABEs). Like a good therapist, a Level Three leader needs to understand and be able to communicate about VABEs. Clawson’s research demonstrates that aligned VABEs are the drivers of sustainable world-class performance. Great organizations are characterized by a sense of engagement, and even passion, that stems from the energy unleashed when people care deeply about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
In the contemporary world of work the best people are more aware of their options and much more motivated by a sense of meaning, purpose, and connectedness than in any previous generation. Level Three leaders, those who are capable of building relationships by connecting with people “beneath the surface,” are increasingly valuable to organizations who want to attract and keep high performers.
You don’t become a psychotherapist without going through therapy yourself, and you don’t become a Level Three leader without conscious consideration of your own VABEs. Most people are relatively unaware and avoid considering their values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations until they’re forced to by illness, death of a loved one, divorce, or some other trauma.
Don’t wait! History’s greatest leaders have always operated from Level Three. Now you can too.
The Soul Impetus
In the 1970s managers were managers. In the 1980s managers were asked to learn how to be leaders, something that has become more important every decade since. In the first decade of the new millennium, managers were also asked to develop the skill of coaches. Now if you work in any kind of organization, in addition to knowing how to be a coach, it really helps if you can think and speak like a psychotherapist. The same thing is true for parents and spouses.
I first learned how to speak like a therapist from my mom, Joan, who worked for years at the Passaic County Mental Health Clinic. After raising me, her work treating sociopaths, addicts, and murderers seemed easy. Joan has a special gift for connecting with people, which served her well at home and in her work. She recounts:
One of my regular patients, Anita, was only twenty-four years old, but she weighed more than three hundred pounds and was on ten years’ probation for threatening to blow up the post office (a federal offense). She had a long history of assaultive behavior. I saw her once a week for about three years, and we built a solid relationship.
One day she came in highly agitated and couldn’t say what had upset her. All of a sudden, she jumped up and shouted, “Joan, get out of the room fast! I’m going to tear this office apart. Get out NOW!” I did, and it was a good thing, as she trashed the office completely before being dragged away by the police. I was touched by the way she communicated her trust in me. She knew that I cared for her, and in the midst of acting out her rage she remembered our connection. (Incidentally, I was using another office that day while mine was being painted!)
My dad, Sandy, retired from his oral surgery practice almost twenty years ago, but people still remember him fondly. The reason is that, besides being a superb and dedicated technician, he cared about his patients. Without ever being a “touchy-feely” type, he calmed the fears of patients facing extractions of impacted wisdom teeth or reconstructive surgery. Sandy understood that his reassuring words and calming presence helped to generate more successful outcomes in the surgeries he performed. As he explains: “It wasn’t part of my formal training, but it was pretty obvious that most people who come into a dentist’s office are terrified. Somehow I always knew that if I could get them to relax a bit, if we made a human connection, then everything would work better.”
Affectionately known to their friends as “Mental and Dental,” Joan and Sandy recently celebrated their sixty-sixth wedding anniversary. Despite their gifts in the art of connection, things weren’t always easy between them. But, unlike many of their friends who separated when things got difficult, they worked through their challenges. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my parents’ example gave me a sense that growth and change were possible.
My passion for growth and change led me to study psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, because it was the place where Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung first visited when they came to the United States and it was renowned for an excellent psychology department. Upon graduation I contemplated a career as a psychotherapist, but in those days doctoral programs in clinical psychology focused exclusively on pathology, and I was interested in what we now call “positive psychology.” The field of positive psychology didn’t exist yet, so I blazed my own trail.
Thanks to the creative support of Goddard College, I was able to design my own master’s degree program in Psycho-Physical Re-education while training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique in London. My thesis became my first book, and that’s how I became an author. In 1979 I was invited to present on a five-day leadership retreat in Switzerland for senior executives of a global computer company. I made a great connection with the Human Resources VP and was asked to colead this program for many other groups around the world. These early experiences provided a great opportunity to learn about bringing people together, but my deeper understanding of human relationships has emerged from the humbling lessons I learned from a difficult divorce and from more than twenty years’ work with a wonderfully wise psychotherapist. This deep inner work helped me become more attuned to myself and, in the process, more attuned to my clients. Learning to be fully present with clients allowed me to cultivate positive connections that, in some cases, have lasted for decades. All this provides the soul impetus behind this book.
Although there’s always more work to do and lessons to learn, my life is rich with beautiful, joyful relationships. I have an abundance of loving friends, a marvelous network of clients who have become friends, a great relationship with my mom and dad, and, best of all, a fulfilling, happy marriage. The perspectives and insights in these pages are those that I apply on a daily basis to make the most of all my relationships.
Professionally, my primary emphasis has been on teaching people the mindset and skills of creative thinking. It’s relatively easy to teach people how to generate new ideas. The hard part is getting support for