The Athletic, Joey Votto and Steph Curry Found a Secret to Workplace Happiness. You Can, Too:
As a young first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, Votto showed up to work, kept his head down and locked into his routine, the same drills, the same swings, the same results. …
The routine turned Votto into one of the best hitters of his era, a multi-time All-Star, an NL MVP, an on-base machine and a potential Hall of Famer. But then one year, he read the seminal book by Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” a self-help tome originally published in 1936.
Votto was struck by a passage about connection. One of the best ways to reach others, Carnegie wrote, was to offer sincere appreciation. It wasn’t enough to show up; you had to be intentional.
In the months and years that followed, Votto began to change. He came out of his shell and found his voice. He counseled younger players, doling out hitting advice and telling jokes, letting teammates into his world, a charming mix of chess, philosophy, science and dry comedy. …
What Votto had discovered was an idea that Jane Dutton, an organizational psychologist at the University of Michigan, has spent nearly three decades researching.
Her key finding: There is a simple formula for being happier at work. … [T]here’s [a simple] way to foster happier work places and more cohesiveness among team members. The answer is in what Dutton calls “high-quality connections,” a term she coined to describe the brief, positive interactions between colleagues.
They can be a quick conversation, an email exchange or an interaction in a meeting, but they are marked by trust, equal engagement from both sides and acceptance. Perhaps more important: They don’t require a long or deep relationship.
In some ways, it may seem obvious that having positive interactions would boost team morale. Yet the magnitude of the impact is surprising. Studies have shown that an increase in “high-quality connections” can improve physiological health outcomes for employees and increase measures of energy and vitality. It can also increase resilience and coordination in organizations. In other words, fostering more connections may be more powerful than trying to change a company’s culture.
“This is such a simple idea, but I’ve been stunned at how powerful it is,” Dutton said. “It doesn’t cost money. It’s easier to actually change (that) than culture, which is really hard to change in an organization.”
The origins of Dutton’s work began in the 1990s, when researchers were studying people who clean hospitals. Dutton was interested in how people in low-status jobs dealt with feeling, in her words, “devalued.”
The study offered a surprise. The maintenance workers and custodians were having regular, brief interactions with patients and their families, which allowed the cleaners to reframe their work as meaningful.
They were able to see themselves as “part of being healers,” Dutton said. …
A second aspect of HQCs, however, could be more useful to coaches and sports executives. When it comes to building resilient organizations, it’s sometimes easier to think smaller than to build a deep relationship.
“The idea of changing a relationship can be really daunting,” Dutton said. “But if you think about, well, that relationship is made up of a whole bunch of little micro bits of connection and disconnection, you’re gonna build a better relationship if you have more of these moments of high-quality connecting.”
Through her research, Dutton devised a set of categories and strategies to foster these “connections” at work.
The first was what she called “respectful engagement,” which included words of affirmation, praise or genuine interest in a colleague’s work.
The second was “task enabling,” or helping an employee accomplish something. In sports terms, it might include a baseball player offering a tip in the batting cage or a basketball coach introducing a drill to a player. But it could also be more abstract — creating the conditions or culture for success — a concept that former NBA coach Phil Jackson once described as “invisible leadership.”
The final category was creating trust, either through moments of vulnerability or by soliciting information or input.
The connections are often brief — just 30 or 40 seconds at the most. But Dutton thinks of them “like vitamins,” nutrients for the mind and spirit. Those moments help propel people forward. Then the cycle continues.
On some level, Steph Curry has understood this intuitively.
When former Warriors guard Glenn Robinson III joined Golden State in 2019, Curry greeted him with a handshake and offered him a list of churches in the area. When Jeff Addiego, who runs the Warriors’ youth basketball academy, made a rare appearance at the Chase Center, Curry asked how the basketball season was going for Addiego’s daughter. When the Warriors landed late in Indianapolis one night, Curry knocked on young teammate Quinn Cook’s door and walked with him to Steak ‘n Shake, where they ate burgers and talked until 4 in the morning.
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