Craving connection

The importance of feeling some sort of connection to your teammates or organisation isn’t commonly acknowledged in business. Yet, great leaders intuitively realise that what propels their organisation or team forward is a feeling of connection.

Theo Epstein, the president of baseball operations at the Chicago Cubs, helped guide the team’s win in the 2016 World Series, its first in 108 years. In an interview with Fortune magazine, Epstein credited the win to the team’s connection: “When people do things they weren’t even sure they were capable of, I think it comes back to connection,” he said. “Connection with teammates. Connection with organisation. Feeling like they belong in the environment. I think it’s a human need – the need to feel connected. We don’t live in isolation. Most people don’t like working in isolation – some do, but typically don’t end up playing Major League Baseball.”

Epstein is right. We do have a need to be