I am stoked today to have the opportunity to give a talk to our excellent management team in Atlanta, GA. FHI leader Shad Santee asked me if I would talk with his team on the importance of leaders touching a heart before they ask for a hand (Law of Connection - Thanks JMax). Knowing this is something Shad's team has heard many times from him. Praise you Shad for wanting to keep the message alive and well.
I want to take this deeper though. I am going to rave on the psychological and physiological aspect of this principle (touch a heart before you ask for a hand). Heartmath Institute has been doing fascinating research for years on the powerful partnership between the heart and the brain. We are learning more and more that the heart is a tremendous component to the ebb and flow of our emotional funky bunch. Your heart produces extensive inputs that rocket ship straight to your brain therefore making a major contribution to the Emotional Experience.
When appreciation, praise and compassion are placed on you from someone, especially a boss, your heart does the happy dance and fires away at your brain, which puts a pump in your step, powers your productivity and pulverizes negativity.The addition of this Leadership Oxygen flows into your environment and enhances the business at hand. This physiological experience is termed: Physiological Coherence which tells us that SUSTAINED positive states of mind lead to a clear and concise mode of physiological function that appears to help the body regenerate! Active regeneration and maintenance of Positive EMO(emotions) can produce extended periods of productivity.
If you are a leader, you have a new job = to create positive feelings in your team. If the technical dynamics of your workplace have the makeup of high stress, like a Distribution Facility or a Belligerent Boss Boot Camp. Transforming stress requires intervention at the emotional level. Your leadership necessity is to make their Heart and Brain talk to each other several times throughout the shift, not just as a one-hit wonder. Get to know what puts a dance in the step of everyone on your team and be the person who pushes those buttons with a smile.
True Leadership will lead to passionate productivity, turnover reduction and injury reduction. Perhaps you never thought "touching a heart" was so literal. Go to Heartmath Institute to learn much more.
What kind of emotions do Dictators create and what are their results? What kind of emotions did Mother Teresa create and what were her results? That'll make it stick.
If Leadership is Rallying people to a better future, why would you not want to make contributions to their HEALTH?
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