Introduction to the Second Edition

My interest in workplace culture sprang from a desire to understand what was going on in my own work life and to discern what I should do as a leader to establish and maintain an environment in which the people I led could consistently do their best work. I took a break from working on Wall Street so I could focus on studying and addressing the widespread problem of employee disengagement and workplace burnout. Gathering and assimilating research and the perspectives of academics and experts, and conducting research on people in the trenches of modern organizational life led me to write and speak about what I discovered, and eventually to found a company to bring these insights to organizations.

Now, almost 20 years later, my colleagues and I have had the privilege of sharing our work with groups ranging in size from a medical software start-up of fewer than 20 employees to every Costco warehouse manager worldwide. Early on we worked with the engineering section of the NASA Johnson Space Center. More recently, we’ve spoken to leaders at the U.S. Air Force, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Yale New Haven Health. In education, we’ve worked with Utah’s largest public school district and have an ongoing relationship with Texas Christian University (TCU), which established the TCU Center for Connection Culture. Other clients have been centered in the technology, construction, and finance industries.

What I’ve learned about connection applies beyond the realm of our work lives. The principles are relevant for individuals, families, community groups, sports teams, and even nations. Knowing that a connection deficit negatively affects our own health and well-being, the health of organizations, and the health of society, I’ve become concerned observing how the pace and stress of life threaten to squeeze out time for supportive, lifegiving relationships and endeavors. The United States and countries around the world are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. In recent years, the news has been full of reports of incivility and active shooter incidents. There has been a rise in suicide rates, even in those as young as elementary school age. As I update this introduction, protests are taking place across the United States calling out systemic racism. It is a time of entering into honest, open, and productive dialogue that is very necessary if we are to be a country that values the dignity and inherent value of each individual. In all of these social issues, we must go beyond just talking and take action to make lasting change. I believe we can collectively turn the tide if we are willing to be intentional about connection.

New Research, Case Studies, and Connection Practices

This updated and expanded edition of Connection Culture builds on our understanding since the first edition was published in 2015 and since our book that introduced connection culture, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity, and Productivity, was published in 2007. For instance, recent research has found that:

You’ll find new practices that boost connection and a five-step process to operationalize connection culture. You’ll learn about common obstacles that get in the way of cultivating a connection culture and how to overcome them. This edition also broadens the diversity of leaders and types of groups highlighted, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and the team that developed the award-winning Broadway musical Hamilton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors basketball team, the Mayo Clinic, Oprah Winfrey, and Tricia Griffith of Progressive Insurance. We’ve also added features that encourage you to pause and reflect on your own experience and how the material applies to your life and work environment.

In chapters 1 and 2 you will learn about the three cultures of connection, control, and indifference, and why a culture of connection helps individuals and organizations thrive.

In chapter 3 you will learn the Vision + Value + Voice model that is essential to create and sustain a connection culture.

At the close of parts I and II, you’ll find a section we call Profiles in Connection. Here you’ll read about leaders and groups that dramatically differ in the nature of the tasks they perform yet share commonalities in their social cultures. Perhaps you’ll spot some best practices of connection in action that you can implement.

Chapters 4 and 5 will arm you with interesting and relevant research supporting the case for connection from a wide variety of fields, including psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and organizational behavior. You will also see how a lack of connection affects wellness, well-being, and longevity, and how connection provides six specific benefits to teams and organizations that add up to a powerful performance and competitive advantage.

Chapters 6 and 7 will equip you with a process to operationalize connection culture, including specific, practical, and actionable ways to boost connection in your group’s culture.

The Perfect Storm: Stress, Loneliness, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

As the editing process for this second edition of Connection Culture neared completion, a novel coronavirus that causes the illness COVID-19 emerged in the city of Wuhan in China. As the highly transmissible virus began to spread worldwide in the early months of 2020, life as we had known it abruptly changed. On July 16, 2020, as I revise this introduction one final time, the statistics are sobering. To date, the virus has been found in nearly every country in the world, 13.7 million positive cases of COVID-19 have been publicly reported, and 588,023 individuals have died. In the United States alone, at least 138,255 people have died (New York Times 2020a, 2020b). The numbers continue to rise. Thankfully, the majority of people who contract COVID-19 are able to recover.

Because there wasn’t (and as of this writing still isn’t) a vaccine to protect people from contracting the virus, public health and government officials began to focus on strategies to slow the spread of transmission and “flatten the curve” so as not to overwhelm health systems. Many different strategies were used, including “social distancing,” wearing face masks while in public, and quarantining at home (which could be voluntary or mandated by law, depending on where you lived). The social distancing strategy called for people to maintain a physical distance of at least six feet in an effort to reduce the risk of disease transmission. Additionally, many local governments put restrictions on the number of people who could be together at one time, which meant that people could no longer gather as they would have for weddings, funerals, worship services, or birthday parties. Because of social distancing restrictions, public spaces were closed, and conventions, vacations, and live performances were canceled or moved into the virtual space. In addition, school buildings and college campuses closed, and education moved to being delivered through distance learning. School plays, spring sports, and the prom were canceled, and students couldn’t walk across the podium to receive their diplomas in a graduation ceremony.

Office workers became remote workers, doing their jobs from home. Other employees were furloughed or let go as organizations were forced to adapt to a sudden drop in activity. The millions of people who rely on income from gig work or having a side hustle were especially hit hard. According to an article in the New York Times on May 8, “The Labor Department said the economy shed more than 20.5 million jobs in April, sending the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent as the coronavirus pandemic took a devastating toll” (Schwartz et al. 2020). This was the highest U.S. unemployment rate since the Great Depression.

Alongside the feelings of loss and disappointment were feelings of fear and anxiety. Many worried that they or a loved one would contract COVID-19, they would lose their job due to the economic recession, they would be financially vulnerable due to the declining value of their savings, or that they would be unable to pay their bills.

Individuals worldwide were already struggling with high levels of stress and loneliness before the pandemic arrived. The physical distancing required to reduce virus transmission only add to our social isolation, contributing to a perfect storm of factors that increase physical and emotional health problems. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll of American adults conducted a few months after the COVID-19 outbreak began found the mental health of nearly half (45 percent) of respondents was negatively affected due to worry and stress over the virus (Kirzinger et al. 2020).

To help individuals and organizations, Katharine Stallard and I wrote “Connection Is Critical During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” which was published in a number of media outlets in late March. In that article, we shared key points about connection: Social connection makes us smarter, happier, and more productive; makes us more resilient to cope with stress; and appears to improve cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune system performance, which may provide physical and emotional resources to fight the virus. We observed that the convergence of factors—high stress, the current loneliness epidemic, and increased social isolation from the COVID-19 pandemic—made boosting connection an even more urgent matter. Acknowledging that the need for physical distancing makes it more difficult to connect in conventional ways, we recommended a number of practices to boost human connection under these conditions.

How long increased social isolation from COVID-19 will last is difficult to tell. It likely won’t end until a vaccine is developed, which may take one or more years. And once that happens, what will the lingering effects of having faced this traumatic event be? In the years immediately following the Spanish Flu, a particularly deadly pandemic that swept the globe in 1918–1919, there continued to be a fear of social connection when having done so in the midst of the prolonged crisis proved fatal for more than 600,000 individuals in the United States alone (Kenner 2018).

And how will the way we work change? For one, I expect to see a larger percentage of individuals working remotely, no longer benefiting from social connection in a shared workplace. In addition, many social distancing practices—such as wearing masks, plexiglass sneeze shields, and workstations that are more physically spread out—will likely continue, which will make connection in the workplace more challenging.

Going Forward, Together

Despite these concerns, I’m optimistic that the COVID-19 pandemic will bring about the post-traumatic growth that often comes after people experience times of adversity. This growth could come in the form of a renewed appreciation for human connection. If I’m right, we could see the emergence of a new anthropomorphic age that ushers in greater creativity, productivity, and well-being as the trials we face lead to greater human connection and a renaissance of the human spirit.

Getting through the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the loss of human life will require unprecedented levels of connection. Not only will connection be necessary to protect people until a vaccine is developed, it will also fuel the collaboration and creativity needed to crack the code and identify that vaccine. This became clear to me after I read a New Yorker article by Dr. Atul Gawande (2020), the noted surgeon and author. Gawande’s hospital system, Mass General Brigham, was able to keep COVID-19 cases at a minimum among its 75,000 employees despite being in Boston, which was a hot spot for the disease. In the article he observed that in addition to his hospital’s four pillar combination strategy—hygiene, distancing, screening, and masks—it was a fifth element, culture, that moved people who knew what to do, to actually do it.

Now more than ever, it is an essential time in history to cultivate cultures of connection. I hope you will join me by taking action to increase connection in your home, your workplace, and your community. As you will learn through reading this book, our future depends on it.

Michael Lee Stallard

July 2020