Mind Your Melon Mental Health Resilience Program

Our latest Mind Your Melon session with Tom from Healthy Minds explored something that can have a significant impact on how people experience work: connectedness.

At the heart of the session was the idea that rapport helps people feel understood and connected. When we have stronger relationships at work, people are more likely to participate fully, share ideas, ask for feedback, admit mistakes and speak up when they have concerns or a different perspective. It creates the foundation for better conversations — including the ability to disagree well.

Tom shared some simple building blocks: being a curious listener, asking open questions, showing empathy and warmth, reflecting back what we have heard to check our understanding, being genuine and validating another person’s perspective. These might sound simple, but they require us to slow down and be intentional about how we interact with others.

Rather than thinking about connectedness as another big workplace initiative, we can build it through the small interactions we have every day. Ask a better question. Listen for a little longer. Be curious rather than making an assumption. Check that you have understood. Over time, these small actions build our toolbox for creating stronger relationships — and stronger relationships create the conditions for people and teams to do their best work.