The Art and Science of Connection with Kasley Killam, MPH

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I'll catch you later. Casli, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yes, it is our pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. So my name is Kasli Killam. I am a social scientist by training. I also run a nonprofit called Social Health Labs and most recently I've written a book called the Art and Science of Connection why Social Health is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier and Happier. So this book is based on over a decade of studying the science of human connection and applying it in my own life, but also with the communities that I work with. And it's meant to be a toolkit to help us all live more meaningfully connected lives.

I love this and you know, I like to start off with definitions because a lot of times we assume we're talking about the same thing, but we're not. So for you, as somebody who has studied connection, what does connection mean to you?

Oh, that's a great question. Connection is to me, the most important reason for living and it's also an underappreciated driver of what makes us healthy. And so a lot of my work focuses on advancing the idea that health is not just physical and mental like we typically talk about. Right. It's so important that we strengthen our bodies through exercise and new nutrition and sleep. It's so important that we strengthen our minds through, you know, mindfulness and self care and perhaps therapy and things like that. It's also vital that we strengthen our relationships and that we cultivate meaningful friendships and relationships with our co workers that are healthy and a sense of community. The research shows that that is much a part of our long term health outcomes as the other factors that we typically do. So for me, connection is vital to not just Our physical and mental health.

But our social health, that is powerful. So everybody go out and make a friend today. That is. Yeah.

Yes.

I love this. And as it relates to negotiation and difficult conversation, we understand that connection is necessary. And I think a lot of people intuitively understand that. But oftentimes these conversations can be very transactional. And as a result, we are just going into these conversations with other people without forming a strong connection, and we're just trying to persuade or manipulate them into doing what we want them to do. And when you think about connection as it relates to, let's say, the business world, what does connection look like when we're thinking about business? Business types of relationships?

Yeah, this is a great question. Well, what I would love to invite us to all recognize is the fact that every interaction you have, whether it's in a business context with a coworker or a client or someone else, whether it's in your family, in your personal life, every single interaction has the potential to not just further your goals as an employee or as a leader, but also to actually improve your health and to improve their health. So the research shows that, for example, people who have strong relationships, who connect in a meaningful way, who feel supported, they live longer, they have a reduced risk of mortality. They also have strengthened immune systems. People have a lower risk of things like heart disease and depression and dementia and stroke if they have meaningful connection. And so when we think about. In a business context, every conversation that we have is an opportunity for so much more than just achieving our goals. Right. It's part of living a fulfilling life and living a healthy life. And so I invite us all to think about the workplace and our business interactions as an opportunity for meaningful connection. Right. A lot of us make friends in the workplace or meet our romantic partners at a business event or things like that. It's. There's so much potential there for the connections that we're forming to serve a lot more than just our business goals. And I think that's an exciting and undertapped opportunity.

I agree 100%. Because when you think about this, there's a. Obviously, there's a skill to creating deeper connections, but then there's also a mindset challenge as well, because if we're not going into this with that positive mindset, not just about the opportunity, but about this person in general, about the fact that there might be a business opportunity. But even deeper than that, I personally have an opportunity to really pour into you in a way that gives you health and life that really elevates the Sanctity of these conversations in our mind too, Right.

And what are we living for? What are we working for? Right. If we're not bringing that mindset into our day to day, then that's an incredibly missed opportunity. We spend so much time working. I think on average in the U.S. americans spend around 90,000 hours over the course of their lifetimes working. We often see co workers or our boss or employees more regularly than we see our friends. Right. For a lot of us that, that resonates. And so how can we make sure that those interactions and those relationships are positive and healthy and fueling that, that bigger purpose for us?

This is so good. So good. And so now let's, I hear a curmudgeony business person grumbling like what is all of this heart centered stuff? Show me how to make money. Right? So let's, let's talk to that person to just keep engaged here. Now let's speak to the science behind this. Because if we create deeper, more meaningful connections, then it makes it more likely for our negotiations, our difficult conversations to go well. A lot of times business deals move at the speed of trust. If there's more trust, the deals wouldn't get done. And so scientifically and psychologically, beneath the surface, what changes in the mind of somebody when there is meaningful connection that helps these difficult conversations to be a little bit easier?

Yeah. Well, so let's look at the workplace as an example. Right? So if you are an employee at an organization and you go into work every day and you feel really disconnected, you don't get along well with your coworkers or the people who you are negotiating with, right. You feel lonely, perhaps you don't feel like you belong. It's just a job that you have to, to do in order to pay the bills. The research shows that that takes a toll on the bottom line. So people who feel disconnected in the workplace are more likely to quit. So it's bad for retention. They're less productive and they're less happy, which makes them less motivated in that context. And there's research that shows that the toll this takes amounts to over $400 billion each year to the U.S. economy in lost productivity and missed work days. Right? So when people go into work and spend our lives working and are not feeling connected with each other, that is a serious problem for an organization's business and ability to, to be successful. Right. In contrast, people, when you go into work and you have positive relationships, you're more productive, you're more engaged. There was a study that found that people who have a best friend at work. So someone who they really trust and get along with well are seven times more likely to be engaged, to produce quality work, to be happy in their role. Right. So this is a measurable difference that we see in terms of the importance in a business context of making sure that people are cultivating positive relationships.

I love this. And for the business folks out there, when we talk about $400 billion in lost productivity, I think the best way to quantify that is that that is a lot of money. Yes, a lot of money.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so we can hold both these things at the same time. We can recognize that there's the higher mission of connection is what makes life worth living. And being socially healthy is, is vital to our, our lifespans. But also it' beneficial for the business to invest in making sure that our interactions with each other are positive.

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Now, when we think about how to make sure that these interactions are positive, can you help to paint a picture of the difference between a meaningful interaction that leads to connection and an interaction that is more transactional, that doesn't have that meaningful nature to it.

So the difference here really comes down to intention, Right? If we go into interactions purely for personal gain, the other person is going to pick up on that. Whereas if it's coming from a place of authenticity and genuinely wanting to build a trusting rapport, it's going to have these cascading effects. And so it really comes down to intention and recognizing that a conversation is much more than just an opportunity to gain something. It's really about that bi directional exchange of value.

Agreed. And I think this is very encouraging because intention, if we want to do it just that mindset, will lead us to navigate the conversation in a different way. And then I think for some folks who are. Everybody's busy. We've got a lot on our minds and a lot of things to do. And we might look at this person and this interaction as just like another box that I need to check to get going, and I need to get what I want out of it. And so for some folks out there who kind of fall into that. That box, they might say, oh, my. I need to actually care.

But the.

Problem is I don't. And so this is.

This is a weird.

It's a very weird question. But, but humor me here, because I'm. I'm with you 100% when I negotiate. I'm trying to create, like, true, deep connections with people, learning about them just because it's a human to human connection. I get a lot of value out of that, too. There's a lot of. I think people would be surprised with the amount of warmth that are in my negotiations. My negotiations sound and feel like a podcast just like this, you know, But I know there are some people who really struggle with caring enough to have that intention. And so is there a way to get somebody who is more transactionally minded to care enough to have that intention?

It's a great question. I don't know if I have an answer for you, but I can share a story. So one of the people who I interviewed for my book was an elderly woman named Nancy, who was in her 80s, had been very, very passionate about her career in education, had been a principal of a local school, and was in a leadership role within education. And she very easily could have made that the center of her life because she was so genuinely passionate about it. And while it did, it was a major priority to her. So was connection. Right. And so she prioritized, making sure that the relationships within her workplace were meaningful. Right. And so she has now in her 80s and retired for a long time. She still maintains connections with the students who she taught and with the other teachers and the other executives who she worked with in that context. Right. She centered her life around connection and infused that into her work, which made sense for her business as a principal in that context, but also meant that it was elevating that work. She told me that if you want to be socially healthy in your 80s, you need to care about more than just the work. It has to have that higher purpose. Because at the end of your life, when there are no more business meetings and there are no more negotiations, what are you left with? A full bank account, but not people who love you and care about you and respect you. It's A bigger question of what is the larger purpose of the work that we're doing, and it should be centered around connection.

I really like that answer because it shows that, again, this does not happen by accident. In most cases, you have to make a concerted effort. And what's interesting is I think if we just. If we do a better job of prioritizing that relationship versus prioritizing a specific outcome of a conversation, I think just that little mindset shift can change the way that we orient ourselves during the conversation. And regardless of how people make that mental shift themselves, it has to be intentional. You know, for me, I'm genuinely curious about people, so I like asking questions. So that's. That's how I get it. Maybe somebody else thinks about it in terms of almost like a dependency in a conversation. I'm not going to allow myself to move toward this more substantive issue until I have felt like I checked that box of connection. But I just want to encourage people to figure out what it is for them that could give them that genuine motivation to connect, because it's worthwhile for the sake of the relationship, for the sake of the other person and their health, your health. And then I think if you put those things in the right position, the outcome naturally kind of handles itself.

Yeah. And also to someone, I mean, I love your question because it's kind of an extreme example, but for someone who really doesn't care and who's in it for the business reason. Right. There's still a lot of data to support that. It makes business sense, too. So in the book, I really. I share this example of a major healthcare organization that was close to bankruptcy. They were really struggling, and they brought in a new leader who said, we are going to transform our culture. We are going to turn this into a community where we are all collaborating, where our relationships with each other are core to the service that we're providing to our patients. He completely transformed the culture within the workplace to really focus on human connection in a very extreme way. And they did all kinds of programs to help connect people, to bring people together, to rally around the mission and care for each other. And as a result, over the next 10 or so years, they were able to increase their revenues from about 1.45 billion to over 7.5 billion. They increased their shares from around $5 to around $60 per share. So we're talking about real monetary value that comes from prioritizing a workplace culture where connection is at the center. Right. It is motivating when people feel cared for and feel Part of a community that's working on a shared mission. And so that mentality is beneficial at the individual level, but it's also beneficial for the business.

That's such a powerful story because it starts with connection, it starts with community. And I don't want to say it ends with the money because the community and connection are still there.

Right.

It's just a byproduct.

It's both.

It's both.

It's both.

Yes. That's powerful. And now let's say there are leaders in this, in that are listening and they're saying, okay, Caslie, I'm, I'm following you. I'm recognizing that in my organization we don't have a strong community. There isn't meaningful connection happening. And I want to create this positive change in my organization for that leader. What would you say their first step should be?

So, first of all, to model it to your employees, to set that example to, in your meetings with your reports, asking about how they're really doing and asking questions that go beyond just pure business questions. I'll also share an example of a technique that I really admire that came out of a conversation with someone at Microsoft who told me about their approach to creating psychological safety. So psychological safety, we know from research, is one of the biggest predictors of success in a workplace context. It's this feeling of, you know, if you work somewhere that you are able to speak up and to share your opinion or ask questions and feel like there's that support, supportive environment where we can connect around the work. So this approach that they took was to do what they called share your failure sessions. So they would have a team meeting where everyone would come and the most senior person in the room would go first and they would share a failure, some mistake they'd made in the past week or in the past year, some. Some mistake they'd made at. At work. And what they learned from that. So importantly, it was the leader, the most senior person in the room, who would go first. So it's modeling to employees that it's safe to share. And then other people would go around and share mistakes or failures that they had made. And what they learned. And what that did was create this atmosphere where people could talk openly about what they were learning, know that there weren't going to be repercussions for it, and know, in fact, that it was celebrated and rewarded. And what we know from the research is that people who self disclose, so share something a little bit vulnerable, share something like a mistake or failure that engenders Trust that engenders likability with the other person. So just in that simple format of sharing some mistakes, talking through them, people were able to connect on a deeper level and create that psychological safety that's so important for a business to thrive.

Starting off with the leader, that's so powerful. That is so powerful. And at the same time, it helps us to recognize why so many of these programs that are geared towards improving team culture, organizational culture, fail because the leader comes down from Mount Olympus and says, you mortals do better and do these things. They go back up to the cloud and they don't change themselves. And so it's hard for people to take it seriously if it doesn't seem like the leader's taking it seriously either.

Yeah. Another example I came across while researching for the book was this idea of win a coffee with the CEO. So having kind of a raffle opportunity where an employee at any level, it could be the most junior person at the company, had the chance to actually win a 30 minute coffee with the CEO and ask questions. And what that does, again, is it creates this sense within an organization that you are just humans connecting and that there's the opportunity to create relationships that you might not have otherwise had the opportunity to cultivate. And I know someone who won one of these at their organization and had a great conversation with the CEO and it made her feel more connected to the organization, feel like she mattered and belonged to belonged, even though she was relatively junior. So that's another fun example where it doesn't take that much time, but it starts to change the culture.

Oh, that's good. CEO Kwame is taking that note. Institute that immediately. That's so good. That is so good. Okay, now let's think about this from the macro sense. Just hypothetically, if we could wave a magic wand and everybody in the world not only reads your book, but adopts its practices and puts it into action, what change would we see in the world today?

If everyone reads this book and takes action based on it, we would have a, first of all, a more meaningfully connected world in a time when we really need it. So right now, there was a global study done by Gallup a couple years ago that found that 20% of adults worldwide feel like they don't have anyone they can reach out to for support. One in four people, according to a different global survey, feel lonely on a regular basis worldwide. Here in the US we have trends where people have fewer friends, they spend less time with the friends that they do have, they belong to fewer community groups, they feel different. They have fewer family dinners with their loved ones. Right. So we're seeing globally that there's this urgent need to recenter connection at the heart of our lives and reprioritize around social health. Right. So if everyone starts to take the tools that are in this book and enact them, I think we'll see more connected workplaces, we'll see more connected communities, and that's going to improve health outcomes. So coming from a public health background, having studied the science of this for over a decade, I know that we live longer lives. It's not just happier lives. We live longer lives if we have those relationships at the center.

That's powerful. That's powerful. And I think there's a lot of synergy between the work that you do and the work that we do, because under everything that we do, we want to be as generous as possible with the content that we create, because we think that we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we also believe that unresolved, long lasting conflict is the greatest threat that humanity faces. And if we have more connected communities, then we are better positioned to address some of that conflict that is tearing us apart.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Communication and the ability to overcome conflict and work through that to get to the other side with someone, whether it's with your romantic partner or a co worker, whoever that might be, that is an essential skill for being socially healthy. And so I completely agree the importance of what you do, it's going to improve people's health through more meaningful relationships.

Love it. Oh, this is great. And last question, the most important question. Hypothetically, if there's anybody in the audience who would be interested in reading a book on the art and science of connection, would you have a book to recommend? Hmm.

Let me think about that. Yes. As a matter of fact, I heard of this great one. That's exactly that title. So funny. You would, should. You would say that. So the Art and Science of Connection, it's available anywhere books are sold and it's truly meant to be a toolkit that makes all of what we've discussed today very practical in your life. So I hope everyone will enjoy it.

Amazing. Kazly, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Well, you're still here. That's a good sign. That means you must have really enjoyed the episode. And for super fans like you, we created Negotiate Anything premium where you can get breakdowns of some of our favorite episodes. And I did a breakdown of this episode. So that's coming up in a little.

Bit, but it's just a snippet, a.

Little taste, if you will. And if you want to hear the whole thing, make sure to click the link in the description to get your free trial of Negotiate Anything Premium so you could hear breakdowns of episodes like this one, other bonus content, and Ask Me Anything sessions, all sorts of incredible things, all available in Premium. So make sure to check that out and join Premium today. Okay, great. Let's do a quick breakdown here before my LinkedIn live. Hello and welcome to the breakdown of our Negotiate Anything podcast with Kasli Killam. Yes, this was a great, great episode. Kasli, of course, is the author of the Arts and Science of Connection. Really love the title of the book and what the book is about. And I like the way that she set the stage because people talk about connection all the time. It comes up in everyday conversation a lot. And then when you think about negotiation and conflict resolution, we think about the term connect. How do I connect with somebody? How do I create a connection? Those type of things. But I don't think we do a good job of taking the time to define what we mean by connection, because connection for one person might be something very different as it relates to connection to another person. So I wanted to get her perspective, and she said, it's the most important reason for living. And when I heard that, I said to myself, is it, though? And then I said, all right, cool. Everything in the world. You have money, you have health, you have all of the things that you could possibly want, but you have no connection. Is that a life you want to live? That's when I realized, wow, it really does come down to connection. Everything that we want comes down to connection. And even the things that we do, maybe at work or anything like that, I think ultimately, eventually it gets to that point of connection. So you go to work because you want to provide for your family so you can connect. Maybe you want to work toward retirement so then you could spend more time with the people that you care about and connect with them. Right? And a lot of times people are driven to a particular industry because they want to help people. That's connection, too. So, yeah, when you think about connection, it really is fundamental to who we are as people. And it also is that driver for what makes us healthy, too. That connection is not often made. And it's funny, even people who study this become kind of. Sometimes you can be kind of skeptical to that claim. So I'll tell you a story. I Wanted to tell it in the interview, but I always wanted to keep the interview on the guest, the focus on the guest. But one time I was teaching. It was in an MBA program. I used to teach at Otterbein University in their MBA program. And I would assign my book, my first book, Finding Confidence in Conflict. And one of the things about writing a book is that you write the book and then you might read the audiobook. But for me, when I'm done with a project, I'm done. I'm like, I gave you years of my life. I don't. I just need some space, right? So it's funny you remember the core elements, but there's some little things, some tiny details that you might forget about the books that you wrote. So I asked, what are some of the benefits of effective conflict resolution? People raise their hand. They say, oh, you get better deals. Yes. You have better relationships. Yes. And we were getting some good answers, and somebody said, you'll live longer. And I was like, what? What nonsense is this? You'll live longer. Where'd you get that from? He's like, your book. And then I remembered that that study where they showed that the people who had the best relationships have the best health outcomes. The connections that we have, they are fundamental to our health. And so, yeah, it is legit. It's a Harvard program, a Harvard study that I think came out with that. And then, yeah, I mentioned it in my book, too. Even I forget. But I think that's really important because let's go back to the motto. At the American Negotiation Institute, we believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And one of those things is meaningful connection. If we can utilize these difficult conversations as opportunities to connect, then we can fix broken relationships, we can create relationships, we can maintain relationships, and we can improve relationships through the art and science of negotiation and conflict resolution. And so, really, I just wanted to start off this breakdown, really hammering home the importance of connection and the nexus between connection, health, and the difficult conversations that we have every day. I like that point that she said where she said, every interaction has the potential to further your goals and improve the health of yourself and the other party. There's a term they call speaking life into somebody, really encouraging somebody. But really, when you take that from the more philosophical world and bring it to the health and wellness world or the psychological world, then we recognize. No, actually through our words and the way that we connect with people, every single interaction is an opportunity to pour life into somebody just by brightening up. Wait Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before.

Just kidding.

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I'll catch you later.