1 Discipline 1: Connecting to Build Affiliation

A dream you dream alone is only a dream.

A dream you dream together is reality.

—Yoko Ono, Japanese multimedia artist, songwriter, and peace activist

EVEN WITH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN THE RECENT past for most, many are still reluctant to fully enter physical communal spaces, and they remain tethered to screens. Fears about safety while commuting for people from non-majority populations (based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender, for example) are well grounded. So is, for those in the United States, the anxiety around finding oneself trapped in another random mass shooting. So are, for people everywhere, concerns about adding to the planet’s carbon footprint through commuting.

Connecting remains a challenge even for the growing number of workers returning to the office in full- or part-time capacities, especially for the millions who began new jobs during the pandemic, and not to mention the generation who began their professional careers in physical isolation.

More than half of US adults (58 percent) are experiencing loneliness, according to a recent study by the Cigna Group, with people from underrepresented racial groups experiencing loneliness at higher rates.1 For example, 75 percent of Hispanic adults and 68 percent of Black/African American adults are classified as lonely—10 points higher than the rate for the total adult population.2 Fueled in part by this mass loneliness, 42 percent of Americans are reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression.3

It’s worse in the workplace: 72 percent of employees report feeling lonely at least once a month and 70 percent of employees who now work remotely feel lonelier than before they made the switch.4 In its 2023 Belonging Barometer 2.0 study, EY found that more than 80 percent of employee respondents globally from one specific company have felt or feel lonely at work, with 49 percent feeling lonelier than they did prior to the pandemic. Stunningly, 90 percent of employees suffering from loneliness said they would not tell their supervisor they were struggling.5

This epidemic of loneliness has a significant bottom line financial impact. Employee disconnection is one of the main drivers of voluntary turnover, “with lonely employees costing U.S. companies up to $406 billion a year,” according to the Harvard Business Review.6 Conversely, BetterUp found that employees who experience high levels of belonging have decreased turnover risk, increased job performance, a reduction in sick days, and an increased employer promoter score, which results in annual savings of $52 million for a ten-thousand-person company. Teams that score in the top 20 percent in relational engagement realize a 41 percent reduction in absenteeism and 59 percent less turnover.7

The antidote to this mass isolation and loneliness is clearly Connecting, our first discipline of inclusive teams. As primal—and some may say obvious—as this need is for us, we’re failing at it, especially in our work teams. In BetterUp’s 2022 The Connection Crisis Report, 69 percent of employees surveyed said they aren’t satisfied with the opportunities for connection at work.8 And while most human resources (HR) professionals (85 percent)—who arguably specialize in employee well-being—agree that connection between employees in the workforce is critical, just 31 percent of HR respondents say they’ve adequately addressed the challenges with employee connection at work.9

We need to revisit how to effectively connect in this new post-Covid age, including addressing the generational divides that Covid and remote work have put into starker contrast. And we better figure this out quickly because the effect of not connecting is devastating to work productivity and innovation as well as emotional health.

CONNECTING WITHIN INCLUSIVE TEAMS

Connecting with others is an evolved trait. Humans began living in groups as a mechanism to support cooperative behaviors like hunting and grooming. Today, relationships with others are a kind of cooperative behavior that offers the support critical to navigating a competitive world.

Twentieth-century thinker Abraham Maslow posited that connecting with others is essential to meeting all of our human needs—from the most basic, such as survival (e.g., group hunts that made sure there was enough food for the tribe and GoFundMe projects for critical medical treatments), to the higher-end ones, such as self-actualization (e.g., friends and family coming together to celebrate a graduation and teams galvanizing to develop a cure for Huntington’s disease). But connection also has benefits that lie below the surface. For example, humans release more endorphins and more oxytocin—two neurotransmitters involved in reward processing in the brain—when we interact with friends. In other words, the act of connecting is its own reward.

In the workplace—whether physical or virtual—where so many of us spend a substantial portion of our time, the most likely avenue for connection is within teams. They are the platform not only for getting work done but also for social connection and supportive relationships. At least, they can be. Even in this smallest unit of organizational culture, connection does not happen automatically. Sometimes, it can feel even more isolating and lonely to be the “only one” on a team than it is to work alone.

Connecting within an inclusive team goes way deeper than team members just sharing their title and tenure in the organization. This says so little about each team member’s full range of capabilities and experiences. Rather, it’s about forging strong professional team bonds that will result in enhanced team performance.

Please note the emphasis here on getting to know the professional and intellectual qualities of the team members versus getting to know them more personally. In the Inclusive Teams model, we reserve the practices and dynamics of the more personal nature to the second discipline of Caring, which we will explore in the next chapter.

The first and foundational inclusive team discipline of Connecting leads to team members of all backgrounds and abilities feeling valued for their skills, training, and experience. The result is greater physical, mental, and emotional health, increased engagement, and better business outcomes.11, 12, 13

Let’s look at three key Connecting practices that inclusive teams do well:

• Exhibiting Curiosity
• Building Trust
• Sharing a Common Purpose

EXHIBITING CURIOSITY

Members of inclusive teams express curiosity about what each person brings to the team in terms of their formal and informal credentials, skill sets, and work experiences. By nurturing this curiosity, they gain a better understanding of their peers’ perspectives, interests, strengths, and motivations, and their peers feel more comfortable revealing more of themselves and what they can offer to the team.

Individuals with perfunctory interest versus genuine curiosity often engage their team members in rote, noncreative, and nonpersonal ways. For example, they may see and interact with people befitting their position or tenure without digging deeper to learn who the person behind the title is. On the other hand, inclusive team members practice curiosity through active listening and asking open-ended questions about people’s specific educational, work, and life experiences. When curiosity is reciprocated among team members, connection increases—and with it, knowledge of people’s capabilities that could move the needle on team performance.

Curiosity about others is what led Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to team up. Though they initially were pitted against one another as fierce competitors in the technology industry, their shared interest in innovation and curiosity about each other led to a series of exciting conversations and strategic collaborations, as detailed by journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller Outliers.14

As Gladwell noted, “The more Jobs came to know about Gates, the more impressed he was. ‘He’s actually a really good guy,’ Jobs said.” This shift in perception was driven by Jobs’s curiosity about Gates’s motivations and ideas. And this curiosity-driven connection led to the joint development of new technologies, such as the Microsoft Office Suite for Macintosh computers, and paved the way for greater cooperation and communication within the tech industry.

THE THREE QUESTIONS

How can we show curiosity for what people bring to the team without being uncomfortably intrusive? We have developed a surefire way we call The Three Questions. Team leaders can ask these questions one on one or in a group. They can also encourage team members to initiate Three Questions conversations among themselves.

This approach starts with a preface to appropriately frame what is happening. Here’s how it goes.

1. Provide context.

   I was reading this book on inclusive teams and it encouraged team members to ask each other about how we can best work together.

2. Ask for consent.

   Would you be interested in a conversation to learn more about each other in that way? If not, no worries.

3. Reciprocate.

   And if we do have that conversation, I would be happy to share about myself as well.

In our work, we have found that most people approached this way are open to sharing about their professional selves. Why? Because many people like being asked about themselves, especially things they wish their colleagues knew about them so their skills could be leveraged more effectively. It is stunning how little people tend to know about the breadth and depth of their teammates’ skills and experiences, much less how they can be leveraged for greater team impact.

And now, The Three Questions:

1. In our work together, what’s one thing about you that I don’t know, that you would like me to know?
2. If you were to bring more of that skill/experience/mindset to work, what would that look like and what do you believe the impact would be?
3. What would you need from me as your teammate [or manager] to be able to do that?

When team members have these types of Three Questions conversations with each other on a regular basis, it strengthens their connections. Showing this type of professional curiosity is a powerful connector because it makes people feel seen and valued for what they bring to the workplace. It is also a powerful performance enhancer because it leads to team members being tapped more effectively for their contributions.

BUILDING TRUST

Trust in one’s coworkers is associated with greater organizational commitment, increased job satisfaction, greater attraction to the organization, and lower employee turnover. Individuals rated high on trust (i.e., they are trusting) tend to give others the benefit of the doubt even when mistakes happen. Their connections are strong and resilient. Additionally, knowing that you are trusted generates greater feelings of well-being and greater connection. In this way, trust creates a virtuous cycle of positivity that benefits individuals and the whole team.

Inclusive teams trust that each member will get their work done. They make trust building a priority and do all they can to address areas of distrust related to team accountabilities and goals. The more each individual trusts their teammates to get the work done, the lower the tendency to micromanage.15 This leads to increased autonomy, lower job insecurity, and greater “meaningfulness” of work, all of which deepen trust and team connectivity.16 And when everyone feels connected and can trust each other to stick to their word and follow through on their commitments, the more good work can be done. KFI research confirms that teams with greater trust and collaboration achieve more. They make better decisions and deliver better financial results.17

There are many reasons, often justified, for team members to not trust each other, some of which may have little or nothing to do with the team itself. For example, conflicts within a team due to interpersonal relationship dynamics (related or not to the team’s work) are common. Teams may also contain members from a diversity of backgrounds, some of whom have experienced racism, homophobia, ableism, ageism, or other forms of discrimination. As such, they may be wary of trusting members of groups that may have hurt them in the past or they may be particularly sensitive to acts of unconscious bias even by well-intentioned team members.

Addressing these complex dynamics often requires outside help in the form of individual therapy, mediation, and professional consequences for misconduct. There are many well-researched and elaborate best practices for these different types of interventions that we won’t try to do justice to here, except to say individual team members must be open to exploring their own reasons for lack of trust when they go beyond the scope of a work team and the manager. Part of this exploration should include an acknowledgment of our human tendency to more easily trust people who are like us or whom we have known longer.

At one of our clients in the pharmaceutical industry there was a team leader who needed to assign a new project to a team member. He had two people in mind, Margarita and Laurent, who both had the necessary skills and expertise. Margarita was someone the manager had worked with closely for several years and he knew her well. Laurent was new to the team, and while he had a good track record, the leader didn’t know him as well.

Given his closer relationship with Margarita, the leader felt more comfortable assigning the project to her. While both Margarita and Laurent’s credibility and reliability were important, the emotional connection and trust the manager had built up over time played an inequitable role in his decision-making process. So, the manager defaulted to the person he knew best and who was more like him. But to tap into the full potential of a diverse team, inclusive leaders must be careful to not have overreliance on the comfort they feel with some team members over others.

It’s understandable that managers may be reluctant to give assignments to people they don’t know as well, but this only proves why connection is so important. In such circumstances, practicing curiosity and getting to know the full dimension of each team member’s skills, education, and experiences would go far to build trust and lead to more equitable decision-making. Inclusive teams don’t leave anyone behind.

SHARING A COMMON PURPOSE

The 1995 Rugby World Cup was hosted by South Africa. At the time, the nation was undergoing a significant transition from apartheid to becoming a democratic society. The South African rugby team, the Springboks, represented a nation cleaved along racial and cultural lines. There was one Black player on the team and, historically, a Black person wearing the Springboks jersey was considered an affront to Whites.

Team captain Francois Pienaar, with guidance from President Nelson Mandela, inspired the Springboks to find a shared purpose not just for themselves but for the country, bringing unity and reconciliation to a racially divided nation.

But before striving for such a lofty purpose, the Springboks had a more immediate goal: winning the rugby tournament. This more attainable shared objective galvanized the team; as a collective, they were playing for all of South Africa. With this important goal within their reach, the Springboks went on to win the Rugby World Cup.

Their shared win led to the entire nation celebrating together—previously unthinkable given the systemic separation of the races under apartheid. It brought the country one step closer to the ideal of racial reconciliation and national unity. Post-celebration surveys reflected a more optimistic view of the country’s future. As a result, initiatives were launched to promote rugby and other sports in historically overlooked communities as a means of integrating different racial groups.

Few things focus a team to work collaboratively and inclusively like shared purpose. The KFI’s research on traits and competencies shows that the trait of affiliation (which is one way to connect to others who have a common purpose) is linked to positive business outcomes.18 In fact, shared purpose is, to mix metaphors, both the glue that keeps a team together and the propellent to get things done.

As the Springboks’ story shows, having shared purpose is also the most effective practice to soften the edges of differences of all kinds. It is the bigger picture that allows team members to recognize how their individual roles—and others’—contribute to the larger goals of the group. We are all more motivated to work together and harder when we can identify each person’s part in achieving a common goal.

While the work of creating a shared purpose falls on team leaders initially, members of inclusive teams play a critical role in identifying how individual goals might come together to achieve that shared purpose. It often starts with a growth mindset that embraces challenges, persistence in the face of setbacks, and seeing possibilities where others may see limitations.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

There was an executive at a prestigious nonprofit who was known for being exceptionally competent at his job—smart, focused, efficient—but his team’s results, while positive, were not transformational.

In assessing if he was leading his team inclusively, it became evident that while he had a gentle way about him, he came across as aloof and unknowable when relating to his team members.

In a coaching session to get to the heart of the matter, he was asked how well he knew his team members and vice versa.

“Not very much at all,” he answered. “I know them for their skills and credentials, but I have no idea about the reality of their work and the life experiences that may have shaped how they approach their work.”

While he admitted it would be nice to know more about his people, and to share his own compelling background and experiences, he claimed there was no time.

His coach suggested he try connecting more with his team as an experiment. They asked him to find opportunities to ask his people about who they are within the context of work.

A few weeks later, the executive reported back enthusiastically on the results of the experiment. He had used a variation of The Three Questions with four new employees at an onboarding dinner. Usually, he used these dinners to discuss the dos and don’ts for succeeding in their complex organization. This time, he started the conversation with The Three Questions. He asked them about their origin stories and their motivation for joining the organization. Important information about how they could uniquely contribute to the mission poured out: “I learned things about them I would have never learned no matter how long we would have ended up working together.”

Three months later, the executive shared with his coach that their connections have only deepened—the way he interacts with these new employees and how they work with each other is qualitatively different from any other group he has ever worked with.

In a world of so much isolation and loneliness, getting back to the basics of Connecting can create profound shifts in how teams perform. Next, we will turn to the other overlooked yet foundational discipline of inclusive teams: Caring.

CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

• Connecting is the ability to deeply understand and value the capabilities, professional experiences, and identity-forming biography of each team member.
• Showing professional curiosity builds deeper connections within a team, making team members feel seen and valued. A good way to achieve this is by incorporating The Three Questions.
• Team members within a diverse team may struggle with trust due to past experiences with discrimination and other forms of exclusion, whether professional or personal.
• Inclusive team members get to know and connect with every team member and not just those that are more like them.
• A shared purpose supports team collaboration and motivation to achieve.