I recently came across this unattributed quote, which made me think about the exploding interest in Neuroscience:

"...an intelligent person knows a tomato is a fruit, but an experienced person knows not to put it in a fruit salad!"

The connection may not be obvious. Let me explain.

I’ve never met Monica Lewinsky. But I’ve heard of her. You probably have too. And like me, based on a few pieces of information, you probably built a picture. And it was probably inaccurate at best, and may even have stretched to hurtful or mean. I don’t know. All this, yet we have never met her, talked to her, heard about her hopes and dreams … tried to understand her.

When considering Executive Well-being, one of the most potent and arguably the easiest levers to pull for a massive positive performance impact is the ‘sleep’ lever.

I recently attended a talk by the wonderful and generous Jane Dutton about High Quality Connections (‘HQCs’). A scholar from the University of Michigan, Jane explained that these HQCs are important to individuals, teams and organisations: her research has shown that they increase our capacity to think and create, increase our physiological health, boost our capacity to adapt and be resilient and there is accumulating evidence of a full shopping list of individual payoffs like increased self-image, co-operation and engagement. This is pretty useful in today’s potentially stressful workplace.

As mentioned in a previous blog, Jane Dutton from the University of Michigan has developed 4 specific pathways to building High Quality Connections (‘HQCs’). If adopted on an organizational level, they can transform culture and performance – as well as the well-being of all those involved. Now that’s got to be worth considering!

Continuing the exploration of Jane Dutton’s 4 Pathways to High Quality Connections, this note takes a look at Respectful Engagement. This pathway is all about communicating worth and value in an organization; sending a message through personal connection that shows compassion and empathy. Some strategies to use are: being present and reserving judgment, effective listening, communicating affirmation and actively showing support.

Pareto’s famous principle was based on the fact that, in Italy, 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people. His 80/20 rule gets used in many different ways.

Take the Porsche 911 Carrera and the Subaru BRZ.

The BRZ has nearly 80% of the performance of the Porsche for about 20% of the price. The thing is, unless you’re Lewis Hamilton you probably can’t use all that extra performance.

“Our engagement scores are low [read “appalling”].
Our quarterly results are suffering.
We need you to come in and get people engaged.”

… says the MD.

So, we do what we do best.

In the push for AI, machine learning, and all that progressive jazz, business still needs and will continue to need, people. Flesh + bone, thinking + feeling. People. For the stuff that AI wont be doing – the collaboration, connection, relationship, energy, creativity that comes from engaged human hearts and minds. After all, organisations are typically serving other humans.

Or it is a way of being?

Through the influences we are exposed to, the conversation we have in our head (what we tell ourselves) and the filters we have developed over our life (our attitudes, beliefs + values, to name a few) we create our very own ‘map of the world’. Our version of what is going on. Some people create a map of ‘busy’.

Is this you?

At 46, I was lucky (some said ‘stupid’) enough to try on women’s AFL. A friend convinced me to just ‘give it a go’. I rocked up to the first training session. I felt I should at least go to the second. I had a strong urge to give the third a go. I really wanted to get to the fourth (albeit against all logistical hope), and I did. Then, I was there each week, sometimes twice. Sometimes I missed a friend’s birthday dinner to get there (sorry folks).

Need I even set the scene? Everyone’s in it. We can’t go 5 minutes without talking about it. Everyone’s feeling it, to some degree. COVID-19 is working its way across and around the world. While it was predicted (check out Bill Gates TED talk, 2015), we weren’t ready. Arguably we’re still not ready.