Connect, then lead.
When we feel heard, we feel validated and seen.
If we’re not in the habit of hearing others, we can use a ‘belonging cue’ to get started.
I went to my local cafe recently.
“What was your name again?”, asked the barista.
I felt infuriated.
“Rachel”, I said.
I stomped back home and told my spouse, Sadie.
“I’m never going there again! $5.50 and they can’t even remember my name!”
It was a $5 interaction. Why was I so mad?
Remembering someone's name is the first step of sending a belonging cue.
Belonging cues are moments of showing someone you’ve seen them. They’re the first door to open to create a trustworthy relationship.
At its most basic level, it’s acknowledging someone's existence. At its most advanced, it’s connecting to the deepest parts of ourselves.
When someone remembers our name, we feel seen.
Remembering someone's name is up there with the basics of making someone feel welcome: like making eye contact, a hongi in Aotearoa, shaking hands, fist bumping, or a slight bow in Asia, depending on what context you are in.
So when you bump into someone, and you believe you’ve created a relationship, or at least a sort of friendly banter with them, and they forget basic information, like your name, it can be really jarring.
You wonder whether you’d imagined the connection or whether it was genuine.
When we miss these cues, our colleagues mentally sign out.
All the research says to be influential at work, we must connect, then lead. This means connecting authentically with the person, before going into ‘get stuff done’ mode.
This time of year, we forget the connect part. It’s natural - deadlines are looming and many of us feel we’re ‘crawling’ to the end of the year.
The thing is, the impact of not connecting with someone before we go into ‘get stuff done’ mode means we’re at a higher risk of them actually mentally tuning out.
The result? Mechanical doing, and not a whole bunch of thinking.
When we tell people what to do, they put thinking to the side and activate instead.
As a boss, your job is to get results.
And the way to do that the most efficiently is to train people to think like you do, so you don’t need to tell them what to do.
It makes all other instructions and micromanaging redundant, because you’re giving them a superior tool: problem solving.
And the tool to get someone to mentally switch from get stuff done mode to thinking mode is to connect.
When we notice other people our influence grows.
There’s so much evidence showing how everyone wins when we notice other people.
For example, research has suggested that leaders who have social connections and can demonstrate that others can talk to, and understand them, are more influential. Apparently it’s right up there with communicating empathy.
Neuroscience also has found that many of us would happily be heard, just as much as we love food, money or intimacy. In fact, in one study it was discovered that the part of our brains correlated with our ‘rewards’ function experience heightened activity when we self-disclose. It feels good for someone to listen to us.
And in one study on negotiation, it was discovered that those who ‘gave’ first during negotiations were more successful. Why? The successful negotiators cared as much about the other person's goals and needs as much as their own.
What all this data has in common, is not only that training ourselves to hear what people have to say, and showing them we’re listening, is not only good for them, it’s good for us too.
When I first hired a team, I could not believe how exhausted I felt.
The business was growing at a rapid pace and I had zero time to sit around talking about feelings. I went into get stuff done mode, meticulously attached to doing things my way, perfectly and precisely.
I couldn’t appreciate at the time the level of training, coaching, teaching and active listening required to build a mentally engaged team who could make sensible decisions in my absence.
Instead, while we were connecting, there was a voice in my head saying, ‘but when will the spreadsheet be updated?’.
Can you relate?
You want to make time for someone but the deadline is the louder voice.
You want to hear about someone's weekend but you’ve got your boss pinging you on DM.
You would love to talk about the Kardashians but the meeting with the CEO is about to start.
We need a tool to mentally separate get stuff done mode from connecting mode.
When we teach people to think for themselves, we have a sustainable team.
When we teach people how to think, we reduce work for ourselves and give them tools to succeed, independently of us.
And the tool to getting them to trust us, is to connect, then lead.
Getting into the habit of practising noticing other people.
When you show you’re present, you’re more likely to capture other people's respect.
It’s about deciding, on purpose, to switch on your belonging cues in your team's presence to make sure that there’s no doubt in their mind that they matter to you.
The trick is to pay attention to something you can remember.
Scientists have discovered that the reason we don’t remember names isn’t because we aren’t important enough to be remembered, but rather, there are reasons we remember details about a person. (You can read more about this here).
So, when we forget someone's name, like the barista, it’s not that I, or you, are not important enough to remember. It’s that the data itself is not significant enough to register into our memory.
It’s about connecting a memory to that person regarding something you care about.
I personally dislike small talk. I find it hard to remember details like people's names. But I know it’s an important part of building trust with someone.
So I give myself a fighting chance to remember the details. For example, I might add you on LinkedIn, or make notes on what I learned about you (your name, whether you have kids, a partner, or a fur baby). The idea is, when I see you again, I’ll refresh my memory of the smaller details so we can pick up where we left off.
Over time, the more time we spend together, I remember the small stuff. Because I’ve decided you’re important to me. So I make the effort.
Without connecting, you can’t rely on anyone delivering consistently.
When we communicate to someone they’re important to us, they pay attention.
That might mean turning on ‘do not disturb’ on your computer when you meet. Resisting the temptation to check your emails during a meeting. Reminding yourself to listen instead of adding your ‘two cents’.
Basic stuff. But what I’ve noticed, teaching teams of senior leaders is, most people aren’t paying attention to the connection, because they’re too busy thinking about delivering.
The irony is, when we choose to connect first, we get more done together.
It’s unbelievable how trust really is the gateway to training people to think for themselves. It’s what we refer to as creating a psychologically safe team. (We train leaders how to do this, learn more here).
We can do better by getting into the habit of playing the long game.
The reason the coffee ‘what’s your name’ example irked me is because it communicated to me short term thinking.
I thought, ‘wow, I come here every week and they can’t be bothered making an effort’.
It’s petty, really, isn't it? But hey, I’m human and so are you. And so are your peers.
I now go to another cafe. Every morning they say, “Hey, Rach!”
How they remember my name I have no idea.
But god, it feels good.
When we think short term, we get short term results.
When we send a belonging cue to someone else and show that we’ve heard them, is when relationships become more than transactional, they become relational and productive.
As a result, the way we do business elevates. Meaning that, over time, the whole business improves.
And on a personal note, you get past talking about the weather and actually have some interesting conversations.
The long term win, it turns out, is when people feel heard.
In sales, we call it the lifetime value of a customer. At work, it’s called employee engagement. And in leadership, we call it playing the long term game.
And if we want to experience abundance in work and in life, we gotta start figuring out how to work with people better.
The neat thing about this ‘choosing to notice other people’ concept is that you can start by just paying attention to things you usually would have zoned out about. Like turning on a light switch.
Listening is the first step to creating a psychologically safe team.
The easiest way to turn a relationship around, it turns out, is just by paying attention.
If you find yourself struggling to get out of ‘get stuff done mode’, or you notice your team are zoning out during connections, bring a Happiness Concierge facilitator to your workplace to have your team go through a series of exercises to improve interpersonal communication skills.
Plenty of us have forgotten the basics after the pandemic. That’s natural.
There is something we can do about it. And the result? Better relationships, trusted relationships and epic results.
We run workshops to help teams improve interpersonal communication skills.
Before we do, we meet with you privately, to talk about what sort of culture you want to reverse engineer.
This gives us a clear scope to help the team focus on the right things in the workshop.