We’re hard-wired to connect. We’re born and pre-programmed to form attachments that we need to survive. So when we don’t connect, it hurts.
Here is some factual data. When we don’t connect the area that lights up in the brain when we experience physical pain – the anterior cingulate – is the exact same area that lights up when we feel ‘socialpain’. Chronic physical pain is exhausting. The same is true for chronic social pain. It stands to reason then, that a disconnected workforce is an exhausted, stressed and often, burnt out one.
Emotions can both support and provide a barrier to connection, so we need to start talking about them if we are to enable organisations to ‘get connected’. However we rarely see ‘emotion’ and ‘business’ in the same sentence. Traditionally we don’t talk about our feelings and emotions at work, so we often leave them at home and we just get on with it.
But let’s not forget that we’re all human. We all feel. Talking about our feelings and emotions can feel difficult, BUT doing this can bring about incredible transformations that have a real impact on business performance. Getting more connected to ourselves means we can become more connected to others.
A ‘business person’ is defined as someone undertaking activities for the purpose of generating cash flow, sales and revenue with a view to fuelling business growth and development. A ‘humanitarian’ is someone seeking to promote human welfare. The two are often seen as mutually exclusive, but why should they be? Someone fuelling business growth and at the same time promoting human welfare is the perfect combination to drive connection and therefore high performance.
We use simple frameworks to support conversations, access emotions and increase connection.
TheRising Vibrational Scale is the back bone model of the Rising Vibe brand and is used to enable acknowledgment of how we are really feeling. It provides a language to articulate emotion, challenges you to acknowledge your starting point and then shifts your thinking with a series of coaching questions. When we change the perspective of our thinking just slightly it can make a significant impact to how we are feeling. Change the thought, change the feeling. There is no good, bad, right or wrong emotion. All of them are valid; they are simply high or low vibe. The choice to make a shift will come from the question: ‘is this feeling keeping you stuck or moving you forwards?’
We use the 5C’s framework alongside the scale to bring simple and practical application of connection to the business world:
- Clarity – do you know what is expected of you? Explicitly?
- Capability – do you know what you need to know and can you do what you need to do?
- Confidence – how confident do you feel to deliver what is expected?
- Cared About – how cared about do you feel within the business? Do you believe that the people you work with care about you?
- Connection – how connected do you feel to the business/brand? Do you know what value you bring/impact you have to business results?
This enables a conversation with a clear business frame, and at the same time checks in around how someone is feeling.
The most important thing to remember about connection in the workplace is that is rarely happens immediately, so showing commitment and using such tools as these consistently on a regularly basis is critical to achieve results.
Download your Rising Vibe Scale today for free at www.rising-vibe.com.
