Company culture plays a major role in key outcomes of any organization. It is part of a central nervous system that plays an important role in the health of a company. A healthy company culture fosters coordination, teamwork, engagement, and resilience.

Theodore M. and Catherine C. Alfred Professor in Management, and Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University, John Paul (J.P.) Stephens studies company culture. More specifically, he studies work relationships and coordination in groups. During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Stephens shared several key areas of his research to equip organizations with the tools to build cultures of high quality connection.

The Value of High Quality Connections

Stephens cites Jane Dutton and Emily Heaphy, two researchers who developed the concept of high quality connections “during the early days of the field of positive organizational scholarship.” In a paper from the early 2000s, Dutton and Heaphy describe high quality connections in the workplace as ones that “compose the fabric of daily life.” More specifically, “a connection is the dynamic, living tissue that exists between two people when there is some contact between them involving mutual awareness and social interaction.” They add that this connection means “the individuals have affected each other in some way.”

“This concept is rooted in the idea that human development and growth occurs within connections with each other. Rather than in terms of developing independence or coming apart,” added Stephens. And while high quality connections are built over time, Stephens says they could manifest simply talking to a stranger where there’s “mutual experience in the moment of being seen, of feeling cared for, and physically and emotionally enlivened.”

High quality connections were originally conceptualized as having three sets of markers: the physical experience (also includes what happens in our brains and vascular systems), the subjective experience, and structural features of a connection, says Stephens. “I often think of these structural features kind of like the characteristics of a blood vessel. So, is that blood vessel healthy? Are resources flowing back and forth? Is it flexible?”

In his research, Stephens focuses on the structural features that deal with connection health, or emotional carrying capacity. To frame this feature, Stephens asks three questions: How much overall emotion can we express with each other? Can we express both positive and negative emotions? And, how much do we express those emotions constructively?

“It can't just be that I feel free to express a broad range of emotions, but my connection partner also has to feel like that. They get to express freely and constructively what’s going on in their heads and in their hearts,” Stephens said.

High quality connections go beyond simply feeling good in the company of your coworkers, though. In a study Stephens conducted on emotional carrying capacity, or the ability to express emotion in a constructive way, he found positive performance metrics followed in the wake of high quality connections. “From staff to top management, being enmeshed in a set of high quality connections, where you could share positive and negative emotions in a constructive way, seemed to predict resilience – a sense of being able to bounce back from adversity.”

In another study with product development teams, he found teams that were able to constructively express negative emotions could “better access crucial knowledge and then integrate that knowledge in ways that enhance[d] both the project outcomes, in terms of performance, and budget adherence.”

Promoting Relational Significance

“I do think that leader role modeling of constructive emotional expression is really important. [But] Leaders matter, both for good and for bad,” Stephens said.

Stephens praised Pixar for its community-driven approach, where trust, respect, and strong relationships are key. He said Pixar's leadership cultivates an environment where employees feel valued and part of a talented, collaborative team. “The sense is that it's a community, right? They think that lasting relationships matter. They share some basic beliefs. They want to get talented people to work together and engender trust and respect,” he said.

Moving on from big tech, Stephens and his team pointed their lens to construction sites. “Folks from different roles have to coordinate their collective performance. So they need to continuously work on developing a mutual sense of understanding, and that’s really hard to come by. The [construction] industry as a whole is typified by not having a shared sense of understanding, or poor communication.”

When studying high performing sites, Stephens looked at how different team members created a connected environment. “One practice that I found is what I'm calling [a] cultural tool transfer. A cultural tool could be a set of values or frames, and they're embedded in one culture, and they can be transferred to another culture.”

One of the high-performing sites, The Cleveland Clinic, applied its patient-centered team approach to its construction projects by encouraging hired contractors to adopt the same mindset as the healthcare workers. They facilitated this through large meetings, where project progress was linked directly to the goal of improving patient care.

So, how do you know you're building cultural connections? “Look at the current practices you have in mind and use what you already have, rather than reinvent the wheel,” he said. “Are you talking to the people that are involved in that practice and asking them what they value from the practice? What is it that gets in the way from them participating? What can we do to redesign it so that it's more engaging and compelling?” he asked.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Case Western Reserve University, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.

Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.