Consider this: Your friends were strangers to you at one point.
Our connections with friends are critical to our personal and professional well-being. In fact, having a best friend at work is the single best predictor of engagement at work from Gallup’s longstanding Q12 engagement survey.
We are designed to connect, so we long to belong, and we are better together!
To illustrate the power of connections, consider an experiment conducted to study the effects of relationships on group performance. The researchers compared the performance of groups of three friends to groups of three acquaintances. Each group was asked to follow specific instructions for building models made with Tinkertoy® pieces.
The friends built an average of 9.0 models compared to 2.45 models for the acquaintances. “The friends were able to challenge one another’s ideas in a constructive way,” said Karen Jehn, one of the researchers. “In the groups of acquaintances, people were almost too polite.”
One of the fastest ways to connect with others is to find common ground. This is true whether you are building a new relationship or building a bridge to mend an existing one.
Consider two people who are at odds and walk away from negotiations, thinking they are a lost cause. Then in walks a skilled mediator who quickly identifies a win-win solution. The contentious parties were focused on differences, while the mediator focused on commonalities.
So, what is the lesson here?
Connections among teammates increase team health as measured by engagement and productivity. Sure, digital connectivity greases the wheels of high performance, but emotional connection is the engine.
Another compelling study demonstrates that a feeling of connection can alter how our brains process the challenges we face.
Researchers found that if a person is looking at a hill and judging how steep it is, the simple presence of social support (like a friend) made the hill look 10 to 20 percent less steep than if the individual were alone.
Your or your team’s perception of a task, goal, or project is transformed for the better when the presence of others is felt on the journey to achievement. Healthy connections with others mean we let others know we are looking up that hill, not alone but together.