From Connectors to Culture Carriers

Five Sets of Actionable Thoughts on How to Connect to Yourself and Others

This post is inspired by people. Particularly by the people who take the time to reflect on, study, and practise real connection – both at work and outside work.

Art by Virginia Kraljevic.

[1] Connectors and Super Connectors

Gartner’s VPs Jamie Roca and Sari Wilde published The Connector Manager in 2019, acknowledging that their book is, “like most of our research studies, the product of an enormous team undertaking”.

This book is a great example of skilled people teaming up with other skilled people to publish a study on what makes a successful manager in our world of work today and tomorrow. According to their findings, the main measure of success for a manager is the ability to create, leverage and promote real connection within and beyond his or her network.

[TOOL] Assessment: What Type of Manager Are You?

Anyone in a manager role interested in measuring their dominant approach for how they coach and develop employees is welcome to take the free assessment the authors made available here. The result is a starting point towards developing as Connectors and, taking it up a notch, towards developing as Super Connectors.

 [REFLECTION] Two Questions on the Optimal Environment and Mindset

Two questions can help define the optimal environment and mindset landscape that promote Super Connectors.

First, consider the systems, platforms and communities in your organization.

Do they help you and your colleagues connect?

 The Connector Manager authors call this environment the “Connector infrastructure.”

Building such an environment should be the first and “often most impactful investment that senior leaders can make to scale and support the Connector model.”

Second,

Do you stay in the coaching game?

Managers who never stop seeking the best – nonhierarchical – sources of coaching for themselves embrace the right mindset.

This mindset will allow them, in the long term, not to “lose sight of their own coaching responsibilities, even when their schedules and responsibilities become overwhelming.” It will help them “maintain close coaching relationships with their teams and carve out time in their schedules to provide guidance (judiciously) to others across the organization and beyond.”

Super Connectors keep their purpose simple and central, try to leverage their stance and harness the power of their networks to secure backing for their idea. They champion “Connector ways of working” and commit voluntarily in addition to their “daily job.”

They develop resilience practices that allow them to save their strength and energy to apply where it matters. 

[2] “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" (William Shakespeare)

What is another name you have for a leader, and what are a leader's key attributes?

Staying in the coaching game turns managers into both leaders – at certain times – and followers – at other times.

To me, that is the essence of servant leadership:

to know when to follow and when it’s time to lead, and have the humility to keep learning, observing, listening. 

[PERSPECTIVE] Another Name for Connectors and the Coaching Game

In Jonathan Kessel-Fell’s view, 21st-century leaders belong to a category best defined by an ancient Japanese word: Sendatsu, which describes a spiritual mountain leader and guide defined as “the one who has gone before,” someone who acts as a pioneer to seek out new paths that enhance learning and spiritual growth. 

No doubt, being able to act as a Sendatsu takes a lot of work. Someone does not magically wake up one day as Sendatsu. Any leadership journey is the result of interactions with the people someone followed, a cumulative effect of growth (the addition of layers upon layers of lessons learned, skill development and intentional study and practice over time, with consistency).

A manager who stays in the coaching game would be a Sendatsu, as Jon writes, who would lead his or her team safely along “a network of trails [even when there is] no official start or end point.” Anyone in a Sendatsu’s team would feel safe to follow, but also safe to take the lead when they believe they have new and constructive road map updates.  

In Simon Sinek’s words, we could call this coaching game (that an authentic Sendatsu would never leave) an Infinite Game. Perpetuating this game – beyond the players’ life span – would then become the heart of one’s worthy cause. Imagine if that someone is in all of us, manifesting at different levels as we grow into our best selves as colleagues, friends, partners, parents, grandparents, organizational psychologists and Nobel-prize winners trying to alleviate misery in the world, and the list can go on…

Here is a beautiful example of perpetuating the (coaching) game beyond one’s life span that I came across through Daniel Pink.

[3] Connection Lessons in Interpersonal Dynamics

In February this year, Carole Robin, Ph.D., coauthored the book Connect with her colleague at Stanford University, David Bradford.

David Bradford Ph.D. and Carole Robin Ph.D. taught interpersonal skills to MBA candidates for a combined seventy-five years in their legendary Stanford Graduate School of Business course Interpersonal Dynamics (affectionately known to generations of students as “Touchy Feely”). They have coached and consulted to hundreds of executives for decades.

It is quite telling that their book is the result of such a long-standing, fruitful cooperation.

This brings to mind a question.

Who would you gladly partner up with on a new study or a project without a second thought?

Connect offers perspective on many aspects like how to take relationships from shallow to exceptional by cultivating authenticity, vulnerability, and honesty, while being willing to ask for and offer help, share a commitment to growth, and deal productively with conflict. Of all the lessons, there is one that resonated with me that I'd like to share.

[REFLECTION] How to Deepen a Relationship

Self-disclosure (along with deciding if, when, with whom, and how much personal information we are willing to share) is a matter of personal choice and emotional maturity.

It is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, practising mindful self-disclosure means being open to others knowing you. Some of the benefits in this include: creating more opportunities to connect and increase trust. By sharing your story with someone, they are less likely to make up stories about you.

On the other hand, though, self-disclosure is not risk-free. It makes us vulnerable. And, as Simon Sinek shares in this video below, true vulnerability is inter-personal. It cannot happen in the form of reactive emotional sharing on social media which barely graduates to “broadcasting.” 

[PRACTICE] The 15% Rule

So how much should you disclose in order to deepen a relationship?

The authors of Connect respond with what they call "the 15% rule".

Here is how they recommend visualizing it.

Think of three concentric circles.

The innermost circle would be your safety zone, where you don’t give what you say a second thought. The outermost circle is the danger zone, where you would never consider sharing.

The circle in the middle is the zone of learning. That is where you are considering self-disclosure.

If you are concerned or worried about venturing in this middle zone with a disclosure, try stepping just 15% outside your comfort zone. That will allow you to recover more easily if things do not go as you plan as a result with the person you are engaging with.

In time, you can venture further in the relationships that you wish to grow inside the middle zone.

With every good outcome you will notice that your comfort zone expands a bit more.

To continue to learn and grow, experiment with stepping 15% beyond that.

[4] Create Your Own Rituals

How do you internalize, adjust or transform the practices that work for you and your team?

Here are some suggested rituals for you and your team that you can test and tweak as needed.

[TEAM RITUAL] Apply the 15% Rule

On your virtual team meeting, take 90 seconds to complete the prompt

“If you really knew me right now…”

Making this exercise a team ritual will allow your team to continuously expand the team members’ comfort zone while interacting.

[TEAM RITUAL] Surprise Me!

There is a similar practice recommended by Ivan Wanis Ruiz. I had the pleasure to join Ivan’s online event last month celebrating his newly-launched book End Boring. A Tactical Approach to Public Speaking & Communication. At the start of the event, I took part in an ice-breaker meant to bring together people in the audience who have never met.

Each of us joined a breakout room in groups of three for 2-3 minutes to share responses to this prompt

“People would be surprised to know that I…”

Use this icebreaker to add serendipity and surprise to your meetings and get to know the people attending a bit better.

[INDIVIDUAL RITUAL] Step Out onto the Balcony

Explore this reflective practice by asking yourself this question that opens Valerie Arnold's recent article:

In the midst of action, do you remember to take a step back and ask yourself what's truly happening here?

(Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksy write about it in their book Leadership on the Line.)

I tried out this practice while taking Acumen's project-based course Adaptive Leadership. This course helps participants identify a leadership challenge and use the tools and techniques of Adaptive Leadership to make progress on it. The Adaptive Leadership approach was developed at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and equips people with the skills needed to lead change in times of uncertainty in an increasingly complex world. Listen to Eric Martin of Adaptive Change Advisors describing this practice:

[5] Culture Carriers

At the end of his keynote on the Degreed LENS Lite event on May 5, Adam Grant shared a few insights on "culture carriers" - people at every level in the organization who have a disproportionate impact on the value and norms of the workplace.

Who are they in our organization?

Adam Grant suggests using this question to find out:

"If I can only meet one person in this organization, and after observing them and interacting with them for 10 minutes I would get what the culture is like at its best, who is that person?"

He went on to say that "if you ask enough people that question, you will get a lot of consistent names. Those are your culture carriers. Go and meet them, get them in front of the rest of your team. Those are the people who substitute a lot for those creative collisions and that on-site community experience building that we are all missing right now."

Give it a go!

Who would that one person be for you? (think past and present cooperation)

If you feel comfortable, you can share that name in a comment below, or take this to your network to explore further.

Among many culture carriers I am fortunate to know, someone's name stands out, Janani D'Silva:

In my movie, I get to help people thrive every day. 

More pearls of wisdom from Jan here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With thanks to

Virginia Kraljevic, Jamie Roca, Sari Wilde, Jonathan Kessel-Fell, Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, Daniel Pink, Carole Robin, Ph.D., David Bradford, Ivan Wanis Ruiz, Valerie Arnold, Eric Martin, Janani D'Silva and all the connectors and culture carriers who elevate, enchant, and inspire.