Author Jon Gordon: ‘A Connected Team Is A Powerful Team’

Best-selling author Jon Gordon offers a new paradigm when it comes to understanding mental toughness, mental health, mental well-being, and how and why it pays to be positive.

He starts with the why. “When we feel positive, we feel more powerful,” observes Gordon in the podcast. That makes perfectly intuitive sense. 

But then comes the how, and it’s here that the paradigm begins to shift. In his most recent book, The One Truth: Elevate Your Mind, Unlock Your Power, Heal Your Soul, the best-selling author suggests that positivity is best understood not as an individual trait but as a social one. 

“It’s why positivity works. It’s why positivity is so essential,” says Gordon. “It’s understanding that everything comes down to oneness versus separateness. And so when we feel one and connected, we feel powerful. A team that is a united and connected team is a powerful team; a team that is divided and separate is a weak team. Everything comes down to oneness and separateness in our lives, our relationships in our organizations.”

Connection has become even more important, and far more challenging, in the widespread shift to distributed workforces who no longer enjoy the chemistry that can come from proximity. “We are no longer all in the same office everyday, which we used to think was so important in culture building and camaraderie,” he says. 

In the podcast, Gordon explains that the responsibility is now on leaders to find new ways of keeping their teams better connected, and he offers some intriguing techniques on how they can do this, including:

• How to find common ground with anyone by introducing these five easy-to-discuss topics.

• Drawing on the flexibility afforded by technology to increase connectivity among team members.

• Which words to use when thinking about yourself or talking to yourself, and which words not to use.

• The power of gratitude to turn almost any negative situation into a positive one.

Gordon emphasizes that all of this has to be with intention. By taking the time to ask teammates for candid answers to questions such as, “How’s it going,” “What’s going well. What not so well?” and “How can I do better as a leader?” a leader can actually create stronger connections than would be achievable even if everyone were in the same office but didn’t communicate in this intentional way.