Our connections with others profoundly affect our lives influencing our health, commitment, performance and overall wellbeing. At its best, these connections support a happy life: a good social network has been consistently recognised as one of the most significant factors contributing to happiness. Good interaction also supports success in work and studies. But do you know what kind of quality you bring to interactions with people? Connecting with others can be practised and developed, just like any other skill. 

High-quality relationships are built on genuine, open communication. Even a simple act of looking into someone’s eyes with appreciation can create a sense of wellbeing and strengthen psychological safety. Even these kinds of briefly shared positive emotions, also known as micro-moments of love, can enhance our wellbeing. Body language plays a crucial role, as we tend to trust non-verbal cues. They reveal whether the listener is fully present or if their mind is already preoccupied with other matters. By cultivating the skill of staying mentally present in the moment, we can more frequently experience micro-moments of love, enhance the quality of our relationships and thus support our overall life satisfaction. 

Active, deep listening conveys interest towards the speaker. When listening actively, the listener gives the speaker space and asks questions to help them clarify and crystallize their thoughts. A clarifying question could be, for example, "What do you think is the most important aspect of this?" or "How do you think this matter should be handled in the future?"

In addition to body language, presence, and listening, the choice of words is also important. A genuine thank you for a job well done strengthens the bond. Connections with others can be enhanced by building trust through psychological safety. 

High-quality connections

American professor in business economics and psychology, Jane Dutton, has focused her award-winning research on workplace interaction. Dutton and her colleagues are convinced that any successful interaction can lead to a high-quality connection with another person. Every interaction affects the quality of the connection. According to Dutton, respectful interaction, enabling others' tasks, and building trust are three key factors that promote wellbeing and organizational effectiveness.

Studies support the positive importance of high-quality connections in life. Even brief meaningful encounters can improve our working memory and our brain’s speed of processing information. High-quality connections can also help us develop and grow as humans, as well as connect to communities and organizations around us. They also have an impact on our health, as they support the functioning of the cardiovascular and immune systems. Thanks to them, we recover and adapt faster when facing illness and various transitions in life.

How can we create good relationships with others through our actions?

We are skilled at interpreting various messages from others' behaviour. Therefore it is good to pause to think about what we are in fact communicating. For instance, we can communicate respect by being truly present without pretenses and by encouraging and complimenting other people. A high-quality relationship often starts with being genuine and showing vulnerability. Respect is also communicated through active listening and a supportive rather than demanding way of communicating.

In recent years Aalto has invested in interaction skills. Jari Ylitalo, a university lecturer at Aalto's Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, says that there is generally more discussion about the community, its values and the importance of wellbeing, also at the management level. Nowadays, students are seen as a key part of the university community.

According to Jane Dutton, building connections is heavily based on our actions. She emphasizes the importance of 'task enabling' activities, which consist of five general strategies:

• Teaching refers to providing the right kind of information so that people can do their tasks more effectively.
• Designing enables people to select and organize their work so that it becomes more interesting and motivating.
• Advocating helps people navigate the company's political contexts.
• Accommodating focuses on altering the timing or process of one's activities so that others can also succeed with their work.
• Nurturing focuses on individuals' development needs so that they can perform more efficiently.

The starting point for everything is respect and reciprocity, as well as right timing. Otherwise, e.g. teaching or nurturing could feel like bullying. Perhaps Dutton's model could be supplemented with Meg Warren's research on how to be a good ally. The virtues of an ally, such as compassion, fairness, humility and prudence, help to approach task enabling with respect for the wishes of others.

Fleeting everyday encounters as a source of wellbeing

Barbara Fredrickson has studied shared positive emotions, which she calls micro-moments of love or, more scientifically, positivity resonance. A micro-moment of love can occur in a very short amount of time when friends, or even complete strangers, experience a shared positive emotion together. Although more scientific, especially causal, research on the phenomenon is still needed, positivity resonance has already been found to be associated with overall wellbeing. The effects of this phenomenon complement the more widely known ‘broaden-and-build’ theory of positive emotions. 

Positivity resonance requires mindful presence, mutual care, and behavioural synchrony. Real-time sensory connection enables the emergence of positivity resonance. For example a caring touch, a shared smile or laughter, a gentle hug, or moving together in the same way can create a micro-moment of love, when the conditions of being present and mutual care are also met. 

Shared positive experiences help people feel closer and understand each other better, which in turn increases the likelihood of positivity resonance in the future. When repeated, it improves social bonds, commitment, and trust. Over time, positivity resonance increases the wellbeing of both individuals and communities with many health benefits. 

A micro-moment of love can occur in the most surprising fleeting encounters. Some ways in which you can increase the possibility of positivity resonance in your daily life are practicing mindful presence and a kind, empathetic attitude towards others and yourself, nurturing social interactions, practicing asking appreciative questions, and contributing to a psychologically safe atmosphere in your community.

What kind of interaction is corrosive?

Corrosive relationships can be considered the opposite of high-quality connections. A corrosive relationship is signalled by belittling, imitation, name-calling and hostile humour at worst. We may also unintentionally behave in a harmful way towards others. This can happen when we miss showing gratitude or appreciation, ignore people or their work, or exercise power over others.

Jari Ylitalo names the considerable performance pressures of an academic career as a factor hindering interaction. This can easily reduce opportunities for forming and maintaining high-quality connections. Ylitalo also says that the post-corona hybrid era has brought its challenges to finding real encounters and maintaining a community.

In corrosive interaction we break another person’s trust. The antidote, therefore, is strengthening trust. According to Jane Dutton, building trust begins with treating others as trustworthy, without first requiring them to prove their trustworthiness. This creates a self-perpetuating circle of trust. Not having to constantly doubt others also saves a lot of our energy.

Psychological safety as a basis for interaction

In recent years, the concepts of safe space and psychological safety have entered both scientific research and general discourse. Psychological safety refers to feelings of belonging, trust, shared direction, as well as a desire to learn and contribute to the community. In its core lies the question of what happens if one takes a risk. Are opinions and suggestions treated constructively and with appreciation, or do they result in resentment and unsafety?

Although psychological safety has been shown to influence how innovative and how ready for a change people are, the results regarding its impact on efficiency and learning are contradictory and require further research. It appears that psychological safety provides a good foundation for development, learning and achieving top performance in the workplace and educational institutions, but does not in itself create them.

The way we behave, the things we do and how we deal with others matter. Maybe the next time when we meet another person, we could really do our best to act with respect, be genuinely present and to actively listen. This way, we communicate acceptance and support. A high-quality connection, or at least a precious micro-moment of love, might take us by surprise!

References

^{Carmeli, A., Brueller, D., & Dutton, J. E. (2009). Learning behaviours in the workplace: The role of high‐quality interpersonal relationships and psychological safety. Systems Research and Behavioral Science: The Official Journal of the International Federation for Systems Research, 26(1), 81-98.}

^{Dutton, J.E. (2003). Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.}

^{Edmondson, A. C. & Z. Lei (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behaviour 1:1, 23–43.}

^{Kim, S., Lee, H., & Connerton, T. P. (2020). How psychological safety affects team performance: mediating role of efficacy and learning behavior. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 1581.}

^{Major, B. C., Le Nguyen, K. D., Lundberg, K. B., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2018). Well-Being Correlates of Perceived Positivity Resonance: Evidence From Trait and Episode-Level Assessments. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(12), 1631-1647.}

^{McKinsey & Company, (2021). Psychological safety and the critical role of leadership development, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/psychological-safety-and-the-critical-role-of-leadership-development, (5.2.2023.)}

^{Mineo, L. (2017). Good genes are nice, but joy is better. The Harvard Gazette 11.4. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/ (5.2.2023)}

^{Stephens, J.P., Heaphy, E. & Dutton, J.E, (2011). High Quality Connections. In K. Cameron and G. Spreitzer (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.}

^{Warren, M.A. and Warren, M.T. (2021). The EThIC model of virtue-based allyship development: A new approach to equity and inclusion in organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 182:783-803.}