Here and Now

by Jane Bergin

You are being interviewed for a key executive position by a panel, including the deputy minister. Clearly focused elsewhere, the DM asks you questions but sits locked in the ‘Blackberry prayer’ position, apparently more intent on responding to incoming emails than listening to your answers.

A facilitator working with your team in an all-staff meeting poses a question to the group but, looking around, sees that two of the key players have stepped away from the group to take phone calls.

You’re sitting at your son’s hockey game on a Saturday morning when your PDA sounds, indicating a message from your superior. You answer it, missing the only goal your son has scored all season.

What message comes across in the first situation? If the deputy minister was too busy to engage fully in the interview, he could simply have said, “I have to handle something urgent. The interview will have to be delayed or rescheduled.” Instead, it’s likely that the message he sent is not so much “I’m busy” as it is, “It doesn’t matter to me who gets this job. People aren’t as important as the issues I’m dealing with.”

In the second situation, participants in the meeting convey a similar message: “The facilitator, my colleagues and the topic at hand are lower priority to me than these phone calls.”

And in the third – “My work is more important to me than my family. My boss thinks so, so it must be true.”

We are busy. We are overbooked. The system is demanding. But might it also be that this all-encompassing ‘busyness’ feeds people’s sense of importance? “I’m important, you’re not.” “Your concerns are less important than mine.” “You’re not a priority.” “My time is too valuable to listen to you.”

The top echelon in the organization often drives this attitude. Some situations might justify after-hours phone calls that disrupt family life or emails sent at 2:00 a.m. requesting an immediate response. Situations of this level of urgency are rare. By routinely engaging in this kind of behaviour, the belief the boss transmits to the employee is, “I deserve to have priority over everything else in your life. My immediate concerns are of the utmost importance.”

Modeled at the top, this attitude can easily infect the middle, resulting in organization-wide meetings where self-absorption prevails and all the bodies attend, but very few minds engage. People who choose to answer phone calls rather than participate in meetings at which they are physically present convey a damaging message: they consider their individual responsibilities more important than their responsibility to the group.

Few of us consciously want to convey this message to our colleagues, but regardless of how unaware we are of the behaviour when we are guilty of it, we typically perceive it quite clearly when we observe it in others.

The undermining of interpersonal connections may be the most damaging result of tuning out of the present. Just as responding to your PDA rather than watching your son’s game erodes the quality of your relationship with him, ignoring the colleagues present with you in time and place erodes connections that are essential to both individual and organizational well-being.

What are the benefits of tuning in to connect in the present – in the here and now? They are actually more abundant than most people imagine. Jane Dutton, in her book Energize Your Workplace, presents research findings indicating that patterns of discourtesy in the workplace are psychologically damaging and stress-inducing. They leave employees feeling demeaned, disgruntled and disengaged. In contrast, patterns of positive interpersonal connections trigger spirals of infectious energy and personal engagement in the job.

If executives don’t choose to make positive connections for reasons of simple courtesy, perhaps they will do so because it’s good for business. Positive connections enhance cooperation, facilitate the coordination of complex tasks, foster employee retention, strengthen employee’s adoption of organizational values, contribute to ongoing learning, and support adaptive organizational change.

Similarly, Gallup reports that employees’ perceptions that their work is recognized, that their employer cares about them as people, and that they have friends at work strongly predicts their job performance.

What is the fundamental requirement to establishing positive connections? Simply being present in an interaction and conveying that sense of presence to others. Being available, being still, and being focused. Paradoxically, genuine connections are most likely to happen when you turn away from the computer, shut off your phone and ‘lose’ your PDA. Eliminating these distractions allows you to see, listen to, and appreciate those who are with you in the here and now.


Jane Bergin is a partner in the CCI Leadership Institute, a management consulting firm based in Ottawa. CCI provides comprehensive executive assessment and leadership development services to both the public and private sectors.