Jason Lauritsen - The Human Connection Study (Part 1)

If your engagement strategy feels like it keeps hitting a ceiling, it may be because you are measuring the outcome instead of building the cause. We sit down with returning guest Jason Lauritsen in this two-part episode to unpack The 2026 Human Connection Study, a deep dive into connection-shaped motivation, retention, and performance at work, and why “connection” is more than team chemistry or feel-good culture.

• Click HERE for The 2026 Human Connection Study
• Click HERE for Jason's website
• Click HERE for Jason's episode: Teach From Your Scars...
• Click HERE for Jason's episode: The Check-In Method™

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Transcript

Welcome And Study Preview

John Broer 0:08

A very warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is your co-host, John Broer. So excited to welcome you to another installment of the Bosshole Chronicles because today I'm going to be joined by none other than Sara Best, a wonderful friend and business partner. And we are welcoming back for a third appearance, Jason Lauritsen. Jason always delivers on The Bosshole Chronicles wonderful content, wonderful information. And by the way, go into the show notes, you will see links to his previous two episodes. But today we're going to be talking about his role in helping to bring together the 2026 Human Connection Study, a connection-shaped motivation, retention, and performance at work. I promise you, this two-part episode will be incredibly beneficial for the work you're doing. So you'll find the study in the show notes. Let's end up part one today. Pick up part two next week. Let's dig in. Enjoy today's episode. Jason, welcome back to the Boss hole Chronicles third appearance. Good to have you. I am delighted to be back. Thanks for having me. And by the way, to all of our listeners, go into the show notes, you will see Jason's previous episodes, all remarkable. This one we're very excited about because a couple of months ago, Jason, you shared with me that you were part of or you were leading a study, a pretty massive research study. And you thought you you had said, hey, what do you think about this as a topic? And immediately uh we agreed that this would be super. So we're gonna turn it over to you to find out what was the study and what was the motivation behind it. Just give us some context, if you will.

Why Connection Became The Mission

Jason Lauritsen 2:18

Sure. So the study, we call it the human connection study, which feels, you know, like now, it feels real super ambitious. Um, but at the time we had kind of, I think, an ambitious goal in mind when we set out to do this. So let me back up a little bit. I think if I really go to the origins of where this started, it probably started for me 20 years ago or something, right? You know, I wrote a book about relationships and the power of relationships that published in or co-wrote with Joe in 2012. And so I've been fascinated by the power of relationships for a long time. And then through my work in, you know, within organizations, trying to understand how leadership and management and engagement and culture and all of that worked, I had this kind of I think we've talked about this in previous episodes, this sort of epiphany or sort of understanding that employees experience work as a relationship. And that really kind of is when, you know, that was my Neo moment, right? Seeing the matrix and being like, oh, this is all, it's all relationship. Like everything is relationship. It's relationship skills and relationships and all the things. And so, you know, when when I started down that path, then you very quickly find your way into wanting to understand, okay, well, how do relationships work exactly, right? What is it that makes it work? And you find your way to the different sort of subconstructs that kind of live live in that world, things like belonging and connection kind of is the central one. And what I came to understand was, or at least the way I understood it, is kind of connection is connection, at least should be kind of our understanding of what makes a relationship strong or not, right? That's kind of how I understood it. And so I started diving in, right? Looking, well, you know, the answers are surely somewhere, right? In the connection, the body of research on connection, this is so powerful. There has to be a whole bunch of stuff out there about this. And and there is, I mean, some people have have written some books and done some research and some things, but I have for 10 years, probably or more, been unsatisfied by what we actually understand about connection and how it how it happens, both both at work and beyond. I'm sort of fascinated by it broadly. And so, all of that to say, these questions have been sitting with me for a long time. And I've been sort of irritated that we didn't know more. And so last year, beginning of 2025, I was um having a conversation with some colleagues at Ingenuity Design. They're uh kind of an employee experience design firm. And they have done some research in the past into connection. They care about this. That's how we got connected. We kind of are both, you know, really invested and nerdy about this work. And uh we were talking about what could we do here? And the initial idea we talked about, I was kind of thinking about a retreat that didn't play out. And then we're like, you know what? What if we partnered on some research? And that, and and because we both were kind of wanted to get at the same questions. What is connection exactly? How does it work? What are the consequences of connection or disconnection? And then what are the things that actually make it happen at work? And that's really what sent us down the path. So that's how we kind of found our way into this this adventure. And we we dubbed it the human connection study and off we went.

Engagement Versus Connection Defined

John Broer 5:52

Nice. And you and you also partnered with Energage, is that correct?

Jason Lauritsen 5:55

We got there. Yeah, we got there sort of through the process.

John Broer 5:59

Okay. Okay. Well, that's very helpful. And and let's um let's talk about some core definitions. I mean, you you were using the word connection. Sarah had a really great question before we hit record. Sarah, why don't you we let's start out with some core definitions and we'll talk about connection. But Sarah, what was your question?

Sara Best 6:17

Well, Jason, I know you've studied engagement, but you even mentioned it a moment ago. Like you've been focused on that. I just wondered what the difference was between engagement and connection.

Jason Lauritsen 6:31

Yep. So, and I'm gonna this so these are my my definitions, the way that I understand the or sort of the way that we defined it. And I will say that the way I have historically defined engagement is engagement's the degree to which an employee is willing and able to perform up to their potential.

John Broer 6:49

Okay.

Jason Lauritsen 6:50

And so in a lot of ways, it's a measure of sort of employee motivation or it's an indicator of employee motivation based on the circumstances that surround them. Connection, the way it and this definition of connection actually emerged, and I should it, and I'll come back to in a second, I needed to tell you a little bit more about how this research worked or sort of what's in the study to have this make sense. But in the first phase of our study, it was more qualitative in nature. It was an open-ended set of survey questions asking people to describe what it felt like to be connected or when they felt most connected, when they felt disconnected. And then we sort of um extracted from all of that what connection meant, or how when people talk about connection, what do they actually meant? The way that definition that emerged was that connection is the feeling of meaningful engagement with something that matters to you. And this is confusing because you're using the word engagement here, but it's engagement differently, right? This is engaging with, right? So it's you're you're interacting with or you're having some experience with something that matters to you. And so the difference between the two, I think, is that connection can contribute to, and certainly what we found is that it plays a huge role in contributing to the degree to which an employee is willing and able to perform up to their potential, but they are very different. I would say that it in and I I think what ultimately it showed, and this is um we hold this loosely because we don't have causal, the causal chain, but it's predictive in a way that sort of makes sense is that connection sits upstream of engagement. Generally, when we're measuring engagement, engagement's an outcome of your experience. If you're if your experience at work meets or exceeds your expectations, then you're generally engaged. And then what that means is that you're going to perform at a higher level, you're going to be more likely to stick around. That's kind of the general construct. Connection sits upstream. So connection is something that you can create that actually then I think has sort of trickling effects to make it more likely that you are going to feel engaged or feel like your work experience is positive, which is going to then lead to performance outcomes.

John Broer 9:14

So that is well, first of all, that's a great definition. And I love the idea that connection sits upstream because in our world, you know this, and our listeners are very familiar with this. We talk about, you know, the whole person model, head heart and briefcase. And it's critical that from the junk, job fit, connection to the organization, I can't use that word. I shouldn't use that word, but job fit. There is alignment, if you will, before they even step in the door. And we can do that. I mean, that's part of the work that we do. But our definition of engagement, just to draw some contrast, is an employee's emotional connection to the organization and its goals. And that it makes perfect sense to say that is an outcome of them feeling not only connected, but the human side of it, that I am part of, I'm literally part of something. I am feeling a connection not only to the job I am doing, but also the people with whom I am doing that work. I love that. I think that is that just absolutely resonates. But this is so consistent with all the stuff that the three of us get to do in our in our wonderful careers. So let's go to some other definitions, if you will. Thank you for the distinction between connection and engagement.

The Three-Part Connection Model

John Broer 10:23

That makes total sense. Three key things that come out in the study. You talked about identity congruence, relational connection, and resonance connection. Can you take us through those, Jason? Sure.

Jason Lauritsen 10:35

So again, back to in the first phase, this phase one of the research where we were really trying to understand what connection is and how it works. This is sort of what emerged from it. We went into this as an exploratory project, right? We didn't start with an assumption about what connection was. I mean, we had assumptions, but the the survey wasn't designed or the research wasn't designed to sort of validate any assumptions or test any definitions. It was to try to understand what's actually going on. When someone says they feel connected, what does that actually mean? And so, or what are they talking about? And what we found in phase one was that there were, and I'll say this was kind of one of those, one of the moments that tested our assumptions going in, right? Because usually if I say to someone, you know, tell me about connection, or if we're talking about connection at work, where our brains typically go to is other connection with other people, right? I mean, when people talk about like why remote work is is um, you know, if they're gonna argue against remote work, it's because you can't be connected to other people, right? Those relationships are harder because we're separate in our houses, whatever. And so I I went in assuming that a majority of what people are going to tell us about connection had to do with people-to-people uh interactions. And sure, that is certainly there. But one of the things that showed up is that there was just as often people were talking about, you know, when they were talking about moments where they felt really connected, they were talking about things like, you know, I I um was part of a cause, or I got involved in a movement, or I was contributing to something that meant something to me, it made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. And so the the language of connection didn't mean just connection with other people, it meant connection to this, this bigger thing, right? Sense of purpose or meaning or significance. And so what we ended up seeing very clearly is that there were two types of connection loosely. They everything kind of sorted into these two types. One is connection to people, we call relational connection, the other is connection to meaning or significance. That is what we call resonance connection.

John Broer 12:52

Okay.

Jason Lauritsen 12:53

And so those are the two types. Well, then there was this third factor that was present in the in the data. It showed up as a as a sort of an another finding or factor that was there that we tried to fit into relational or resonance, but it didn't, it didn't map to either one. It was like this, its own, its own separate thing. But kind of the way that it seemed to work is it was like a almost like a precondition to being able to connect. We ultimately called it identity congruence, but basically and simply what it is is the answer to the question, can I be myself in this relationship, in this experience, in this job, in this organization? Can I be myself? And this isn't like, let's not mistake this with can I bring my whole self to work? Because that's not what this is about. This is, do I feel like in this relationship or experience, that the way I am being seen or the way that I can show up to it is aligned with how I see myself? Or am I having to be something that I'm not? Am I having to cover something that I am? Right. And so what the way this all kind of works, if you think about it structurally, is that identity congruence is this thing that has to be true in order for the other factors that would generally make condition or make connection happen, make me feel connected in order for that to connect to me. Identity congruence is sort of a vital ingredient that has to be there. If it's not there, then it's going to be really difficult to feel connected. And I think we can all, like, everybody can relate to that, right? Being in a, being in a, you know, even if you think about just a personal relationship with a friend or if you're dating someone and you're, you know, you're always feeling like you have to kind of be on your best behavior, or you have to like, you have to play some kind of role that isn't really who you are, that's never going to be the kind of relationship that you're going to feel deeply connected in. The same thing's true at work with our jobs. And so those were the kind of the way that the definition of connection emerged, or at least how it worked kind of emerged from our first set of research.

Leader Behaviors That Shape Belonging

Sara Best 15:15

I think about identity congruence. We we use the psychological safety scan, a fearless organization scan, which actually you know zooms into inclusion and belonging. Like, do I feel like I can show up like myself? Do I feel like I'm in the fold? And I I see the power, you know, how that is the sort of the defining characteristic that makes relational connection and resonance connection possible. Question for you, Jason. What in your mind are the we'll call them subtle and maybe uh un undetected leadership behaviors that communicate to people you don't really belong here or the way you need to be to belong here is this way.

Jason Lauritsen 16:02

So this is stepping outside of outside of the research report because we didn't that's not something we necessarily dove into in great detail there.

Sara Best 16:11

Yeah. Um I'm just thinking about your experience.

Jason Lauritsen 16:13

Yeah. No, in my experience, I would say um, you know, so often it's it's I I think what you tapped on is, you know, it's the psychological safety component of it. This is, I mean, the the reality is it's what the work of inclusion is has been about since the beginning, right? Is is how do we make sure people feel actively included when we are building teams or we're having discussions or we're making decisions. And so it's making sure voices are heard, making sure that people, you know, one of the one of the sort of foundational things that showed up in the initial um in the initial data set was that the kind of spark moment that creates a uh sort of the opportunity or sort of the initial sort of seeds of connection is feeling seen and understood by another person. Right. So that's on the relational side, but that's what we're talking about. So when you think about leader behaviors, right? It's it's you know, when when we're not taking the time to solicit your input, or if you do offer it, it gets dismissed or moved past, your voice isn't included in meetings. You know, there's a whole list of things that we could talk about that that you know, anytime we're trying to get people to sort of fit in to a particular norm or standard that they're sort of they maybe don't fit particularly cleanly with, right? When we're sort of taking the edges off of people is where you start to lose this. But I think most of it happens in one-to-one conversations with leaders, right? Whether or not they're actually, and and I mean that this does show up in the data. We talk about manager connection, it's pretty clear. But it's those those conversations with their managers and the degree to which their manager or leader can sort of make them feel understood and feel safe in that conversation to basically speak their truth without there being um fear um in the background.

unknown 18:29

Yeah.

John Broer 18:29

Well, now dovetailing Sarah on your point about psychological safety, uh, because in psychological safety, we talk about I mean it's all about team performance. And we're going to talk about the impact of connection on performance in just a second. But I would say in our world of analyzing psychological safety, the opposite of identity congruence is what we would call identity management. People just having to sort of kind of manipulate and show up differently. There is no authenticity. It's just like, well, this is how I think I need to behave in this particular circumstance because I don't feel connected here. And one of the things that that sh stood out for me, and I'm just going to read it right from the findings, that 60% of disconnected employees say they cannot be themselves at work versus just 1% of connected employees. And then to your point, high identity congruence does not guarantee connection, but low identity congruence nearly guarantees its absence. And I think that's a very powerful finding. Pretty stark. It is. It really is. So let's go to performance. Uh, because you've mentioned it a couple of times, Jason. You talked about the connected employees are are better performers, or there is an there is an element that it influences when it comes to performance. Tell us about how genuinely connected employees perform better.

Jason Lauritsen 19:48

So this is where I have to introduce now phase two of the

Big Data Results On Motivation

Jason Lauritsen 19:52

research. So phase one was we did the phase one included 800 respondents, and this was the kind of more open-ended exploration of trying to understand what connection is. And from that, we got the model, right? The model kind of emerged on the relational resonance, identity congruence, and the different pieces. We needed then to test it at scale in the workplace. And that's where we connected with Intergauge. Um, Intergauge is, for those that don't know, Intergauge, they're one of the sort of largest, most trusted workplace organization or workplace kind of research organizations in the U.S. They are the team behind the top workplaces contests across the U.S. And so they they literally they've collected tens of millions of employee survey responses over the last couple decades. We partnered with them. We basically um they came kind of after we had done phase one research. We said, hey, we'd like to go test this. Would you be willing to help us do that? And they said, sure, we'd love to. And so we sort of built out sort of how we wanted to sort of test out the things that we had found or validate the things we found in phase one. And they went and collected research for us, collected data for us. And so they they provided us back basically with sort of non-attributed, anonymous, anonymized data from it ultimately like kind of blew our mind once we got through the end of it. But the data set that came back from them had over 285,000 employee responses uh across over 1,600 organizations. So this is not a small data sample. No, it's pretty big, pretty big data sample. And so in that, we were sort of we were basically able to kind of take what we were learning about, we were testing out the connection model and then looking at it in relationship to all of the things that they measure in their surveys. So, you know, things around you know, motivation and intent to stay and engagement and inclusion and all the other things that that that um they measure to assess workplace engagement. And so one of the headline findings that was for us, again, one of those, like one of those sort of it was surprise in the sense of the scale of it. So, like one of the the things that that came out of it was that highly connected employees are 6.7 times more motivated at work than those that are not connected. And so when you think about that on a like a scale of magnitude, 6.7 times more motivated isn't like I'm a little more motivated. That is enormously more motivated. And then it there was all kinds of other impacts. Like it's it's really predictive around a variety of different things. I mean, highly connected employees are seven times more likely to refer their organization. You know, there's a bunch of other findings like that. But there is a very real and distinct kind of linkage between how connected I feel and then sort of my and unless you have to be honest about what this survey is measuring, it's surveyed is sort of measuring sort of one click upstream of actual performance outcomes. We're not measuring outcomes necessarily, we're measuring the things that hit outcomes in a survey because it's an employee. So, you know, motivation and and all the things that go there, those two things are very closely connected or correlated together. The way that I, when I first saw it, and then we started talking about this, I think at some point I said or made a comment, and this is in the report, that the best way I can describe what it looks like is that connection is the energy of performance.

unknown 23:35

Yeah.

Jason Lauritsen 23:36

Right. So you can build the, you can have all the tools, you can have all the things, you can have, you know, even the clear, you can have clear expectations and whatever, but it's the connection that sort of animates the the grid, if you will, and really lifts everybody towards performing at their best. And so there's pretty powerful findings.

Key Takeaway And Next Week

John Broer 24:00

Connection is the energy of performance. You better write that one down because that is absolute gold. So go into the show notes, look at all the information, download the report. It's absolutely fascinating. And make sure you check out part two of our interview with Jason Lauritzen next week on the Vossel Chronicles. We'll see you then.