Making Connections

Remember I wrote an earlier blog about how I felt talking to people about Snip-its? Basically, unless I was the one doing the talking, I felt very disconnected from other people. But something amazing happened when I started talking to people about Empowered Girls. Suddenly, I was connecting! It felt amazing! I give my elevator pitch on Empowered Girls, and all of a sudden, I’m getting CEOs and investment bankers telling me about their kids, or their siblings, or their parents. And guess what, we are all just the same (only different) – people looking for acceptance, positive reinforcement, and human connections. Instead of, “Gee, Snip-its sounds like an interesting business. What are your EBITDA margins?”, With Empowered Girls, I’m getting, “Wow, I have a daughter in college, and I sure wish I could have understood her better in her preteen years.” Or, “Yeah, my sister struggles with her kids, and I can see it stemming back from the way our mother treated her.” Who knew that the CEO of a fortune 500 company is also the adult child of critical parents? It’s been an amazing revelation!

Suddenly the barriers come down, the professional demeanor is gone, and we are just two people relating about things more important (really!) than EBITDA margins. This revelation got me thinking about how making human connections might actually be a better way to do business. I know I feel a strong connection on a deeper level with my family and close friends; what would it be like to connect in the same way with my co-workers and community of business associates? Do you know that to this day I do not know if that first investor has children? I don’t know if he still works or is retired, or anything about him. It’s amazing really that he chose to invest in Snip-its – in me – when we really had no connection at all.

I started to think about the people I associate with in my Snip-its world – the stylists in the salons, the corporate team, my board of directors, and even the vendors, lawyers, and advisors I work with. There are a few who I felt connected to, but most I felt kind of nervous and distant around. It had to be all business. But those few I felt closer to – it became obvious – it was because we had made friends. We talked about our kids and our lives outside of work, and we made a connection. Then we started doing business. It is those people who have worked for or with Snip-its for the longest time. They work the hardest for me, and I work hard for them. Neither wants to let the other one down. And the relationship grows fruitfully.

Are you thinking about the people in your organization? I bet specific names come to mind. Either someone you have a strong bond with or maybe someone you realize you don’t even know if they are married or not. I read a book once that recommended the CEO should know every employee’s birthday, and not just that, know their children’s birthdays too, and send a card to their home address. Sounded like a good idea when I read it a decade ago, but now it just seems like a gimmick – an insincere way to trick your employees in to thinking you care. How could it possibly work? Especially when we don’t treat our employees as personal friends throughout day-to-day business dealings. Sometimes we don’t even think of our employees and associates as people, but rather a means to an end like a computer program or some other tool we need to get ahead.

And yet, we’ve all heard how people don’t leave companies; they leave people. Get the right people on the bus. All the fancy management tactics in the world won’t help if you’ve got the wrong people on the team. It’s always interpersonal conflict that causes problems, and there are thousands of books written to address these sorts of business issues. Some of them are actually pretty good, but most of them, quite frankly (and this is just my opinion), suck. They tell you what to say and how to behave to be a “winner”, but they – those authors and business experts – don’t even know you. And we are all too smart to fall for some scripted scheme designed to make us better communicators. Remember the books about active listening. You’re supposed to lean forward and say, “so what I hear you saying is…blah blah blah.” Would you really fall for that? It’s so fake.

I think the message here is that we have to get real and be human in our business relations. It's good for our spirit and it's good for business!