Team esteem: How to create “spirals of increasing cooperation”

The psychologist David Blustein captured the powerful role of connections at work when he wrote that “each decision, experience, and interaction with the working world is understood, influenced, and shaped by relationships.” As a leader, this means that modeling healthy relationships and cultivating an environment that fosters them is foundational for building a healthy culture. And there’s one characteristic that defines quality relationships: Knowing that we matter to the other person. 

And when you show someone how they matter to you, something else happens. You build their capacity to initiate and maintain high-quality relationships, which creates an upward spiral on teams and in organizations.

The power of social self-esteem

Here’s how it works. Imagine you’re invited to a networking event. You don’t know anyone. No one reached out to you ahead of time. You’re unprepared, experiencing self-doubt, and have unresolved questions about whether you belong. You enter the room. What do you feel? How comfortable and at ease would you be when approaching others?

Now, imagine that you’re invited to the same networking event. This time, a colleague says they’re going with you, and they reassure you of the strengths you add to the group. Your peer shares how people with similar backgrounds thrive at these events. Then, the organizer reaches out to you. She spends time on a call getting to know you and invites you to meet her when you arrive so that she can make introductions. You enter the room. What do you feel? How comfortable and at ease would you be approaching others?

What many people experience when they think of the first scenario is social anxiety, which impedes our ability to form bonds with others. When considering the second scenario, the ease many people feel is called social self-esteem, or “the degree to which we have a sense of worth and capability, specifically in social situations.” As the second scenario shows, feeling like we matter to others is an important driver of increased social self-esteem, which drives our ability to connect and collaborate.

To develop healthy relationships, we must first view ourselves as important and capable enough to be part of a relationship. We must feel confident that we have something beneficial to offer. Studies show that when people feel that they matter, social behaviors like talkativeness and collaboration increase. On the other hand, a feeling of not mattering is a strong predictor of social anxiety and avoidance behaviors.

Building social self-esteem is often overlooked by leaders trying to combat disconnection or disengagement. You can’t tell someone to “put themselves out there” if they don’t first believe they have something worthy to offer. In organizations, we’re quick to tell people that they should speak up, share ideas, give feedback, or branch out, or that we have an open-door policy. Instead, you should ask yourself: What are you doing to ensure people know their voices, ideas, or feedback are significant? Are you creating a culture that builds the social self-esteem necessary to branch out or to walk through the open door? 

Leaders who create mattering invest in the relational groundwork necessary for collective social self-esteem, which spurs more relationship-building on teams. 

The key ingredient of a healthy relationship

But all connections at work aren’t equal when it comes to their impact. Evidence shows it’s almost impossible to be satisfied in any relationship, including those at work, if you don’t feel seen, heard, and valued by the other person. 

For example, psychologists Juliana Schroeder and Ayelet Fishbach investigated what predicts relationship satisfaction by studying hundreds of pairs of people in multiple contexts. They asked participants to rate how well their partner knows them based on several criteria: the other person knows their opinion on daily events, their mood at any given moment, their life goals, their feelings about other relationships in life or work, their preferences when making a decision, and what they’re really thinking. 

Across every relationship type, feeling known predicted satisfaction; if someone didn’t feel understood by the other person, fulfillment in the relationship was nearly impossible. This research adds to the evidence that relationships in which we feel that we matter enhance our well-being more than those that don’t. 

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Studies of workplace relationships mirror these findings. Management researcher Jane Dutton spent years seeking to understand what qualities contributed to high-quality connections at work. She and her team found that one of the most important behaviors people use to foster positive connections is “respectful engagement,” which occurs when another’s behaviors, nonverbal cues, and words communicate that we’re valued, respected, and have dignity. Experiencing respectful engagement in a working relationship improves our cognitive functioning, strengthens our immune system, increases our learning capacity, and fosters trust. Dutton writes that high-quality connections characterized by respectful engagement can “spawn spirals of increasing cooperation and trustworthiness across the organization.” 

Her research also shows when people are in high-quality relationships, they’re more likely to go above and beyond, help colleagues, and contribute to the team because of their sense of collective safety, security, and support.

That’s why, for a leader, modeling and forming relationships by prioritizing showing people how they matter is a critical, yet often overlooked, foundation of a healthy culture. And when people feel like they matter, they act like they matter.