Putting what matters "in the center"

I’ve been fortunate to have an interesting career. It’s taken me to some unexpected places, and I’ve learned a lot about ways we can show up along the way. Early on, I learned a lesson that has stayed with me: what we center in our work is critical. It’s critical in how we experience our work. Perhaps more important, it’s critical in how we encounter each other.

The specifics of the job I had when this lesson presented itself aren’t important. That said, it was a mission-driven organization that required demanding hours — it wasn’t unusual for us to work an 80-hour week. In fact, I worked over 100 hours in a week on multiple occasions. It also wasn’t unusual to encounter people who only thought about the work, and who pretty much worked 24/7. I watched person after person burn out, sometimes within weeks of being hired. It was pretty brutal.

In the first months of being in this job (which, by the way, I was definitely passionate about, which will help explain where I ended up), I encountered superiors who pushed me to always do more. I remember telling one of them that I’d go talk to the person they wanted me to track down as soon as I grabbed a sandwich. It was 7pm, and I hadn’t eaten all day. “Are you saying you’re willing to risk not being able to reach them for a sandwich?” Yeah, that was his response. In each of the places I had to travel to for this job, I encountered more of these high-pressure managers. We had so much to do, we can’t wait to get it done. Go. This was a culture of get it done at all costs.

You can probably see where this is going. Within a year, I hit a wall. I was falling apart. All the working, the traveling, the late nights, the early mornings took a toll. Too much coffee. Too much Red Bull. Unhealthy eating. It was doing me in. I fell into a deep depression and struggled to do the simplest things. A coworker who had become a friend encouraged me to talk to my boss. “She’ll understand,” this friend told me. “Trust me.” Thing is, this boss, who was well loved in our organization, wasn’t one of these more more more types. She worked her butt off, and people worked their butt off for her. But something about her was different. I went to talk to her.

She took me to lunch, and I spilled my guts. She listened. Really listened. She was fully with me. When I finished speaking, she looked at me with kind eyes and told me her story. Of burnout and being overworked. Of collapse. Of not being able to go any further. She looked at me and said, “I get it. Let’s figure out what to do together.” We talked about plans, about what was possible, about what I wanted. It was amazing. She stood up for me with some people, made arrangements, put me on a new work plan. Got me a reasonable schedule. Helped me get the help I needed. She may very well have saved my life.

I’m not so sure this is all that unusual. Yes, the conditions were extreme. But I think the underlying issue is far more common than we realize. The thing that gets into our cultures and drives us to do more. And more. And more. The thing that leads us to burnout, and unhealthy stress, not to mention what we tend to call “lack of engagement.”

And what is this thing that drove the intensity? It’s simple. It’s what we centered: getting the job done at all costs. We had goals. We had to achieve them. There were quotas. We had to meet them. We were in a very competitive environment, and if we didn’t “win,” someone else would. There was no time for us to consider an alternative. The irony is that I believed in this. In some ways, so did my boss. She believed in what we were doing with a passion I saw few meet.

But she held the work very differently than most of us did. She centered the health and well-being of the people she worked with. Dare I say, she centered care.

We could say this another way: she put humans first.

I was centering what pretty much everyone around me was centering. The winning. I was centering what others told me to get done. I was centering a transaction. And why wouldn’t I? It’s just the way things are, right?

And this, I think, is a big part of what we are up against. It’s just the way things are. But it’s not working. Perhaps it never did.

There are shifts happening in the world of work. The decisions we make during this time are likely to impact the “way things are” for years to come. I believe we’re being called to clarify what we center. By choosing just the work, we will get a certain outcome. And there is no doubt that some will choose that.

But if we center people – if we put humans first – we can expect an entirely different outcome. We can expect an outcome that contains greater meaning. An outcome we can be proud of. An outcome we can actually live with.

The thing is, putting people in the center doesn’t mean we are giving up on getting things done. We aren’t giving up on outcomes. My boss wasn’t saying, “It doesn’t matter if we lose. I don’t care.” No, she was saying the opposite. That it’s possible to achieve our goals, to get our work done, but only if we are around to do it. How can I help if I’ve burned out?

Productivity. Efficiency. Profit. Return on Investment. Yes, these things are important. But must we center them? What might the impact on these if we put what’s meaningful in the center? If we put humans first?

There’s one more thing I feel called to speak to here. My boss wasn’t holding this perspective as some sort of workplace initiative. It was who she was. One of the most significant takeaways in this for me is that in order put humans first, it has to come from within — from who we are and from caring about who others are. This requires being honest with ourselves about our goals, our desires, about who we want to be in the world. And it requires doing the hard work of extracting beliefs and conditioning that no longer serve us.

I’m grateful for what my boss did for me all those years ago. She showed me that there was a way we can approach our work that values care for one another as a way to support what we are doing in the world. She showed me that it’s okay to be a messy, challenged human being. She showed me what can happen by putting humans first.

How does your connect-o-meter work?

Let me be the first to say I’m not crazy about the term “connect-o-meter”. It’s cheesy. I know. However, sometimes cheesy works precisely because it’s cheesy. It’s memorable. It brings levity, helping to make the difficult more doable.

The connect-o-meter was initially a joke that started between me and my partner early on in our relationship. As introverts, we get deeply immersed in our alone time, making the transition into couple time bumpy and awkward, with both of us quick to be offended and hurt. The patterns that make it hard to reconnect run deep in both of us, of course, but we were committed to changing them. We just didn’t quite know (yet) how to ease and/or accelerate through the bumps and awkwardness.

So, one day, after about 3 hours of bumping along and wanting to just fast-forward into being connected, I turned to Jonathan and blurted “I wish we had a connect-o-meter so we could see where we are on it! Then we would know what to do!”

“Well, “ he said, “let’s make one. 0 = total disconnection and 10 = total connection. I’d say I’m at 6.5. How about you?” I was at a 6 and it was immediately useful to know that we weren’t so far apart. It was a “data” point that countered the “story” my crazy mind was making up. I felt more connected already!

We starting talking about where where we started 3 hours ago, what actions helped us get to 6ish, what level of connection we wanted and needed, and what actions would help us get there. We discovered it was pretty simple things that strengthened our connection - sitting on the couch and sharing what had been on our minds and in our hearts since we had been apart, a few kisses and hugs of welcome, hearing “It’s good to be with you”.

That was four years ago and we still use it today. The cool thing is that we’ve developed a bunch of “connection short-hand” so we can move towards it with much more ease and efficiency. I find efficiency a weird thing to think about relative to connection, especially romantic connection, because it’s such an “un-human” word and concept. Yet having “connection efficiency” means we have a lot more energy and time available to us since we don’t burn it up in worrying and arguing.

As my business name suggests, I believe connection works, that connection is what you need if you want to do great things. I believe that applies to all relationships, whether at work, at home, or in community. This belief has been proven to me again and again across so many relationships, especially those at work, where disconnection has resulted in confusing discussions that go round-and-round as people miss each other, poor decisions based on limited understanding that only fall apart later, poor quality products for the same reasons, missed deadlines because disconnection makes everything harder and take longer.

Of course, living the belief that connection is what you need if you want to do great things gets tricky. What kind and how much connection is enough to do great things? According to who? But this is where connect-o-meters really, really come in handy, starting with your own. First you have to know what is enough connection for you and what creates it or diminishes it?

I can hear you saying now, “Well, it depends on the situation and the person.” Of course it does, AND there are patterns to be found and I invite you to find a few of yours.

• Think of a few colleagues with whom you have a good connection with, where your connection makes it easy and productive to work together. What makes it a good connection for you?

• Think of a few colleagues with whom you do NOT have a good connection with, where your disconnection makes it hard and unproductive to work together. What creates the disconnection for you?

Becoming familiar with how connection works for us makes our work and lives better in at least 3 important ways:

1. It builds our self-awareness, which brings us more choice around the quality of connection we have in our relationships. Without self-awareness, we live our own version of Groundhog’s Day or to be more contemporary, Russian Doll, trapped in the same patterns of connection or worse, disconnection.

2. With self-awareness about how connection works for us, we can take responsibility for creating the conditions for good connections. It is less mysterious, less “it’s either there or it’s not”.

3. When we take responsibility for creating the conditions for good connections, we bring a different level of attention, intention, and, hopefully, curiosity. What is the quality of connection right now? What do I need? What do they need? Have a few of these conversations and pretty soon you’ll have a connection efficiency going with your colleagues and team members.

I hope you spend some figuring out how your connect-o-meter works. Start with just observing the quality of your connections with others. Notice what improves and diminishes connection. Then, the next time a conversation with a colleague hits a bumpy spot, sketch out a connect-o-meter, share where you are, and ask where they are. Throw one up on the whiteboard the next time your team gets stuck and ask people where they are. Ask for one action or practice that you could do right now, in the moment, to improve your connection and see what happens. I suspect great things — or at least, surprising things that shift the patterns of connection in productive ways.