Test

The Belonging Advantage: Why Connection Is Your Competitive Edge

We were recently asked to present a talk on belonging. They had noticed that remote workers seemed to be less connected to their organisations and were concerned about the impact of this. 200 people came to explore the topic. The conversations afterwards confirmed what the research already tells us — this is a subject that resonates deeply, because it touches something fundamentally human. Here's a summary of what we covered. What Is Belonging, Really? Belonging isn't a soft, nice-to-have concept — it's a specific psychological state. It's what happens when we feel cared about, accepted, included and valued by the people around us. It's the ability to relax, be ourselves, and put ideas forward without fear of judgement or rejection. In te ao Māori, this concept is beautifully captured by tūrangawaewae — literally, "your place to stand." The Business Case Is Overwhelming The data presented made it clear that belonging isn't just good for people — it's good for the bottom line. Organisations with strong belonging see significant gains in job performance, retention, and attendance, alongside measurable improvements in engagement, safety, and profitability. Teams with a strong sense of belonging are dramatically more engaged and more satisfied in their roles. The Cost of Disconnection The flip side is sobering. Employees who feel lonely at work are less innovative, take more sick leave, and make poorer decisions. Of the top predictors of burnout, work loneliness — having no one to talk to or engage with at work — was by far the strongest, outranking even excessive hours or constant mobile connectivity. It's Also a Health Issue Perhaps the most striking statistic of the day: chronic loneliness carries health risks comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, including a significantly elevated risk of heart attack and stroke. Social connection, by contrast, is genuinely protective — reducing illness risk, supporting healthy cholesterol, and even lowering the risk of dementia. How Big Is the Problem? Locally and globally, the numbers tell a clear story: a large proportion of adults report regular loneliness, a notable share of workers say they felt lonely at work just the day before, and burnout risk across the workforce has climbed sharply since the pandemic. Many people also report lacking a "third place" — a regular space outside work and home where they connect and belong. The Frameworks We Shared Two frameworks helped ground the discussion:

• Dunbar's Number — the idea that humans can only meaningfully sustain relationships with around 150 people, nested in smaller circles of acquaintances, friends, and close confidants. It's a useful reminder of how precious and finite real connection is.
• Owen Eastwood's model of belonging — which moves beyond simple "fit" toward authenticity, identity, and psychological safety, highlighting how leaders can build cohesive teams by integrating individual and collective identity, trust, and open communication.

So What Can We Actually Do About It? This was the heart of the session — practical, low-cost actions at every level of the organisation: Leadership - Small, consistent moments of connection matter more than grand gestures — checking in, protecting social time, and dealing with incivility early before it erodes trust. Culture — the Four A's A simple habit model: Aware, Acknowledge, Appreciate, Accommodate. Noticing people, recognising contributions, showing small gestures of thanks, and flexing for others' needs. Team Level - Leaving breathing room between meetings, shared morning teas, celebrating milestones and friendships, and regular genuine check-ins all build connection — and teams that celebrate friendships at work see a substantial lift in engagement. Structural Changes - Simple policy shifts can help! No emails on weekends, protected face-to-face time, paid lunches — remove friction and protect the time people need to connect. Onboarding - First impressions matter enormously. A well-planned welcome — letting the team know someone's starting, a buddy system, and proper introductions — sets the tone for whether a new employee feels they belong from day one. A Word on Remote Work One of the more nuanced findings: hybrid and remote workers report feeling notably lonelier than before the pandemic, largely because remote work strips out the incidental connection — the chat before a meeting, the person you bump into in the hallway. The fix isn't necessarily "more days in the office," but making the time together count, and being intentional about connection regardless of where people work. The Takeaway Belonging isn't a soft issue — it's a fundamental human need, and right now, many of us aren't getting enough of it at work (or home). The encouraging news is that leaders, teams, and organisations all have real, practical levers they can pull — starting today.

Its how leaders react to stressful situations that matters

When we hit stressful situations how do we react? A key part of leadership is about giving people confidence that we can lead them - this has been identified in research resilience, energy or personal positivity being a key component of leadership. New research from Brunswick Group shows something striking: executive stress levels today are higherthan at the peak of the pandemic. In a survey of 400 C-suite leaders across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, more than half reported being "very stressed" — and most expect it to get worse. They identified six default stress-response patterns, mapped across two spectrums — composed vs. dynamic, and threat vs. opportunity:

• Lighthouse – Calm, steady, big-picture. Risk: can look aloof or indecisive.
• Alchemist – Sees disruption as fuel for reinvention. Risk: chasing novelty, exhausting the team.
• Firefighter – Fast, decisive, energized by crisis. Risk: impulsive decisions, burnout.
• Stoic – Cool, rational, principle-driven. Risk: suppressing emotion, missing human cues.
• Diplomat – Leads through trust and relationships. Risk: prioritizing consensus over hard truths.
• Container – Imposes structure and control. Risk: excluding others, absorbing too much alone.

The key takeaway: there's no "best" style — each has real strengths and blind spots. The leaders who thrive under sustained pressure aren't the ones locked into one default reaction; they're the ones who recognize their pattern, deliberately stretch beyond it, and adapt in real time as a crisis evolves. Three practical moves for any leader:

• Know your default — awareness is the first step to flexibility.
• Test and adjust — what worked in one crisis won't always work in the next.
• Share the load — build teams with a mix of response styles, and normalise talking about stress openly.

In a world of compounding disruption, the differentiator isn't who feels the least stress — it's who masters their reaction to it. #Leadership #ExecutiveWellbeing #CrisisManagement #HR #PeopleLeadership

Authentic Leadership in Winemaking

  I recently attended a wine tasting hosted by the Irish New Zealand Business Network. Alan Brady and Brian Shaw told the story of Wild Irishman Wines, and took us through tasting five of their fine wines. I was taken in their story by the similarities to authentic leadership.

• All the well researched leadership models currently have humility as a key component - in a rapidly changing and complex world leaders need to recognise they don’t know everything.  They need to help the people around them to use their skills and knowledge to deal with the ambiguity and complexity.
• The hard part of this is maintaining humility when people get into senior leadership positions - as the people around them start filtering out information or sugar coating messages. Over time this leads to overconfidence and decreases in empathy and humility - even at a biological level senior leaders mirroring neuron's are impacted (the neuron's that help us read the situation around us and respond).
• Being humble is also a tough place to be psychologically. Realising we don't know, and aren't controlling, everything can lead to dark places (eg imposter syndrome and worse). Research shows knowing our strengths and having a deep sense of purpose help us be humble without the adverse impact. I suspect another way of looking at purpose is whakapapa - knowing where you come from helps us see we are part of something bigger than ourselves and gives us a sense of belonging - something Owen Eastwood focuses on in his work with elite sports teams.
• Bill George developed case studies on highly effective leaders and found they maintained their humility by staying grounded through connection to their roots - in fact they had a deliberate habit of visiting their home town once a year. They also deliberately fostered 'truth tellers' around themselves - people who they knew would tell it like it was but would do it from a place of having their back.

Leaders Coach!

Our evaluation of coaching consistently shows when Leaders coach their people, they are more engaged and more likely to be open to learning (a growth mindset). Other research shows a whole range of positive impacts on performance and capability building to the extent that coaching is probably one of the key tools of a leader. Coaching is good - does focusing on strengths actually make coaching better? Our research says yes. There's a lot of research showing the positive impact of strengths. Gallup research also showed significantly lower levels of disengagement for strength based coaching (1.7% disengaged compared with 50% for weakness based coaching). Our research, was based on the evaluation of an executive coaching programme delivered within an MBA leadership course, tracked 90 participants across three years and asked a simple question: once you account for all the other things we know make coaching effective — trust, listening, good questions, accountability, sharing useful tools — does a focus on strengths still add anything extra? The answer was a clear yes. Participants rated their coaches across seven quality dimensions and three outcome measures (would they recommend their coach, did they achieve more, did they progress their goals). Helping people leverage their signature strengths correlated significantly with every other marker of good coaching, and — importantly — remained a unique, statistically significant predictor of outcomes even after everything else was accounted for. Interestingly, trust and listening, while clearly important, didn't hold up as independent predictors on their own once other factors were controlled for. The researchers suggest they may work more as the foundation that allows other coaching skills, like questioning and a strengths focus, to actually land. A few other findings stood out:

• Good questioning, strengths focus, resource-sharing, and accountability were the four factors that independently predicted better outcomes.
• Face-to-face coaching had a measurable edge, particularly in how well coaches were seen to share useful tools and resources — though a strengths-based approach worked well regardless of format.
• The overall model explained a striking 76% of the variation in coaching outcomes, a strong result for research in this space.

For us, this lines up closely with what we see in practice: the leaders who get the most out of coaching conversations are usually the ones who've been helped to see clearly what they're already good at, and to build from there, leveraging strengths to achieve what they want or need to — not just to fix what isn't working. It's also a big part of why strengths, trust, and good questions sit at the heart of the coaching approach we teach leaders through our Leaders Coach programme. If you're curious about how these ideas translate into practical, everyday coaching skills for your leadership team, get in touch — we're always happy to talk it through.

Workplace Conflict – when can it go from bad to worse?

 

Disagreements in the workplace are common, and to the extent that disagreements reveal useful differences of opinion, can be constructive and useful in creating a successfully diverse workplace, if managed well.

Unfortunately, not all disagreements or personality differences are expressed or managed effectively.  And this often leads to fractured work relationships, damaged wellbeing and reduced work output.

Recent years have seen a notable increase in workplace conflict.  Much of the increased incidence can be attributed to heightened levels of anxiety in general, caused by factors unrelated to work – think financial concerns, global instability, pandemic, earthquakes etc.

Most workplaces will experience conflict at work but it’s worth recognising that not all conflict is created equal.  Various strategies are employed to address conflict, ranging from informal discussions to formal investigations.  Frequently, an external party is brought in to work with the parties involved to understand what is going on and help them identify ways to resolve conflict and work together more collaboratively.

Exactly which strategy you use will depend on your organisational policy and can also be usefully informed by assessing the level of difficulty.  In my experience, there are several factors which complicate conflict and make resolution more difficult:

• Personality and willingness to take accountability – where one or more of the individuals is highly resistant to feedback and/or holds a seemingly intractable viewpoint that they are the innocent party and another person is 100% at fault, or where they lack interpersonal tolerance
• Duration – where the conflict has been ongoing for an extended period of time
• Management involvement – where management has allowed the conflict to continue and has not held people to account for counterproductive behaviour or when two managers of individuals experiencing conflict have not proactively sought to resolve the conflict
• Number of people – where the conflict exists between more than two people, or has extended to others; perhaps where individuals or teams have taken sides
• Position – where one of the individuals involved is in a management position, particularly if this is line management of the other individual
• Wellbeing – where the conflict is having significant impacts on one or more of the individuals’ physical or psychological wellbeing
• Lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities – where people’s roles overlap and position descriptions, policies and procedures do not specifically address levels of responsibility and expectations of consultation or involvement.
• Organisational culture – where microaggressions are commonplace and people are not trained in ways of resolving differences of opinion and/or where expected standards of behaviour are not known or communicated
• The work itself– where workload is heavy and/or the nature of the work creates heightened emotions

Our key advice?  Always address conflict early, carefully considering your resolution strategy based on the above factors.  And in the meantime, put serious effort into creating a workplace where people are open to differences of opinion and have the tolerance, skills and support to manage disagreement effectively.

  Andrea Gardner Director andrea.gardner@spgroup.nz