An emotional connection is one of those fleeting, powerful
things that can seem all too rare and all too outside one's control. It can
seem like it's just chance when you happen upon one as if but by the grace of
God it came into being.
And learning to connect with people on an emotional level is
one of the most powerful, practical, wide-reaching skills you can possibly
learn. If you haven't given much thought to this one before, it's high time you
started.
Basically, feeling connected means feeling in touch with
someone who cares about us. Most people acknowledge that children need to feel
a safe attachment to an adult who cares for them. The reality is that adults
also need a secure attachment to another adult. Each of us has an innate need
to feel safely attached to another person who will be there in our times of
physical or emotional need.
And emotional connection, at its very core, is all about
helping others see you as the same as them: as someone who gets them, is bonded
to them, and understands them to the quick of them. If you stop and you're
really, truly honest with yourself, you'll realize they're people just like you
are and just like the people you don't consider
"other" are, and there really isn't anything wrong with them. They're
just living a different life you don't fully relate to, and they have different
reactions to you and feelings about you too.
The ability to make an emotional connection is so often
misunderstood because it’s not about being emotional or showing emotion. It’s about
making a human connection- one person to another. This sounds simple, but it’s
easy to lose sight of. When I feel overloaded in the midst of ringing phones,
e-mails by the hundreds, and a gazillion other things to do, I tend to
lose sight of the people around me and begin to see everything as a project
that needs to be accomplished.
Research has shown that a person’s mood can be affected even
by three degrees of separation from people they don’t even know. So imagine
your impact in the workplace on those who report to you directly. Whether positive
or negative, your emotional state has a significant influence on those you work
with, especially when you’re the team leader.
But if you’re a leader, you simply have to develop the
ability to reach out to others, engage them in discussion, and actively provide
feedback. You’re the one who has to be out in front, taking the lead in
developing these relationships. Even introverts can muster the energy to do
these things and relate to others.
As leaders, by definition, we do our work through other
people, and yet how easy it is to lose sight of that, to focus on the amount of
work - the tasks, the output, the jobs to be completed. The irony is, the more
you focus on the quality of those connections, the greater your quantity of
output is likely to be.
The ability to build an emotional connection allows you to
build friends and allies with on a highly consistent basis. All you really need
to start is a focus on connecting.
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