L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Creating Relational Excellence with the Power of Connection Culture

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

This week, L&D in Action features Michael Lee Stallard, Co-Founder and President of Connection Culture Group. A finance executive turned coach and consultant, Michael has observed that many high-achieving organizations are forfeiting strong connections between people in favor of operational excellence. It’s his goal to bring empathy and humanity back to the workplace.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by GetAbstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. With an eye on the future and a preference for the practical, we address the most important developments in edtech, leadership strategy, and workflow learning. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today I'm speaking with Michael Stollard. He is the co-founder of Connection Culture Group, as well as the author of Connection Culture and Fired Up or Burned Out. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Tyler. It's great to be with you. So you've had a very prolific career working with financial organizations in many different leadership capacities. I'd love for you to start off just by telling our folks what it is you do in your own words, if you don't mind. Sure. I work with leaders on helping them cultivate cultures of connection. And these are leaders in business, government, healthcare, and higher education. leave Wall Street and begin doing your own research and your own work to uncover the power of connection. Can you describe sort of what was the moment or the ultimate decision-making process behind leaving Wall Street and taking on this career? Sure. It was, you know, I started out in technology at Texas Instruments, and then I ended up moving to Wall Street where I worked in

a lot of different capacities. I got to work with great organizations like Goodyear Tire and Rubber and McDonald's Corporation. I also, just being at different organizations on Wall Street, I saw different cultures. And I personally started to burn out. I was involved in some very large mergers that really became civil wars within these large Wall Street firms. And it was taking a lot of my time. Even when I was home in the weekend, I wasn't really focused. I wasn't present. I wasn't focused on my family. I was trying to figure out how to crack the code and get these parties to work together so that the merger would work. And I started not feeling well. I didn't know why. I didn't know I was lonely because I was around people

all the time, but I had really crowded out intimacy and connection in my life. Nobody ever told me, Tyler, that I was hardwired to connect and I would dysfunction if I didn't have that. And so I ended up leaving Wall Street and taking a sabbatical. I turned down an offer to join Goldman Sachs, actually, and told Gary Black, who was chief investment officer for Goldman, that, you know, let's talk down the road, but I have a book I need to write. And so I started really exploring, trying to follow the clues wherever they led to understand what is there a best culture and what types of cultures really drain the life out of people. So that really started it all. You talk about three different types of culture. Why don't we just kind of kick off there? What are the three types of culture and, you know, the critical importance of connection culture? Yeah, Tyler, over time, just over my career and in our research, I've seen that there are really three types of relational cultures in organizations. The first is the culture of control. That's a culture, you know, think of dictators or, you know, the over-controlling boss. That's a culture where

those who have power, they rule over everyone else. And it's not so great for the other people who have less power. I would argue it's not so good for the controllers themselves either. who have less power. I would argue it's not so good for the controllers themselves either. It's really not. Yeah, it does tend to isolate them as well. But I think most people, they feel the pain of being controlled. They can't, it's not a safe culture for them to speak up. They're not sure what they can do and what they can't do. They're just expected to really follow orders and not think on their own. Just, you know, basically it's a kind of command and control culture. Now that's the first type of culture. The second, which I would say is primarily what I saw on Wall Street and the tech world,

is a culture of indifference. And that's where people, Tyler, are so busy with tasks. They don't take time to develop supportive relationships. And that was my case on Wall Street. I was so focused on these overwhelming tasks of trying to make mergers work that my body started to go into a state of stress response, which we can talk about later. But that's the second type of culture. Just it's a culture of busyness.

The best culture is a culture where people have those supportive relationships. They feel connected to their supervisor, to their colleagues, to the people they're responsible for leading. So those are relational connections, but they also feel a sense of connection to their organization, mission, its values, its reputation. They feel connected to the people they serve through their work. I'm doing a lot of work right now with Yale New Haven Health. And just that connection that physicians, nurse leaders, and healthcare workers who work on the front lines, the connection they feel to the patient is very important. And those connections have a profound effect on our biology and on organizational performance. And that's the

connection culture. We feel that sense of connection that helps us do our best work. And it's absolutely necessary. It's not optional. If we don't have that, we're not going to thrive. And over time, it really has a serious negative effect on our health. Hospitals are something that you refer to severally as case studies in your work. And I think they're really just paradigmatic of what you're talking about right here. Because when you thrive as a connection culture, people are happier, as the research has shown, people are healthier. And because hospitals are businesses at the end of the day, outcomes are greater, you know, the business does much better. And I'd love for you to expand a little bit on some of your experiences. I think the first one that you usually talk about

is Memorial Sloan Kettering that really blew you away. I'd love for you to just kind of talk about that a little bit. Right. Well, my wife, Katie, was diagnosed first with breast cancer and then with advanced ovarian cancer within the span of about a year. And on one of our first visits to the gynecological oncology group at Sloan Kettering, we were walking down the street on the sidewalk toward the entrance of this part of Sloan Kettering. It's actually spread out in several buildings in Manhattan and in the tri-state area. And the doorman, a guy named Nick Medley, he locked his eyes on Katie and smiled and greeted her like a returning friend. As you know, this is in Manhattan where people don't tend to make eye contact, much less smile. And so I was

caught by surprise at Nick's reaction. And then as I thought about it, I realized that he was reaching out to connect with people he recognized were cancer patients who were coming to Sloan Kettering. And he could spot Katie had a wig. She probably looked a little anemic just from having six rounds of chemotherapy. And he recognized that. So he was very friendly. Then we met the receptionist. She was calling everyone honey. And that's also very unusual in Manhattan. It just surprised me. The security people we met, the administrative people we met were helpful and friendly. We eventually met Katie's oncologist, Dr. Marty Hensley. She spent an hour with us, Tyler. She educated the research and I knew Katie's probability of survival for more than five years was less than 10%. So I was feeling a lot of anxiety and just concern about Katie's future and the future of our family. But Dr. Hensley said, don't look at the research. You're not a statistic. And women do survive this disease.

She was upbeat and optimistic. And by the end of the day, I had two reactions. Number one, I had done the research, Tyler. So I knew in terms of just the tasks of treating ovarian cancer, this was one of the best groups in the world. But I had a second reaction that was not on my radar screen at all. And that was, I felt a sense of connection to them. And I knew they cared that this wasn't just about kind of doing their job. This was a mission for them. And I remember seeing on screens, their logo at Sloan Kettering, the best cancer care anywhere. And that's what I wanted for Katie. And by the end of that day, even though when I was walking down that sidewalk, for Katie. And by the end of that day, even though when I was walking down that sidewalk,

I was feeling a lot of anxiety and I was just expecting to find a culture of death at a cancer center. But to my surprise, it was a culture of life and living and joy and people doing important work. It did blow me away. It was very different from what I had experienced on the other side of Manhattan where most of Wall Street is located. And it just made me more optimistic that we could get Katie through the season ahead. And now Katie is a three-time cancer survivor. She's been, we recently celebrated her 19th year being cancer-free from ovarian cancer. And Sloan Kettering and Yale New Haven Health. It's also one of our clients. They've both been long-term clients now. So we're doing a lot of work in healthcare these days.

That's a great story. I'm very happy to hear that Katie is doing so well and that she's overcome all of this. My mother herself had breast cancer. I distinctly remember cultures of death and dying versus cultures of life and living in the places that she would go because we lived in two different states and various different areas through the course of that. And it's a distinct difference in how she felt day to day outside of the hospital, back at home. Her feelings were clearly reflected by her experience in the hospital.

And this is, of course, sort of an individual story of, you know, one person's experience. But I think we can all agree at the end of the day that this has a grander impact not only on outcomes, but like I said before, on business, on health, on happiness, etc. And there is a lot of research behind this that, you know, goes into the biology and the physiology of humans and how connection is so critical. I'd love for you to dive into that a little bit. I actually read an article that you reposted on LinkedIn, I think just yesterday or a couple days ago, that was discussing sort of, you know, the innate human reaction to danger scenarios and how there's, you know, the fight or flight response, there's the freeze or be paralyzed response, but there's also the result that you feel safe and comforted. And,

you know, the difference between those and how you feel within an organization very much impacts your physiology as a human being. I'd love for you to talk more about that in the research that you've uncovered. Sure. There's so much research on this. You know, it started really decades ago when scientists who were studying children after World War II who had been isolated from their parents because, you know, a lot of families in, say, the UK shipped their children abroad just to protect them. And, you know, physicians started noticing that children who didn't have that connection early, it really affected their emotional and mental health. And that kind of set this whole field off on what's called attachment,

which is another word for connection. And in just the last 20 years, I would say we've learned so much about how important relationships are that because of technology advances, we didn't really see what was going on in the human body before that. But I like to describe it as, you know, the human body before that. But I like to describe it as, you know, in our book, we have a whole chapter on just summarizing the evolution of research on how connection is a superpower for individuals and a separate chapter on how connection is a superpower for organizations. But I like to sum it up this way, that connection is a superpower and disconnection, whether it's social isolation or feeling lonely, you can be around people but still feel disconnected. And that is a super stressor

that has a negative effect on us. And let me explain why. So when we feel connected, it affects our brain activity, it affects the endocrine system that allocates hormones. It really has a profound effect on the entire body. And when we feel connected and safe around people, our brain operates in, and say, for example, like now when we're in conversation, our brains are primarily operating in the prefrontal cortex where language, speech, logic, you know, thinking is all processed. When we feel disconnected, our body looks at that, it senses that disconnection as a threat, and it throws us into a state that scientists call stress response. It's processing in another part of the brain called the amygdala in the limbic system.

It almost operates like teeter-totter. When the prefrontal cortex is engaged, the amygdala is quieted. When the amygdala is engaged, sensing a threat, it quiets the prefrontal cortex. So we react much more than we think when we feel threatened. And you can imagine when you're dealing with complex issues, you're not going to do your best work if you're really not using your prefrontal cortex. It kind of sabotages our ability to be rational and think through problems. And then it also triggers these hormones around our body that make us feel, if we feel threatened, we feel anxious. The body, if it perceives the threat

continues for a long period of time, that we don't have supportive people around us, then it will even potentially shut us down into a state of depression. So what we see in America is about half of Americans based on most current research, which arguably is quite dated now. I haven't seen more current research about the arguably is quite dated now. I haven't seen more current research about the number of people who have addiction problems. Last I saw was roughly half of Americans have serious addiction problems that are either addiction to substances or behaviors or both. I would say it's probably more than half now, given what we're seeing in the data. There just hasn't been a large scale study to really see how prevalent is in our society. The last study was like 2011.

So it's quite old, but I'm pretty sure that those numbers are worse now. But the good news is there really is a somewhat simple solution, which is developing supportive relationships in our life. And so, for example, in the healthcare context, one of the things we're teaching physician leaders and nurse leaders right now in the work we're doing throughout the Yale New Haven system is that you need to cultivate supportive relationships and you need to create cultures of connection in the workplace to protect you from burnout because there's so much pressure on the healthcare system in terms of, you know, the number of patients they have to see every day to make the economics work. And it carves, you know, that productivity goal is reducing the amount of time they have to

connect with patients. So, and to connect with each other. So we're figuring out small ways, things they can do to create these cultures of connection that will protect them. When we have that connection, it really protects us from going into that state of stress response. When we're in that chronic state of stress response, it's really interesting to understand the research and the effect that it has. Number one, pain of stressors is greater when we feel lonely or unsupported. It also undermines, also I should mention, not only is the pain greater, but those things that are uplifting to us. So for example, if we like golf or we like painting, we're going to get less positive uplift in terms of positive emotions when we're lonely. Isn't that kind of profound how that works? It sabotages the good things in our life and it makes painful the challenging, threatening, stressful things in our life. It also, things

we're doing in terms of building resilience. So when we're lonely, it undermines our sleep quality. It also undermines our willpower, Tyler, to exercise and eat healthy. So it really does sabotage those things that make us more resilient and it increases the pain of the stressors. And when we hit a point where our body is, we feel so much stress, it tips into a threat state. And that's when we go into chronic stress response so that blood glucose and oxygen is over allocated to our heart, our lungs, and our big muscles like our thighs, because the body is anticipating that we're going to need to fight or flee. So it's equipping those parts of the body that are necessary for that.

And it's taking those resources from the hippocampus in the brain, where the part of the memory resides, the digestive system, because we don't need to worry about digesting when we're fighting for our lives. And it also undermines the immune system and the reproductive system. It's hard to conceive if you're in a constant state of threat response. That's why we see conception rates falling in society because stress levels are so high today. And so the answer we often tell people is, you know, you need to think about what you're doing in terms of resilience, but start with connection because connection has a systemic effect on the stressors and the

resilience factors. It just makes you stronger in the entire system. And the research shows that most people don't have enough connection in their lives. In the same article that I referenced before, the author mentions that a lack of secure attachment is arguably the most prominent trauma in basically the industrialized world. And that, you know, I'm not a scientist by any means, but that to me sounds a lot like much of what took place in development, you know, developmental security and lack of attachment there. So when folks were younger, that in many cases, organizations and, you know, companies that employ people now are probably a little bit responsible for making up for what, you know, families could have lacked in the past. And this is really significant to me, because I,

obviously, we spend, you know, much of our adult lives in our organizations, engaging with the people in the companies that we work with, and being very close to those people, which are not necessarily people that we choose. Ideally, everybody has, you know, a positive work setting. And it's, you know, friendly, and it's good. And we're striving for this connection culture. But it to me sounds like a lot of companies and a lot of leaders of companies probably don't realize the amount of work that they actually have to do to help overcome what they weren't really responsible for, you know, whatever that sort of lack of secure attachment was caused by. It sounds like leaders really have to realize that like, it's not just, you know, creating

a positive culture, but like this connection culture is an additional degree above what they think it is. It's really, really acting deliberately to establish and help healing in some cases. Would you agree? Absolutely. And you bring up a lot of issues there, Tyler, you know, starting with family of origin and those, you know, that love we feel early in life has a profound effect on us in terms of just affecting the way our nervous system is wired and our brain is wired. And, do we perceive the world as know, do we perceive the world

is safe or do we perceive the world is threatening? Now, those changes to the brain start to happen from the time of conception on. And then, you know, after birth, they accelerate in those early years. A lot happens in terms of shaping the brain and the nervous system so that people either their nervous system and a lot of this happens on a not really a rational level but on a subconscious level in our right brain hemisphere so which doesn't really the right brain hemisphere is where you know the left brain hemisphere is where speech and kind of the things we're conscious of happen. The right brain hemisphere processes things below the level of awareness. And the reason it does that is it uses less resources as a result. It would be overwhelming if we were thinking about all the

sights, sounds, smells in our environment. It would just be overwhelming and it would require a lot more energy. But nonetheless, it's recording all that all the time. And based on the patterns it experiences over time, it senses whether from experience, whether something is threatening or safe. And so that is encoded into our brain and into the nervous system. And so as we go through life, then we can either the experiences we have, the more relationships we have that are positive and supportive, help change the brain's wiring. If we experience things that are threatening or traumatizing and in society, really sexual violence is the number one reason of trauma in our society. But I mean, even something like a car accident can cause trauma to the brain. And when trauma occurs,

it damages a switch that leads to a part of the brain called the para-aqueductal gray that really determines fight, flight, freeze, or predatory behavior. And, you know, there are a lot of people in society who didn't really have that secure attachment early on. You know, they had, in some cases, parents who were abusive and many who really neglected them. So they didn't really feel loved and supported. Those who were fortunate to have those really loving, supportive family relationships, they really have an advantage in life from an emotional and mental health standpoint. They're much more resilient. But the positive thing is that that can change over time. With good relationships in life and cultivating friends who have our back,

that helps us feel safer. It changes the wiring. Our brain is neuroplasticity, it's called. Our brain changes with our experiences. And so it's a lot of people are coming into the workplace with just these deficits that they didn't have control over. They were traumatized by something or just the effects of their family of origin make them less resilient. But what you see is, you know, that's why I write a lot of case studies about leaders like Alan Mulally, who turned around the Ford Motor Company, or Francis Hesselbein, who turned around the Girl Scouts, or Victor Bichini, who is the Chancellor of Texas Christian University, TCU.

You know, these leaders, what I find about them, Tyler, is, and I love this, I'm so inspired by them. Mike Ivey, who is the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Yale New Haven Health, and I love this. I'm so inspired by them. Mike Ivey, who is the deputy chief medical officer of Yale New Haven Health, or I could go on and on. Vern Clark, former chief of the Navy. What these individuals have in common is that they love people more than they love money, power, and status. And in each case, they're all competent. They're very competent from a task standpoint, but they're also brilliant and capable at developing not only task excellence, but relationship excellence.

And that's what's critical is the great leaders, all leaders focus on task excellence and results, but the great leaders, they're able to connect with people and build trust because they care about them. Now, I can teach a psychopath how to fake it for a while, but eventually people are going to figure it out. And when you study psychopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellians, which are the dark triad they're called, what they have in common is they can't empathize with people. They don't feel what other people feel, and they don't really care about people as a result. They care much more about money, power, status, because they feel that's going to protect them from ever being abused again. And there's usually some serious abuse in their past. You look at Caligula, one of the leaders of the Roman Empire during a horrific time, and he was seriously abused early on. It had a damaging effect on his moral thinking

and his ability to care about people. In some sense, I feel for people who have experienced that. In many ways, it's not their fault. They're victims. But nonetheless, they're dangerous. And they're out there. They're about 1% of the population. So that's probably more than you wanted to hear on that topic. But yeah, the people who are healthy, they often have those other families. The amount that you know about the science and the impact this stuff has on biology, the danger of it, it sounds like scary stuff. At the end of the day, this is very serious. You know, the impact on biology, the presence of these sorts of people, you know, these are serious considerations that I frankly think most organizations just don't care about.

They're pretending it doesn't exist as severely as it does and they get by. But more and more, especially post-pandemic in the current state of things, we are seeing that you just can't ignore these things anymore. We're in effectively a recession, tons of layoffs happening. And I expect that in the next five years, this will be the bulk of the professional conversation is how to create more connected, thoughtful, and just genuine, kind organizations and companies that really have, you know, relational excellence at heart instead of just task excellence. I think that's going to start to dominate the conversation more and more. It already more or less is. If you go on LinkedIn and you see all of the layoff posts,

what the most popular posts that you'll see or that I've seen recently is which CEOs are doing it best. Which CEOs are posting thoughtfully and who is actually treating those that they even had to lay off really well or treating those at their organization really, really well. Those are the things that are really starting to pop out now that these sorts of struggles have become almost the new normal. It seems like it's coming to the front. So I can't imagine a better time to have this conversation with you, honestly. And if you don't mind, I'd love to jump into how to actually do this work because there is, you say it's simple and I agree, but there's a process here and we got to work through that. So three big principles, vision, value, and voice.

Vision and values, I think, are things that most companies probably treat a bit like checkboxes. I think vision is usually something that's pretty critical early on. Values are definitely commonly established at successful organizations, but are they properly shared and spread throughout the company and explained and really like mulled over? That's, you know, up for debate. To me, most interesting, though, is definitely voice the third one, because it's I don't think it's spoken about as much as the other two. And also, it's I can't imagine a more difficult time than to do what you prescribe through voice, which is to make sure that everybody truly has the

ability to speak up and share their ideas and feels recognized and heard in an organization. And in decentralized remote organizations with work from home, with all those things, that is harder than it has ever been. As far as I'm concerned, there's no debate. It's harder than it's ever been to do that, especially when you are working primarily through platforms and messaging systems and that sort of thing, and people just aren't in person with each other. So I'd like to dive into that. If we start with voice, how can organizations encourage true democracy, true hearing of everybody, including everyone? And it sounds like some of the case studies that you've already discussed, everybody at the hospital that you spoke about them? That's what value primarily stands for. So voice is really important. I'm glad you brought that

up because in so many cultures we see today, you know, take for example, healthcare, everybody in healthcare, they're really good at vision typically, because it's right in front of them every day. They see that their work matters almost from a life and death standpoint. And so they know they're doing important work. And that is primarily what vision is about. When it comes to voice, however, in a lot of healthcare organizations, and we find this when it comes to feeling valued as well, and not just healthcare, but overall organizations, a lot of people don't feel that they have a voice. And that is unfortunate for two reasons, Tyler, because if people don't feel that they have a voice. And that is unfortunate

for two reasons, Tyler, because if people don't have a voice, number one, they're going to feel much less connected and they're not going to give their best efforts. They're going to feel like an outsider and they are less likely to be engaged from an employee engagement standpoint or align their behavior with the organization's or the team's objectives. They're less likely to fully communicate. They're going to self-protect rather than share what sometimes needs to be said to make the best decisions, even if decision makers don't want to hear it. Sometimes they need to hear it to make the best decisions. And they're going to be less aligned and adaptive to changes in the external environment. So that's number one. Then also, the second benefit from when voice when people have a voice is what I call knowledge flow. they need to make optimal decisions when everyone feels it's safe and that they should speak up and share information. That creates a marketplace of ideas also that fuels innovation. So there's

two benefits, superior quality of decisions and great higher levels of innovation come when people have a voice in the culture. Now, how do you go about giving people a voice? I think of, you know, I've mentioned Alan Mulally. I actually have a call with him on Monday. So he's on my mind right now, next Monday, a week from tomorrow, from yesterday, I should say. When he retired from Ford, Fortune had him as the third best leader in the world. And he had been a head of Boeing commercial aircraft when they developed the Boeing 777, which there's a great PBS documentary on that that's actually on YouTube now. And then he was tapped by Ford to be their CEO when they were headed toward bankruptcy. They were really in trouble and he completely turned them around and made them one of the most powerful automobile companies in the world. And that year he retired. I was glad to see Fortune showed such respect for him because it's really extraordinary what he accomplished, how he changed the culture of Ford and created

a culture of connection. And one of his, I've written a lot about Alan and the things that he did. One of the things he did is he had his weekly meeting of the leaders throughout Ford, and they had a system in place. It was kind of a color-coded system where if everything was aligned with their performance objectives, it was coded green. If it was yellow, it meant they had a plan and it wasn't on track, but they had a plan in place to correct it. If it was red, it was like, there's a problem and we don't have a plan yet. So, you know, then they would really tap into the mindset of all these people at Ford. So, you know, they would put this issue out on the table in these meetings. And sometimes they lasted quite long. I think early on when they had a lot of problems, they took a while. And Alan's view was that this is a huge enterprise. We have expertise all around the world. And if we're having a problem at a plant in, you know, Ontario, Canada, maybe there are people in Europe who have solved that problem. Well, let's get them on a plane and fly them to Ontario and help them, you know, get them in that plant. It doesn't matter

wherever the knowledge is. We want people to be open and honest, to share the challenges they're facing, the problems that have us off track from meeting our objectives. And let's find the answer as a group. And so he encouraged this knowledge flow. And before that, the culture was people were holding back. It was kind of competitive between silos of the business. And there also was a somewhat nasty culture of humor where they were putting each other down. Well, Alan put his foot down about

that and said he did not want anyone making comments that were demeaning of others. And so I think he pulled people aside privately and said, I don't want to see that again. And if you're not able to change, I hope you'll change and buy into our beliefs and change your behavior. But if you don't, I still love you. That's what you would say. But you're choosing to not be part of this. And you really can't stay if you're not going to agree to what we're all agreeing. We need to be the best that we possibly can. And so that system over time encouraged. And I think the first person who spoke up was Mark Fields, who became Alan's successor. And he shared a problem they had. And I think Alan clapped. It was like,

yes, finally, somebody is speaking the truth. All right, let's figure out how to solve this problem now. And so that's an example of knowledge flow. Another process I like just briefly is what I call a knowledge flow session. And that's when leaders, I call it putting their cards on the table. They're just saying, you know, here's what I'm thinking about a problem or an opportunity. And then asking people what's right, what's wrong, what's missing from my thinking. It's stress testing their thinking. And when people over time see that you really want to get the best answer, you want to hear their opinions and ideas, they'll start to speak up. In fact, they'll even pick up the phone and start calling you if they have information that they think will help you.

That's what I found when I really created that system at Morgan Stanley when I worked on Wall Street. So just voice is very important and it's deficient in a lot of organizations. So there's a huge opportunity to improve the quality of decisions and the rate of innovation in organizations by cultivating voice. How do you convince certain organizations to do that though? Because I can imagine that even at a place like Ford, there's plenty of people that just simply will never be included in certain decisions. I mean, that's got to be true everywhere. You know, if you don't have any relevant expertise at all to an issue, I mean, I could still try to make the point that it's worth consulting, you know, any number of people depending on their perspectives, both knowledge

wise, culturally, and just the experience they have on the job. But at the end of the day, there's not really time in the day or maybe, you know, resources to actually consult with everybody and, you know, really ask everybody about every decision, obviously. So how do you advise that people do that across massive organizations like this? Ford has a really good example of sort of doing this with their leadership. But I, you know, I'm a pretty strong believer that this sort of thing should be extended to as this sort of practice should be extended to all arms, which might include like frontline workers who, you know, might not have the sort of depth of knowledge, but have, you know, more experience than others. So how do you advise really, you know, getting

that to the extremities of the organizations? I think it depends on the issues that you're putting out there in the meeting. And so if they're operational meeting, if it's strategic issues, which affect the whole organization, almost all employees would like to have some sense of that. And so I think of, you know, there are, well, I used to head marketing and strategy for part of Charles Schwab. And I, Chuck Schwab, I love Chuck Schwab. He is just, you know, he wouldab. He was so generous in terms of opening up even strategic reports that most organizations would never let their employees at large see were available online and what they called the Schweb, which was the internal web, Schweb. And yeah, and he was out there, you know, traveling the world. And Dave Patrick, when he was co-CEO of Schwab, they were very open about sharing information, traveling around the world, letting people put it, I would call it putting their cards on the table to say,. If it's an issue that has to deal, it's more of a micro issue with a particular unit, then we really only involve employees who are connected to that issue somehow, or maybe even slightly tangentially connected. They might bring some new ideas that the group that's so connected to each other isn't aware of. And so there are some guidelines that we use in our work. So for example,

focusing on people who you're expecting to implement that decision and people you know have an interest in that decision, it's wise to include them in to get their opinions and ideas, because they'll have insights about it. And they're going to execute with, you know, implement the decision with much greater effort if they feel they've had a voice. One of the things you're starting to touch on now is that, and you mentioned this when we spoke before, every large organization, at least has many different cultures. You know, a lot of companies would love to feel that they have one unified company culture, but we all know that's not true.

And it's not true. Yeah, I can go from, you know, a micro culture for a small room within an office, a larger office building to, you know, all the employees in Singapore for company X, you know, like, you can argue that, you know, there are cultures within those cultures and everything. And I think this is something really critical to touch on, because we don't want to act as if it's a, you know, monolithic solution within organizations. But at the same time, I think it's a good way for us to address how to make employees feel valued when they have such disparate experiences within any one company.

And hospitals are probably a really great example of this. But I've experienced radically different, you know, styles of company myself, I was on a sales team for a while. And then I was on a very insular content creation team. And now, you know, I work from home with a company that's, all over the world, and every experience is radically different. But somehow that, you know, the value that I present to the company has still been communicated to me. And I'm very grateful for that. But I'd love to hear from you, you know, how organizations can be more effective at doing this. Well, it's important to understand that. I'm glad you brought that up. Because in every organization, subcultures are very different. And there isn't one global culture. Now, there is,

I think, in general, you know, if an organization really has been focusing on developing certain practices, then it can be uniform in some ways across the organization. But especially from a relational culture standpoint, they tend to be very different. They tend to, you know, the degree of connection, control, and indifference really varies by subculture. And so the challenge for leaders is how do we give employees a voice so that we can find out if they are connected in the subculture they're in? And then if that leader needs help, how do we get them help? And if a leader is really particularly strong in creating different languages, the survey of their subcultures that we did. The CEO actually made one of the most effective leaders in the entire organization. He promoted this individual to become vice chairman of the firm with the role of mentoring other leaders

around the firm so that they could cultivate cultures of connection and be as successful as this leader, this new vice chairman would be. I think that's how to think of it is how do we assess subcultures? And oftentimes, you know, I was just having a conversation in the last couple of months with the CEO of Gallup and Gallup has the Q12 survey that they've done. I think it's a great instrument. It does measure the degree of connection in a culture or attachment. We prefer to use that term. And it really gives you very valuable information to understand how connected people feel in that unit when you look at those 12 questions on the Q12.

And even more recently, I had a conversation with Doug Koenig, who turned around the Campbell Soup Company when he was CEO there. And one of the things Doug put in place was he used Gallup's Q12, and he told his managers throughout the organization that you're going to meet a certain level in the Gallup Q12, or, you know, you're really not going to be here. He kind of laid down the law. And in the first two years, Doug replaced or people opted to leave because they couldn't or wouldn't do it. And he replaced 300 out of 350 leaders in that organization in the first two years. Isn't that, I've never heard of anyone doing it that fast, but you know, the results

were astounding in terms of just up into the right, in terms of revenues and profits and employee engagement. And he had one of the highest employee engagement scores I've seen of any organization. It really makes a difference when you hold managers accountable. Now, Doug also provided training and mentoring and coaching and gave leaders who were struggling with that every opportunity to change. But if they couldn't or they wouldn't, they really weren't going to be in a leadership position at Campbell. And it made a difference when he really cultivated those subcultures of connection throughout the organization.

He's written a couple of great books on it. And in our book, Connection Culture, we have a lot of profiles of leaders. In the next book, we'll have Doug, because it was a great example. Or Hubert Jolie just wrote a book. He was the CEO of Best Buy, another guy who really focused on connecting people to the mission and connecting with the CEO of Best Buy, another guy who really focused on connecting people to the mission and connecting with the people, the organization. And he turned around that organization. Every one of these turnarounds that you find where leaders cultivate organizational performance that's superior and it's sustainable, you'll find that they cultivated a culture of connection. It's just impossible without it. Yeah. A big part of this is hiring and recruiting and having the right people. You just mentioned

that there were some serious replacements in Doug's case. I think it's really important to address how leaders and those responsible for hiring can maybe reframe the hiring conversation, the recruitment conversation, and also push for this, it's important to consider people for their ability to connect and for their potential for relational excellence. I don't think that's something that a lot of, you know, hiring managers really consider in an overt way. I think it's more, oh, is this person a culture fit? And they aren't thinking, you know, are they going to contribute to a connection culture, you know, like they, you know, would they fit in the conversations that me and my current team and the employees that I spend the most time with have and would my leaders like them, that sort of

thing. But I think it's very important to, you know, reframe this conversation around how would this recruit or this candidate fit as a relational, you know, provider and a member of this connection culture. So how do we determine that in new people? And also, as leaders, how do we find good sources of those who represent relational excellence? What can we do to hire better with this in mind? Well, like you said, you have to find people who have can develop task excellence, right? Number one, they have to have the appropriate skills from a competence standpoint. And then they also need people who will cultivate relationship excellence through a connection culture. And my advice would be have as many people on your team

interview them, including some people who have less power in the organization, and observe how they treat those individuals, because that's really important. I remember stories of Richard Branson early on in the life of a Virgin organization. He would pick up people at the airport, and if they, almost posing as a limo driver or something, and if they didn't interact with him in a respectful way, he would just go back to Virgin. He would just drop him back off at the airport. And that was really brilliant. Do a loop around. Yeah. In a way, you know, he's seeing if they value people more than they value money, power,

and status. And that's really the key because those great leaders and great employees, they boost the performance of everyone around them because they care about them as people. And they care about results because their results are usually affecting people. If it's healthcare or Ford motor cars or passenger jets that Alan was responsible for developing. He left before Boeing had its problems. I would say Boeing really blew it by not making him CEO, but Ford was wise to bring him in and they benefited from that. He's definitely the type of leader who cares about people. That's what you're looking for is people who care about people. And they usually be they're pretty decent at connecting with them. And it doesn't matter if they're introverts or extroverts. Do they care about people? And have they developed some of the skills to be able to demonstrate that? What about systematically finding more of those people,

not just assessing the ones that come to you, but, you know, really seeking them out? I think one of the things that you mentioned is, you know, I'm generally diversifying your hiring pool and the places that you look, I think is a naturally effective method because you're, you know, varying the heuristic that people address problems through. I think this leads to better innovation and, you know, more likely problem solving that sort of thing, like you discussed early when you sort of vary the hiring pool. What do you advise to that end for systematically finding people that can show relational excellence? Well, when you develop a culture of connection and you empower your employees to identify friends and people they know who they think would have the competence and

they care about people, they're going to be your best people because they know just from living in communities who cares about people, who's capable, and they'll bring in a lot of people. Otherwise, I think that's the greatest opportunity for most organizations because they really don't cultivate that opportunity very well. They tend to just use a traditional means of hiring, but existing employees can bring in a lot of good people. And it's also interesting to know that the most important, well, out of the Q12 questions that Gallup has, the question that has been the most predictive of whether employees are engaged in giving their best discretionary efforts is, do I have a best friend at work?

Another interesting data point is that most people actually find their best friend in the workplace. So we want to be intentional about cultivating friendships in the workplace and then leveraging those by asking people to think about your friends. If you have friends and acquaintances that you respect and you know are good people who care about people, then let's bring them in and reward and encourage people for doing that. There are seven facets of connection in addition to vision, value, and voice. You dive a little bit deeper as well. So respect, recognition, a little bit deeper as well. So respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, progress, and meaning. Is that, did I get them? Well done. You got them. You got all of them.

Yes. Nailed it. So, you know, there's a lot to address there. I think that, again, when we're talking about post-pandemic, we're talking about a decentralized workplace. We're talking about communication that's, you know, done sort of online in that way. A lot of these things are sort of like, again, systematically, I'm using this word a lot, but they're systematically addressed because of the project management resources that we have, the tools and the software and the messaging platforms, you know, autonomy and progress, for instance, I have experienced, you know, seem to be more or less automated for me because, you know, I have experienced, you know, seem to be more or less automated for me, because, you know, as somebody who has worked remotely, you have platforms where

you have your goals, you have numbers, you know, your specific goals, as well as the tasks that you have to complete. And, you know, I've been allowed at least to go and achieve those things. And that feels to me like it's very much automated through the tools. I want to ask you, how do we make sure that these things don't, you know, turn us into automatons, in a sense, you know, how do we make sure that these tools that may help us achieve these things don't just turn these moments of, you know, successful recognition, even in some cases, where somebody is posting on a message board for when you succeed at doing something, you know, that's very common, I think, on like Slack and Microsoft Teams is, hey, congratulations to this, you know, new achievement. How do we make sure that we don't turn into just these things don't become moments

of serotonin or dopamine release, and they don't really reflect sincere connection that reflect those seven principles? Right? Well, it's that human in person connection that has the greatest impact. Now, it's not to say that virtual connections are not important, they are important, and they can be very effective. And so I don't want to diminish those, but the in-person connections are going to be the most important. And so when you think about that list of universal human needs in the workplace that you remembered, you know, respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, meaning, and progress. The first three are all relational in nature. Respect, recognition, and a sense of belonging, which just means, do I have friends in the

workplace who I know them? They have my back. I have their back. It has to go both ways for that to really be meeting that sense of belonging. And I think of a couple of ways to do that. I do think there is a risk if we automate so many of our interactions. Number one, we can lose our ability to read people's face. You know, that's a very complex thing that our brain has developed. And the more we do it,

the better we get at it. This is research from Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina. And the less we do it, it diminishes those skills. So we want to be intentional about hanging out with people, being in person, going out to lunches, those things, having team training where people are together in person, having social events. And at Yale New Haven Health, when we were there recently, we heard a lot of teams who were just celebrating the holidays together and things like that in person. So those things help cultivate those abilities. So you would recommend a budget dedicated to this for companies that are particularly decentralized and disparate? Ideally. I think if you can get people together in person, that's going to be good. When we were at Yale New Haven Health, we heard about

some of the leaders, they were paying for this out of their pocket, Tyler, to go away for a weekend once a year. They're in New Haven, Connecticut. They would go to, say, Maine or New Hampshire or somewhere in New England and just have a weekend together. They would have volunteer activities like kayaking during the day that were optional, and then they would all come together for meals at night. And this was just the leaders of the unit, but it really helped bonded those leaders. It had an impact. And we also heard stories of a nurse leader who arranged for some of her leaders in her unit to just go off and spend the day connecting, doing some fun things together. And she worked it out so that their responsibilities were covered.

But she said she saw the impact it had on them just to have that time to reconnect because they're so busy with tasks all the time. So a couple of important, I'm a big believer in applying things that have been proven by research or just by practice for a long period of time. And I love the research of Ashley Harden at Washington University. And she focuses on what's called personal knowledge. When we get to know something about somebody's life outside of work, it has the effect of humanizing them. It makes us both more responsive to each other and less likely to undermine each other. Personally, to undermine or backstab is another way to think of it. And so it has very practical benefits just to... My favorite

question, just to make it very practical here is, what do you like to do outside of work? I love hearing people, their hobbies or about their families. It's really interesting when you find out about that. It has that effect of connecting you. There are some simple things that we can do. I also like leaders practicing micro-connections. When we were up recently interviewing the people in this step-down pulmonary unit that had produced really fantastic results during the COVID crisis. It was interesting to see that Dr. Tuba Kazmi, who is the medical director of that unit, Lauren Thayer is the patient service manager of that unit.

They're really a partnership, a physician leader, a nurse leader. And it was interesting that they knew the first names of everybody in the unit. The environmental services people who come in to clean the floors, everybody knew and called Dr. Kazmi Tuba. And, you know, it was, you could just see the connection they had and the energy and the positivity. It's no surprise that they came up with some innovations to help get people on ventilators faster. And now there's research being done to really study and document the metrics of what they accomplished. But I can tell you, it's that culture of connection that was really driving that energy and that innovation and has protected them from burnout. The case in point to what you were saying just before about personal knowledge and asking that simple question, you know, what

do you do outside of work? When I was sort of reviewing our notes from a prior conversation, I realized that I'd forgotten to send you a link to my friend Keith, who does New York City tours, because that's something that we talked about a little bit was the fact you really enjoy, you know, going on tours, specifically of New York City. And I apologize that I haven't sent that to you. But I will do it right away. And that, but when I saw that, I was like, Oh, man, we actually, you know, we had a really meaningful conversation. And, you know, that doesn't always happen with folks that you, you know, engage with minimally, you know, you don't always go that deep with somebody. And you don't realize the difference, because you're not going there. But when you do, you realize, Oh, wow,

this, you know, this feels more personal, this feels much more friendly, it feels like we have something more significant there. And when you multiply that across an organization, it obviously has expansive exponential effects, I would imagine. So yeah, it does. Absolutely. I think of a couple things that come to mind over the years I've been doing this 20 years now. You know, when I first started talking about connection, they're really, you know, Jane Dutton at the University of Michigan, she had come out some years before with the importance of high quality connections and Ned Halliwell at Harvard Medical School, and the Stone Center up at Wellesley was doing great stuff on relational culture theory. But it really wasn't out more broadly, and I got a lot of blank stares from leaders, but it does. I love what Atul Gawande, the writer for The New Yorker, said. He's a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and he advises his colleagues and new doctors to take the time

to connect with your patients because it's surprising what you learn that's relevant. And he said this, Tyler, and I thought this is really a great insight that I've been sharing with a lot of physician and nurse leaders recently. He said, you know, it makes the machine feel less like a machine when we take the time to connect. And you know, if we're in a machine all the time, it does affect us. We become less human and taking the time to connect with people does make the machine. And it is a machine. I mean, we have to be efficient. There are processes we have to put in place to help us do our best work, to be the most productive, to have the best results from a quality standpoint. And we learn about those

processes and that is machine-like. But when we take the time to humanize the environment with little things like making eye contact and knowing people's first names, even one thing about them, about their lives outside of work, as he says, it makes the machine feel less like a machine. And it really protects us from being dehumanized. It humanizes us more. And no surprise, we are human beings. And those needs that you remembered, those are needs, they're not wants. We dysfunction. And when we dysfunction, we go into stress response. needs. They're not wants. We dysfunction. And when we dysfunction, we go into stress response. And when we go into stress response, we start looking for unhealthy ways to manage our emotions.

And those unhealthy ways are addictive because we're experiencing anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide. We've done work with the Air Force and other organizations that have had higher rates of suicide because the CDC has found that connectedness is the best strategy to reduce suicide ideation. And also violence. People, it's called displacement aggression. When you're aggressive to someone physically, sexually, in a violent way, it reduces stress on the part of the perpetrator. So all of these societal ills we see today are often can be traced back to the lack of connection and community or decline of connection and community in our society. And I'm very encouraged that Vivek Murthy, our surgeon general, who we actually profile in our book because he has a powerful personal story.

And he understands that. He understands that loneliness and social isolation in society is the cause of a lot of medical ills we're seeing today, as well as violence and suicide. So I want to finish off with a couple of questions about action items that people can follow to really solidify connection culture. I think of, again, Alan Lally at Ford and some of the ways that he even spoke in some ways. I think you mentioned a few of the things that he said to people, but the ways that he spoke, I think he had an identity statement of sorts. Can we talk a little bit about maybe those, you mentioned micro connections, but also just the smaller actions that you can take as a leader, maybe as somebody who's in HR, that's responsible for recruitment, but can we talk about some of those,

you know, smaller action items? What's the first thing that if they hear this podcast, what can they go and do with their folks the next day to take the first step toward developing a connection culture? Yes. Okay, let me mention a few here. Number one, make sure that you are meeting your need for connection in your life, because you're not going to be a good connector and a role model if your needs for connection are not met. And so do you have another practice for you as a leader, but also to encourage in others is never worry alone. And I thank Ned Hallowell from Harvard Medical School for sharing that with me. Because when we worry alone, it triggers the amygdala in our brain and it disconnects the activity in the prefrontal cortex. So all we have to do is get into a conversation like this to process our fears, our concerns that re-engages the prefrontal cortex and quiets the amygdala. The result is we make better decisions and we feel better. Something

simple. You know, Freud called it talk therapy. Of course, he didn't understand the neuroscience back then, but he identified that talk therapy helped people. And he was right. It's absolutely true. So never worry alone. Also having cultivating a group of friends that you can ideally go to. And, you know, I'm exploring a new book idea and I have some friends that I definitely know who I'm going to. And, you know, here's what I'm thinking. What's right, what's wrong, what's missing from my thinking? I really want your advice on this. And, you know, they're wise, very capable people. And I know they care about me too. So having a group of friends, you know, some people call it your personal board of directors.

me too. So having a group of friends, you know, some people call it your personal board of directors. Sometimes it's just a mentor. But having that is really important in life, it'll help improve your decision making and your mental and emotional health and just your success in life and your joy in life for that matter. Friends at work, would you say are priority here or just having sort of a board of advisors style group of friends anywhere? Well, yeah, having that and ideally having someone that you can meet with once a week is ideal. And even just to say, okay, here are my highs, here are a couple highs for the week, here are a couple lows for the week. And just to, you don't have to solve the problems, just actually sharing that and having somebody who's a good listener and empathetic you know maybe they provide some advice too if that's relevant but mostly just to be able to verbalize

that and share that with a friend really helps you from a mental and physical health standpoint so doing that then you know making sure you have that foundation of connection in your own life. And a lot of leaders have been shown not to have this. And so it sabotages their leadership. So that's important. Then secondly, understanding how to cultivate a culture of connection. And that's what we write about in our book, you know, vision, communicating and inspiring vision that unites people, valuing people as individuals and not treating them as mere means to an end, and giving people a voice when possible to share their opinions and ideas. Vision, value, voice creates connection. And so I like that practice I mentioned earlier of knowledge flow sessions. Just, you know, if you have some decisions that you really important decisions, go out and seek the opinions and ideas of others, listen to them, don't correct them, just listen, and write down what you learn, thank them for what they share. And then, you know, follow up and say, here's what I heard, here's what I'm

going to do about it. And just that will improve your quality of decisions, it'll make people feel more connected, it'll make them feel more valued and respected. And if you're doing that with strategic information, then that's also going to have the effect of boosting that vision element. They're going to know more about where you're going. And, you know, I always say vision is about answering a number of questions, including where are we going? Why is it important to get there? How are we going to get there? What are our values and what's my role? When people have those answers, they're less likely to worry. They have more clarity about what to expect in the future. And if they don't have that clarity, they tend to, many people tend to fear the worst rather than expect the best. When it comes to vision as well, you'd speak a lot more about identity toward the end of the book and how to establish identity. I think I might have mentioned already identity phrases and that sort of thing. There's a bit of a process that you discuss for that as well. But I think that's so critical is establishing some sort of a, it's almost like an internal brand, I think terms that are being used are, you know, employee experience, EX these days. employee experience, EX these days. And I think a lot of people are thinking about this, but they don't really understand what it is that they're seeking or ultimately trying to cultivate, which I think all relates back to connection culture. But I'd love to hear maybe just to

cap it off, what you think about establishing identity within the company. Of course, it probably means both the company-wide identity, but also individually, what is your identity within the greater scheme of things as well? I'd love for you to, you know, finish off just addressing that. Yeah, we break identity down into what we also call just vision, because it's easier to remember than inspiring identity into three components. Number one, mission, where are we going? And why is it important to get there? And our values need to reflect that we value people. And then finally, reputation. You know, it's when we live up to our mission and our values, it produces a reputation that

people are either proud of, indifferent to, or embarrassed by. And it really, when they're proud of it, it aligns with their identity. You know, you think of the Marines and the reputation they have. Or, you know, I see that at places like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, you know, whose, I would say their vision phrase is to provide the best cancer care anywhere. And they've been in the top two cancer institutions in the US for, gosh, almost 20 years, or maybe almost 30 years now. 30 years now. So there's just a real sense of pride there. People know that they are living up to their mission and they're inspired by that mission to provide the best cancer care anywhere. Or other organizations, just another client we've had the privilege of working with is Costco. And I love Costco. I really do love Costco. We all love Costco. It's such a great place. I could wander in Costco for hours.

Costco and Home Depot, just to admit my obsessions. And so anyway, I remember talking to Jim Senegal, the co-founder of Costco, who's such a colorful character. And I asked him, how do you describe your culture, Jim? And he told me, he said, well, do the right thing. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? And he said, yes, that's our culture. Do the right thing. And that's actually their identity statement. That's their vision statement.

Do the right thing. And here's what it means, Tyler. We obey the law. We take care of our members. We take care of our employees. We respect our suppliers. And we reward our shareholders in that order. And that is their recipe for success. So that order is probably pretty significant.

It is. Yeah. It's by doing the things on the top is what produces the, you know, rewarding the shareholders on the bottom for many, many years. And I can only say, I hope you're people tuning into this own Costco stock because it's, you know, Wall Street has declared Costco Amazon proof. It's like Amazon is copying Costco, basically with Amazon Prime. It's the Costco model. And it really hasn't hurt Costco, which is also amazing. So Costco, when it comes to taking care of their employees, they're well known in the industry for having generous compensation and benefits. Wall Street hates that. They feel like they're overpaying their employees

and they're giving them too generous benefits. But Jim Senegal and the leadership of Costco, their opinion is, if you don't get it, that's why we are successful. Because we take care of our members, we take care of our employees. And that's why they stay for so long. And we have an apprentice-like training system that helps them learn and grow and rise to the responsibility and compensation that they aspire to. And I remember I spoke to all of the, you know, Jim and others have said, well, connection is the core of our culture. That is our culture. We just believe in that. And I spoke to all the warehouse managers worldwide at one of their annual manager conferences in Seattle. And I remember seeing that they put all these videos up on the screen of employees from around the world who had come

up with ways to improve efficiency or improve the member experience or the employee experience. And this was basically every one of the people in that room led a warehouse at Costco somewhere in the world. And they were basically disseminating these ideas. They had created, given employees a voice throughout the organization and said, you know, come up with ways to improve every day. Let's get better every day. Let's have, you know, let's all be thinking about this. And then let's share it at our annual meeting. We'll send a film crew out to film you describing your idea and we'll show it at our annual meeting. They just showed film after film. I mean, it's just little short films and sometimes there were

simple little things, but they were creating this marketplace of ideas for all of these managers of Costco warehouses to write these down and take these ideas back to their warehouse. And that is the core of their strategy. And I wouldn't say the strategy as much as their culture is do the right thing, follow those things. And they really, they walk the talk and it's made them wildly successful. One of the most successful companies globally today. Of course, it sounds like it's achieving a lot of those seven components of connection culture very quickly, you know, recognition right at the top there. And that's great. I can't think of a more positive note to end on than a quick review of Costco. It should put everybody in a good enough mood. So Mike, thank you so much for joining us. I'd

love to hear before we finish up just where people can learn more about you and what you're up to. I'd love to hear more about that next book that you have coming up. I understand you might be under NDA or whatever, but I'd love to hear what you can tell us and what to expect. Well, sure. Just briefly. So people can learn more about my work at connectionculture.com. Or if you just Google my name, Michael Stoller, you'll find a lot of things, including things I've done with Get Abstract. Thank you, Get Abstract, for all the just things you've done to raise awareness of my work, including this, Tyler. So you can also, I have a course on LinkedIn Learning, many organizations, and I'm finding a lot of my clients are using our LinkedIn Learning course.

It's called Creating a Connection Culture. I encourage people to take a look at that. Our next book is really focusing on applying the connection culture principles to nations as well and saying, nations, dictators create cultures of control. Many liberal democratic countries around the world have really drifted away from caring about people to focusing more on money, power, and status, and chasing money, power, and status, and the tasks of crowded out time for relationships. So we're seeing just a rise of the problems I mentioned earlier, anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide, homicide, problems of that sort. And I think many of those can be traced back to a lack of connection in people's lives

from a society standpoint. And it's interesting when you go back in history and look at, say, the evolution of human value over time from, say, prehistory times when people focused on survival to the age of empires when the empires conquered one another and then they enslaved or killed those they conquered. And then we moved into the Middle Ages where feudalism was, owning people was acceptable, people were property. you know, owning people was acceptable. People were property. And then, you know, we had in, say, roughly the 1500s, the effects of natural rights, you know, writings of John Locke and other

the philosophes, the growth of, you know, the healthy aspects of the Christian church that taught it was important to love God and love people. Those things, you know, affected people like Martin Luther King and leaders who proved civil rights, who were behind voting for women and are giving people universal suffrage and women the right to vote, which really wasn't all that long ago from a historical standpoint. It was a little more than 100 years ago now that women had the right to vote in the U.S. So just interesting to see that evolution. And I believe that in the postmodern era, some of the problems we're seeing in the world today, you know, climate crisis, decline of freedom in the world, we have racial tension, we have class

wars going on around the world. Many of these, I think, could end up over time if we move in a healthy direction, being birth pains that lead to an age of greater human connection if we move in a healthy direction. So that's kind of a preview of the book at a high level. Great. Well, we would love to have you back on the show when that does come out. It sounds fascinating. Of course, much, you know, bigger topic, but I think that would be wonderful to discuss. So again, Mike, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Tyler.

Everybody listening at home, thanks for joining us. And we will catch you on the next episode. Cheers. You've been listening to L&D in Action, a show from Get Abstract. Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode. And don't forget to give us a rating, leave a comment, and share the episodes you love. Help us keep delivering the conversations that turn learning into action.