The Art of Connection. Michael J. Gelb
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from the first letters of a series of words and can be useful when utilized thoughtfully. They can make it easier for us to remember and serve as a password or bonding code for people who know what the letters represent. They work best when the new word created from the first letters relates to what the letters represent. For example, in Chapter 5 you’ll discover that it’s much easier to remember the principles for giving and receiving praise when you use the acronym PRAISE. You’ll discover a liberal use of original acronyms throughout the book designed to make the material easier for you to remember and apply.
Invitation to Connect
Let’s connect! I’m dedicated to helping you deepen your relationships, enrich your life, and grow as a leader. One of the skills you’ll read about is how to make the exchange of feedback a natural part of your relationships. So let’s make it part of ours! Please write to me directly with your feedback and follow-up questions. Twitter @MichaelJGelb or [email protected].
Overview
Here’s a brief note on the focus of each chapter.
INTRODUCTION: Why The Art of Connection is the secret to health, happiness, longevity, and leadership.
1. EMBRACE HUMILITY: Why humility is the source of genuine strength and confidence, and how to cultivate it. How humility allows you to connect more effectively with self and others.
2. BE A GLOWWORM: How emotions are contagious, and the specific strategies to catch and spread the energy that brings out the best in yourself and others.
3. ACHIEVE THE THREE LIBERATIONS: Three simple but profound ways to shift out of the unconscious patterns that interfere with your ability to connect with yourself and others.
4. TRANSCEND FIXATIONS: How to move beyond the habits that limit your freedom to connect and respond, intelligently and effectively, to different types of people.
5. BALANCE ENERGY EXCHANGE: Simple, practical methods to monitor the balance of energy in relationships and adjust it when necessary.
6. BE A RARE LISTENER: Why real listening is so rare, and what you can do to improve, now! This is the chapter that everyone you know is waiting for you to read and apply, so that you will become a truly great listener.
7. TURN FRICTION INTO MOMENTUM: Three perspectives that will transform your approach to conflict, and the two most important skills for finding creative solutions to relationship challenges.
The Secret of Health, Happiness, and Leadership
A leader isn’t good because they are right; they are good because they listen and build trust.
— GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL, Commander, Joint Special Operations Command and U.S. Forces Afghanistan (retired)
In April 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized an attempt to rescue the fifty-three Americans held hostage by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The Atlantic magazine describes the result: “Everything went wrong.…America’s elite rescue force lost eight men, seven helicopters, and a C-130, and had not even made contact with the enemy. It was a debacle. It defined the word ‘debacle.’”
The elite Delta Force that crashed and burned in the Iranian desert was hampered by the requirement that it check with Washington before making field decisions. Its command structure was rigidly hierarchical, and its leader was frequently described as capricious, arrogant, and egotistical.
In the intensive soul searching that followed, progressive elements within the U.S. military began rethinking the traditional approach to command and control and eventually developed a new operational philosophy. General Stanley McChrystal, among whose other accomplishments was the successful hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is one of the leading proponents of this new way of thinking. McChrystal and his colleagues realized that to meet “the unrelenting demand for continual adaptability” they had to “unlearn” a great deal of what they thought they knew “about how war — and the world — worked.”
They realized that the trust and alignment that characterized small operational units must be scaled up throughout the organization. They discovered that for this to happen, open, clear, and timely communication was essential. Moreover, they realized that each unit must have a deep understanding of the mission and challenges of the other units. Open, clear, and timely communication combined with empathy results in what the general calls “shared consciousness.”
As the commander of a global force distributed around the world, a force made up of men and women from diverse backgrounds and largely dependent on the use of electronic communication technology, McChrystal emphasizes his most significant realization: “I learned that personal relationships are more important than ever.”
Connection Is What It’s All About
Brené Brown holds a PhD in social work and is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She’s a general on a different type of battlefield than McChrystal. Brown deals with humanity’s inner conflicts. She explores the treacherous terrain of shame and the inner terrorism of self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness.
In her TED talk viewed by more than five million, she emphasizes the fundamental importance of the art of connection: “By the time you’re a social worker for ten years…what you realize is that connection…gives purpose and meaning to our lives. This is what it’s all about.”
The art of connection is the key to success for soldiers and social workers, and for you. The latest research makes it clear that it’s also the secret of personal happiness, health, and longevity.
Psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School Robert J. Waldinger is the current director of the Laboratory of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he oversees the world’s longest-running study of happiness. For more than seventy-seven years the lab has followed a group of 724 men, measuring the factors that most influence their mental and physical health.
Waldinger and his three predecessors all found that most younger men believe that money, power, achievement, and fame are the keys to success and happiness. That’s certainly the impression one gets from contemporary media, advertising, video games, and reality television. But the results of the study are undeniably clear: the most important factor in a happy and healthy life is a positive sense of connection with others.
As Waldinger concludes: “The good life is built with good relationships.”
His conclusions are supported and extended by many other studies. The sense of positive social connectedness yields many research-validated benefits. It:
• strengthens immune function and reduces inflammation.
• prevents dementia, diabetes, and many other ailments.
• promotes longevity.
Emma Seppälä, science director at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and the author of The Happiness Track explains, “Social connection improves physical health and mental and emotional well-being.” She adds: “People who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression. Moreover, studies show they also have higher self-esteem, greater empathy for others, are more trusting and cooperative, and, as a consequence, others are more open to trusting and cooperating with them. In other words, social connectedness generates a positive feedback loop of social, emotional, and physical well-being.”
As Seppälä suggests, positive social connectedness spreads happiness, and empathy and compassion seem to generate more of the same. When the Dalai Lama says, “My religion