Let's Connect as Humans!: Nurturing Meaningful Relationships in a Divided and Distracted World

By Tatiana Machado-Griffin

What could change in our lives if we invested more of our time and energy in what actually makes us come alive?

In our modern and technologically advanced era, we are pushed to do things faster, better and more effectively than our competitors. We are encouraged to crush it. To work for our own benefit and gain

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts LLC
• Release date: Mar 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889268758

Tatiana Machado-Griffin

Tatiana Machado-Griffin (she, her, ela) is a Brazilian-American author. She has a Master's Degree (MA) in Organizational Leadership from Lewis University, and a Bachelor's Degree (BA) in Languages, Literature and Education from the University of São Paulo (USP). For over two decades she has devoted her gifts to her career as a people leader, a leadership facilitator and a coach. She has had the privilege of facilitating workshops with thousands of participants from some of the most innovative companies in the world. Inspired by the power of their stories, she seeks to build safe spaces where people can learn together. She is driven by her passion to create workplaces and environments where human potential can flourish.

Book preview

Let’s Connect as Humans!

Nurturing Meaningful Relationships in a Divided and Distracted World

Tatiana Machado-Griffin

Copyright © 2024 Tatiana Machado-Griffin

All rights reserved.

Let’s Connect as Humans!

Nurturing Meaningful Relationships in a Divided and Distracted World

ISBN

979-8-88926-876-5 Paperback

979-8-88926-882-6 Hardcover

979-8-88926-875-8 Ebook

To you, my fellow human being.

May the power of our stories reunite us in the gift of our shared humanity.

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A Message to the Reader

This publication has the opinions and ideas of its author. The author and publisher are not engaged in providing medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should seek professional or medical counsel before adopting any of the suggestions and learnings from this book.

The author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, incurred as a consequence of the use and application of any of the contents in this book.

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Contents

Introduction

Part I Connect with Your Humanity

01 How Will You Measure Your Life’s Success?

02 Prioritizing Rest and Recharge

03 Growing Resilient

04 Nurturing a Loving Relationship with Our Bodies

Part II Connect with the Humanity of Others

05 The Importance of Building TTrusting Relationships

06 The Power of Being Present

07 The Choice of Being Kind

08 The Human Desire to Create and Inspire

Part III Connect as Humans at Work

09 We Work Hard for Our Money and Live Paycheck to Paycheck

10 What Makes Us Engaged at Work?

11 Why Recognition Matters

12 The Impact of Human-Centered Leadership

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

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Introduction

When we work from a place, I believe, that says, ‘I’m enough’

then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.¹

—Brené Brown

What does it mean to connect as humans?

In one of my previous jobs, I set up a recurring meeting called Let’s connect as humans! As one of my favorite morning traditions on a biweekly basis, I truly meant the exclamation mark. The premise of this time was simple. We got to share what was happening in our lives, and this was a time to get to know each other.

We looked forward to these thirty-minute coffee chats before our workday. We shared dating anniversary plans, restaurant recommendations, and stories about our families, hobbies, and passions. This meeting provided our team with the incredible gift of developing closer relationships with one another. I nurture these relationships to this day, even though we do not work together anymore.

The recurring meeting was optional, but we prioritized that time because we all got a lot of value from it.

This may seem counter to the belief that work and life must be two separate entities and that whomever we are at work does not need to be whomever we are outside of it. The downside is that this belief can limit our ability to embrace our humanity and the humanity of others at work and in our personal lives. Human connection can be a catalyst of joy in our lives. The trusting relationships we build can also help sustain us during our most difficult times.

As companies continue to move into remote and hybrid work models, some of these serendipitous in-person traditions can be harder to facilitate. After all, getting to know people through screens is less natural and engaging than simply grabbing a cup of coffee with someone in the same physical space. However, true connection in virtual rooms can occur when we intentionally carve out space and cocreate these rituals together.

In my years working as a full-time leadership facilitator, I had the opportunity to partner with several of the most innovative companies and leaders in different industries across the globe. They would share their creative solutions to promote a sense of belonging among their teams in remote and hybrid settings.

In one of the workshops I facilitated, a smiling manager shared details about this monthly meeting ritual they had established. She explained that the meeting calendar invitation had a theme in the description, and participants needed to choose their Zoom background based on that theme. As they each explained their picture choice, people would get a glimpse of what mattered most to them. They had so much fun getting to know each other in this way that their regularly scheduled thirty minutes got extended to forty-five minutes.

They prioritized this time because they all got a lot of value out of it.

Another client created a Slack channel to start fun conversations with prompts that caused people to debate the silliest things. Examples included, A savory or sweet breakfast, which is better? What donut flavor is the best and why? People can have strong feelings about most anything, and seeing the ensuing debate caused those team members to feel connected, laugh, and react to each other’s replies. They built community this way.

Team members jumped on those Slack threads because they all got a lot of value out of these conversations.

If you have been a part of a group, you know each individual has one thing that sets them apart from others, making them unique. We need to spend quality time with one another to find out what those things are. If we don’t carve out that time, our relationships can become transactional. Those connections feel disingenuous if we only come to one another when we need something. Building trust with one another becomes much harder to do.

Building meaningful relationships requires intention.

Despite knowing how meaningful relationships can enhance our lives, connecting as humans at work and in our personal lives often becomes the last priority item on our long to-do list. One of the challenges of modern life is that the sky does seem to be the limit. Options are endless, and achieving success seems to lead us to only want more of it. Paradoxically, the never-ending quest for success may lead us on a path of disillusion. As my friend Rafael says, "When you get there, there does not exist."

I spent the past few decades of my life and career seeking every opportunity to develop and grow as an individual and a professional. My passion for languages and literature inspired me to become an educator, teaching English as a second language (ESL) for a good part of a decade back in my home country, Brazil. Moving up the ladder and working as a pedagogical coordinator and teacher trainer in different schools inspired me to seek a master’s degree in organizational leadership at Lewis University in the United States.

My primary goal in pursuing a master’s degree abroad was to understand how organizational psychology can inform how companies and leaders can create healthy work cultures. After landing a job in a tech start-up after finishing my graduate studies, I learned the scrappiness and collaboration aspects of a culture that drives innovation and focuses on employee engagement as a success metric.

As the saying goes, Happy employees lead to happy customers, and I felt I was a part of something special. When I joined this small start-up in Chicago, we were a little over one hundred employees. Small enough so that we could know each other’s names and interests. As a team, we sought to help each other develop skills in partnership with one another. At that company, I experienced what it was like to work as a living and breathing organism with my colleagues.

The company grew considerably in my six years there. We acquired another company, opened a new office internationally, and eventually went public. Being a part of a company’s success is a phenomenal feeling. You know your contributions, alongside those of your colleagues, impact the team’s ability to reach higher goals and get places you could only dream of going. During my time there, my ability to develop my skillset and build community always created a path for interesting roles that fed my desire to learn.

The benefit of developing critical skills that lead to business success, such as project management, prioritization, coaching, and clear communication, is that you can pivot your career in many directions. My deeply embedded passion for education grows with every role I’ve had and has inspired me to pursue a role as a full-time leadership facilitator and coach. After speaking with thousands of workshop participants in this role, I saw a pattern emerge.

The feelings of exhaustion and a lack of clarity of purpose were a concern of many in the workforce. Regardless of whether they were individual contributors, midlevel managers, or C-suite executives, I saw again and again how our world was growing to be a place of distraction and disconnection.

We live in unprecedented times. News cycles enrage us, and social media distracts most of us and can often breed a reality that turns us against one another. The information we consume can lead us to believe our truth is the only truth. We become more certain of our convictions and less prone to dialogue. We continue to grow apart and divided. We might become lonelier and more fearful of one another. We end up entrenched in cycles of negativity in the information we consume, the conversations we have, and the media outlets we scroll through without being aware of it.

In 2019, burnout became categorized as a syndrome that results from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, according to the World Health Organization’s International Disease Classification (ICD-11).² When relentless demands constantly inundate us, it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sleep-deprived, stressed, and disconnected, we keep on trying to hack our way out of our challenging days and weeks without much success. Every day can feel like Groundhog Day.

On their own, technology and social media can be incredible tools for connection and good. I know I am grateful to have the ability to stay connected to family and friends in Brazil and other corners of the US and the world. Like any tool, it is up to us to decide how we use our devices to enhance our lives instead of letting them take over our attention during our every waking moment. However, this is easier said than done, as the technology industry profits primarily by commandeering our attention. In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari says:

The more people stared at their phones, the more money these companies made. Period. The people in Silicon Valley did not want to design gadgets and websites that would dissolve people’s attention spans. They’re not the Joker, trying to sow chaos and make us dumb. They spend a lot of their own time meditating and doing yoga. They often ban their own kids from using the sites and gadgets they design and send them instead to tech-free Montessori schools. But their business model can only succeed if they take steps to dominate the attention spans of the wider society. It’s not their goal any more than ExxonMobil deliberately wants to melt the Arctic. But it’s an inescapable effect of their current business model.³

Johann HarI helped me understand that our crisis of attention and connection may feel like an individual problem, but it is a systemic one. For as long as the current model continues to profit from hypergrowth and keep us distracted, humans and our planet will suffer. So, I began to wonder: how might we individually and collectively stop, rethink, and design different possibilities for ourselves?

Modern Western ideals condition us to attach our worth to what we produce from birth. We are led to believe achievement and getting things done will lead us to have a successful life. We may feel as though we are constantly failing when we compare ourselves to others. Maxims such as We can sleep when we are dead, normalize a culture of overworking and overconsumption that leave us feeling empty on most days. To be something, we need to be always doing or experiencing something.

Then I heard someone say, We are human beings, not human doings, and it suddenly hit me: what does it mean to just be and not do? And can we both be and do in ways that feel life-giving rather than life-draining?

I became more curious and decided to interview forty people in four countries to get as many unique perspectives as possible about work, life, and human connection and how they intersect. I share their stories throughout the book. Some names have been anonymized and changed to protect participant’s privacy. I include additional sources and research, weaving these stories together and expanding on the scope of the topics explored. At the heart of it, this is a book about people’s stories and how they manage the complexity and joy of being human.

Connecting with so many people and hearing their personal stories rekindled a lot of hope in me. Despite all of us being human, none of us are the same. The richness and hardships of our individual lived experiences are all valuable and can help us understand we are not alone in our struggles in search of a meaningful and enjoyable life.

If I start a small revolution that impacts my surrounding community, can this small personal act create systemic changes that impact the whole? This is the question that lit a fire in my belly. And that fire of an idea is what culminated in the chapters ahead. While I divided the book into chapters and parts, I invite you to explore it in whichever order calls to you. This is a book of exploration of what you are most intimately craving.

Part I is about becoming more human with ourselves, as our upbringing and culture often teach us to disconnect from our deep human needs to conform to expectations. We will explore ideas on rekindling our humanity and reclaiming our divine right to simply exist in the world. I invite you to rethink what success means and reimagine what rest and recharge can do for your body, mind, and spirit. Next, we explore the importance of resilience and reflect on how we can nurture a more loving relationship with our bodies.

Part II explores practices that help us build humanity with one another and the ways we can connect intentionally in a world that often feels disconnected. Despite the amount of technology available with the power of connecting us as a global community, the crisis of loneliness is real and present in our world today. So, we will take a deeper look at how we can build trusting relationships and become more present with ourselves and one another. After that, we dive into the power of kindness and end on the importance of engaging in our deep human need for creation.

Part III focuses on human-centered practices in the workplace. First, we will rethink our relationship with money, as our income can deeply inform our sense of self-worth and how we show up in the world. Then, we will distinguish between promoting employee engagement that supports human potential and engagement that pushes us to overwork and burnout. Because gratitude and recognition at work are important components of employee engagement, we will have a deeper dive into this topic next. To close this section of the book, we will explore core practices of human-centered leadership, as we all know the critical role leaders play in supporting employee well-being and company success.

This book is my act of dreaming up a world of small individual revolutions that might have ripple effects and positive impacts on the world around us. May the healing of our hardships in search of our own humanity begin within the depths of ourselves. May our collective healing allow us to thrive as human-centered communities in the many places we inhabit.

I hope the stories and ideas ahead will help you learn and unlearn lessons that will make your life’s fabric more exciting and uniquely yours. At the end of each chapter, I will share invitations for reflection and action, and