The Absolute Importance of Connection
In my gut, I knew that connection with your team is the key to all sorts of yummy benefits for your organization (and disconnection is cause for all sorts of yucky disadvantages.) My gut is one thing, and hard and fast data is another.
Guess what - the data agrees with me.
This report from BetterUp involved 78 companies and over 3,000 US workers. Respondents from the most well connected workplaces had, among other benefits:
40% more social thriving
34% more empathy
27% more empowerment
And if that’s too touchy-feely for you, let me share some of the yucky things that happen when employees are disconnected. Those employees who identify as low in belonging have:
313% stronger intention to quit
176% higher likelihood of seriously job-seeking outside the organization
Yikes. Whoa. I think we all know that the cost of recruiting, onboarding, and training new employees is sky-high… in dollars, time, resources, and emotional energy. The problem is that teams feeling connected is a bit vague. How do you increase people’s sense of belonging? How do you help your team to feel more connected?
What if I told you that Compassionate Coaching recently was able to help a team increase their level of connection from 63% to 83%… and that it only took 75 minutes? It goes like this… at the beginning of a half-day retreat, I invited the team members to write down the answer to a simple question:
Look at the team sitting here with you.
On a scale of 1-10*, how connected do you feel with them right now?
0* = not at all connected
10 = extremely connected
Everyone wrote down their number. My team and I used our signature offering, our Interactive Team Building Experience, which uses the highly memorable and powerful modality of Playback Theatre. After the 75-minute intervention, they answered the same question, rating their personal level of connection on a scale of 0 to 10.
Before the Interactive Team Building Experience, the average level of connection was 6.3. Afterwards, it was 8.3! In fact, two of the team member’s level of connection was 30% higher after the 75-minute intervention.
What is this Interactive Team Building Experience, you ask? It’s an offering that utilizes Playback Theatre, an improvisational art form that incorporates storytelling, music, movement, and improvisational drama. Our Playback Team, which consists of a facilitator, actors, and a musician, are trained in deep listening. As your team members share their stories, based on a theme that we have co-designed with you, the Playback Team is listening intently. After a team member’s story is fully shared with the facilitator’s guidance, the actors and musician “play back” the story, elevating it with artistry, and conveying the storyteller’s deeper meaning. As a result, your team not only hears each other’s stories, they also experience artistry together. Empathy comes to life before their very eyes!
It’s powerful stuff. In fact, one of the team members at that very retreat described it in just about the best way ever:
Best experience you have never had before!
Connection is an abstract and absolutely important part of being human. And it’s essential for your team to be connected to one another. If you’re ready for this wildly innovative, effective, and memorable offering that Compassionate Coaching has — the Interactive Team Building Experience — then let’s chat. Our team would love to be of service to your team.
*Full disclosure: I had a typo on the form I offered the team! What you see here is what they received. As you can see, I list the scale inconsistently. Once it’s listed as 0-10, and once as 1-10. So this could have possibly skewed the results!