The first time I vividly remember thinking about the impact of connection was May 29, 1999. As a Nigerian, I was seated on my family couch in Eric Moore Towers, Surulere, Lagos, deeply captivated by the television screen. I imagine millions of other Nigerians were as well. We were about to transition into civilian rule for the first time since I was born.

That's right. I was born into a dictatorship and the regimes I witnessed were oppressive, to say the least. One of my earliest memories was when I was three years old. I heard many cries and groans of disappointment from people outside my family's compound because our recently held democratic election results had been annulled. Moshood Abiola, the man who was democratically elected by most Nigerians at the time, was denied victory; the uproar it sparked was so great that it led to another coup. We watched as another dictator took his throne on Aso Rock, which, for those wondering, is our equivalent of the White House.

Everything I had witnessed up until May 29, 1999 was what many would classify as classic authoritarianism: muzzling of the press, suppression of opponents, and countless human rights violations. In addition, many of Nigeria's 250-plus ethnic groups were vying for ethnic domination because they had been ingeniously excluded from positions of national leadership. Let's call this the gift of colonialism (more about colonialism is in the glossary).

All this led me to wonder what it was like to be seen, heard, and understood for who I really was.

So as I sat there in the living room watching as General Abdulsalami Abubakar handed over power to Olusegun Obasanjo (a former military ruler himself), I wondered what type of leader it would take to bring a bunch of people who held different values and saw the world differently together.

I wondered how he would get people to connect.

Little did I know that my adventure was about to start: about a year after that inauguration, my dad's job as a diplomat began to take us all over the world.

My first stop was Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Here, I found myself as this skinny Nigerian kid with a thick Nigerian accent in a French-speaking country in an American school going through … puberty!

Yup!

Even in a place where everybody felt different, I felt different.

I sometimes felt like a fish out of water in Nigeria, but multiply that feeling by a hundred and you might understand what it felt like for me to search for my voice in my new environment.

I mean, this was the first time I remember seeing white people outside of my television screen.

I had previously lived in Sweden during the dictatorship years, but I was a baby, so I don't remember anything from that experience. So, yes, for all intents and purposes, this was my first time seeing people with different skin tones outside of my television screen.

I looked around for ways to connect.

My default for doing that had always been sports, and back then, the only sport I played was soccer. However, I saw that most people played basketball, so I did what any 10- or 11-year-old would do when he/she wants to learn a new sport.

I went to the library!

Yup, I checked out all the books I could find on basketball. I found out that there were two doctors in basketball: Dr. Naismith, who invented basketball, and Dr. J, who played for the Sixers. I checked out the latest Sports Illustrated for Kids magazines to familiarize myself with the current basketball players.

Once I felt like I knew everything there was to know about the sport, I decided I needed to know how to apply what I had learned, so I went to the best basketball player I knew, Michael Albright, and asked him nervously if he could help. I was like, “Uhh, Michael. I know everything about the game, but can you teach me how to actually play it?” Thankfully, he said yes, and our 1-on-1s became 2-on-2s, then 3-on-3s, then 4-on-4s, and then 5-on-5s.

All of a sudden, it didn't matter where we all came from. I had a Taiwanese teammate, an American teammate, an Ivorian teammate, a Dutch teammate, and a Cameroonian teammate, and we had a common goal—which was to win.

A common goal. That was my first clue.

Establishing mutual purpose is key when you want to connect across cultures, which we'll talk about later, but on that court, what we were learning to do was how to leverage our differences to work together.

That one experience opened my eyes to the possibility of what a world could look like if we connected across differences. It also led me down this quest of exploring different environments to find the best ways to forge these connections and build bridges.

I did all this not only because of my background as someone who was now going to be a minority everywhere he went, but also because I firmly believe that learning how to connect across cultures is how all of us can change the world.

If we look around us today, we can see that, thanks to the Internet, migration patterns and new markets keep popping up and we are experiencing a whole new world. The intersections of markets, customers, ideas, religions, and world views are shifting and influencing our priorities today and will continue to influence them tomorrow.

Essentially, leaders of today and tomorrow must know how to succeed with all these differences. The world is changing, and instead of resisting that reality, we must seek to understand it so that we can leverage our differences the right way.

There isn't a country that is solely comprised of natives anymore. Due to mass migration, millions of people move for various reasons: they move for better opportunities, education, jobs, and much more. Another thing you'll notice is that the Internet has created a system where at any given time, people are able to connect across the globe. Due to this globalization, individuals and businesses need to build their cultural competency levels in order to understand and leverage their differences. The world is much more complex than it has ever been and with that comes inevitable interactions among all sorts of cultures. The fact of the matter is that globalization is here and not going away. Yet a lot of the world hasn't caught up. Global leadership is more important than it has ever been before. In short, we live in a diverse world. You cannot lead, motivate, and inspire the people around you if you're not able to create inclusive environments that allow each of them to feel comfortable enough to be themselves.

The journey I have taken for the past 18 years has led me to the answer to a question that I have been curious about for most of my life, which is, how does one connect effectively across cultures?

The type of people who know how to connect effectively do three things:

1. They Educate.
2. They Don't Perpetuate.
3. Instead, they Communicate.

These three things are the bedrocks of connection and they make up what I call the Connection IQ, or CIQ. My goal is to show people how to raise their level of awareness and consciousness so they can connect to themselves as well as cross-culturally and how to do these three things the right way so people can take advantage of the globalization and the digitalization that are going on around us.

But first, let's dive into why I wrote this book.

Why I Wrote This Book

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

—Haile Selassie

I wrote this book because we are in a time of deep divisions and I believe that now, more than ever, we need to learn how to cultivate. Today's culture is defined by fear, uncertainty, intolerance, and reactiveness. It feels like a war zone sometimes because in a world of nuance, we are governed by binary systems.

In addition to this, we are losing faith in many of our foundational institutions (religion, education, government, family, the Internet, the media).

This isn't happening in just some places; it's happening all over the world.

There simply isn't any clarity on what we find threatening, because we all feel things differently.

Despite this, I'm filled with hope, because we are also in the midst of an awakening of sorts—an awakening that allows us to see who we are really are and where we can improve.

The world has to awaken every now and then to the fact that we are responsible for the world we get.

My objective with this book is to bring together people who hold different beliefs so they can get to know each other and create a path toward moral courage, empathy, compassion, and accountability. There are times when you have to stop being a bystander, and I hope that this book provides you with practical skill sets that you can use to transcend barriers and define values to advance humanity.

We are bonded by our need to connect and advance, so let's connect and advance toward a more inclusive world.

My mission statement is: Use your difference to make a difference. It is the credo I live by and is what this book is based on. It is about celebrating the fullness and breadth of ourselves. It is about opening our minds to people so that we can bridge divides and forge connections. I want to bring East and West together and have them sit side by side with North and South to trade stories of adventures and experiences they each have had. I strive to share experiences as a way to connect people of all cultures, to turn discrimination into appreciation, encourage diversity, tell stories to build global mindsets, and to educate the world about the beauty in all of us and how we can work together to embrace our global identities.

Voice

For a lot of my life, I wondered what to do with my voice.

It never seemed like I had a choice.

I look like this so I must sound like that.

I come from there so I must be like this.

 

Don't be too loud, they said, you'll scare them.

Don't be too soft, they said, you'll embarrass us.

All these rules, and yet, no space for expression of self.

Nuance taken away in the name of systems and expectations.

Identity stripped away to make people I barely know comfortable.

 

I rehearsed several versions of myself so I could play in whatever movie was showing for the day.

All this hard work, only to play supporting characters or extras.

 

I was never the star because God forbid I be seen as too extra.

So I did what they said.

I became an actor in my own life instead of THE director.

 

That was before I heard the power in the sound of my voice.

What a day it was because I could finally use it to rejoice.

My voice led me to the hidden layers I had covered up.

I could finally see myself without any apologies.

My voice led me to the mic so I could project even more.

Yes! No more hiding.

My voice taught me a lot! But, more importantly, it brought me to this realization.

 

Your approval will not make or break me.

Your DISapproval will no longer silence me.

I'm not placed here to make you feel comfortable about your choices.

My existence isn't something you can tokenize and my story isn't something you will weaponize.

 

I've decided to quit playing your game and the only game I'll play now is to live up to my name.

 

A warrior who brings joy!

Not someone that plays coy.

—Tayo Rockson

What Is Connection?

Noun: Connection¹

1. The act of connecting: the state of being connected
2. Something that connects
3. A person connected with another, especially by marriage, kinship, or common interest has powerful connections
4. A political, social, professional, or commercial relationship
5. A set of persons associated together

Basic principles. Everyone wants to connect in some way, shape, or form.

We want to connect to something, someone, or somewhere. Connecting creates a sense of belonging and it is at the base of our humanity as social animals. We are primed to connect.

Connection is also at the base of every issue we have today when we don't get it right.

Don't believe me?

Take a look at how our inability to connect has affected us throughout history:

• Colonialism: Telling people that, based on their language, tribe, or religion, they were unable to connect.
• Slavery: Telling people that they were subhuman so they couldn't possibly connect.
• Segregation: Telling people that they couldn't connect because they looked different.
• Apartheid: A world where you, your spouse, and your kid cannot connect because of the color of your skin.
• Crusades: A series of religious wars fought because of an unwillingness to connect with foreign religions.
• Genocide: The urge to wipe out a part of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group because of a refusal to connect.
• Nationalism I mean Populism I mean Isolationism: A refusal to connect with other nations except on your own terms.
• Racism: A refusal to connect with someone who has a different skin color.

I could go on and on, but the consistent theme that you can see here is the blaming of the “other” because of a disconnect, either real or perceived.

Crimes of humanity have been committed and rationalized in the name of disconnection.

We have been here before and we are still here now.

The only difference is that the disconnection that was once covert is now overt and the disconnection that was overt is now covert.

Let that sink in …

It's happening all over the world through globalization, the Internet, and in places without Internet.

We have to push through, though, because as physician and researcher Dr. Dean Ornish once said,

The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.

It is as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food, so let's honor this need. I wrote the following poem while thinking about my life growing up and the world today.

Here's to building bridges and not walls. Allons y!

How to Use This Book

The book is broken down into three sections. Each section represents what I believe to be the three stages of connection.

The “Educate” section is the foundational piece of the framework, and is needed if you want to master connection to yourself and your environment.

The “Don't Perpetuate” section is focused on helping you know how to navigate the systemic barriers to connection.

The “Instead, Communicate” section is aimed at giving you the tools to connect with people who have different values from you.

Sprinkled throughout the book are poems I have written that reflect the themes I am covering.

At the end of each section, I'll walk you through the application of each stage by using what I call the LORA model. LORA is the acronym that stands for Listen, Observe, Reflect, and Act. These skill sets are the best ways to maximize your potential as you go through each section and will include questions and exercises that will help you improve your listening, observation, reflecting, and acting skills.

Enjoy, and take notes!