Developing a strategy for ‘Connection’ can have enormous influence on the way your people think and connect and plays an important role in fundamental transformation of any businesses culture and work environment. There are three behaviour-based concepts that must be adopted and learned in order to successfully transform connection: attentiveness (focus on others), alertness (emotional sensitivity of others), and adaptability (resiliency to respond to changing events). There is no one of these more important than the other, but the most difficult for most is adaptability – resiliency to respond to changing events.
Adaptability is the capacity to effectively adjust to situations. Adaptable leaders are flexible, quick thinkers and learners, and are highly versatile. They do not get stuck on a method or an approach that does not work, preferring instead to be proactive and resourceful in finding alternatives. Adaptability is an indispensable prerequisite to building connections.
In everyday situations, being adaptable means relating to others according to their behavioural style. Specifically, leaders must learn to adjust their communication according to the preference of the other person – for example, 1) a person likes to converse by email rather than face to face, or 2) a person appreciates receiving background information rather than just main points.
Your success as a leader is inextricably linked to your ability to connect with people. You can connect with followers in a number of ways, but all of the approaches must be characterized by trust and compassion. Experiences or interactions that are more focused on tasks than on people will be perceived negatively. These negative experiences accumulate and ultimately erode your connection. Positive experiences, on the other hand, increase your influence and enable you to sustain connection.
In sum, creating and sustaining positive connections with people, much like developing self-awareness, is a deliberate and willful act. It requires a change in behaviour and self-examination of what you want to accomplish with the connections you forge. Whether you desire less interpersonal conflict, better performance, fewer miscommunications, greater productivity, fewer turf battles, or higher employee engagement, you must learn and apply the behaviour skill of making highly positive emotional connections with other people. You can achieve tangible outcomes in performance through the power of creating and sustaining intangible connections.
Catherine is the President and CEO of CORPORATE HARMONY, providing virtual solutions for leadership development and organizational culture change. Her leadership and coaching experience as a Project Manager in an ever-changing, fast moving technological organization with unrelenting demands drove her to the realization that a positive mindset and strength-building behaviors are essential for today’s complex and chaotic organizational systems. CORPORATE HARMONY’s virtual platform of programs, coaching and performance measurement, is an innovative online technology of tested proprietary content. The world-class content of CORPORATE HARMONY’s Positive Presence Program develops the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and the necessary ‘Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies’ for maintaining a positive and energized mindset and increased performance in today’s complex work environment, and leading to a culture of collaboration and connection. Catherine’s vision for Corporate Harmony is to bring the skill of “Positive Presence” to the corporate world as it becomes more complex, ambiguous and chaotic. Catherine is uniquely positioned to impact organizations’ productivity and long term success, with her powerful vision of eliminating bad stress from every workplace around the globe, bringing purpose into the people equation to promote healthy, productive and meaningful work cultures and turn the tide on the neglect of mental health on a global scale. Catherine is author of the book: “CORPORATE HARMONY – The Performance Link for Today’s Modern Organization” Catherine can be reached at: Catherine.Osborne@corporateharmony.ca or go to ‘contact us’ on our website www.corporateharmony.ca. Catherine is available for consultation, and can be reached by 519-695-3407.