Let's bet on high quality connecting as a path for fostering well-being at work

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners alike need a wake-up call. Despite the compelling evidence that positive relationships with others in our workplaces are central for health and well-being we do not pay sufficient attention to how to foster positive relationships at work. At the heart of positive relationships is the idea of high quality connecting. High quality connecting captures ways of interacting in small moments where both people experience positive regard, a sense vitality and feel mutually able to participate in the interaction (Dutton JE, Heaphy E, The power of high-quality connections. In: Cameron KS, Dutton JE, Quinn RE (eds) Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline. Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, pp 263-278, 2003). It is the type of interacting that strengthens people in the moment, contributing to their short and long-term well-being at work. Fostering high quality connecting in workplaces is perhaps the most potent and more enduring way to create the conditions for sustainable human well-being and enhanced performance at work. This essay makes the case for why high quality connecting is so crucial for well-being, then it identifies 5 key steps that tap into different action domains where practitioners can make a difference in fostering high quality connecting. Since none of these steps have been rigorously tested by researchers, this essay is also an invitation to researchers to get busy-we need more studies that investigate how and to what degree different means of high quality connecting build individual and collective well-being at work.