How Building Connection Reduces Burnout and Lifts Engagement

Do you remember when you were younger, and the feeling of trepidation as you walked in the front door of a new school or club?

"Will they like me? What if I don't fit in?"

Then that one kid smiled at you and took you under their wing. By the end of the day, things were looking a lot more positive.

This is the perfect example of the human need to connect. It is an ancient and hardwired phenomenon that is a key element of positive mental health. Did you know that we are all just slightly evolved monkeys whose brains simply want to be connected to others? It's a concept called Tribalism and is one of the areas we consistently identified in the research we did to identify ways to prevent burnout.

In pre-history, we relied on a connection with others for a sense of safety (watch out for the saber tooth tiger) but also for communication and stimulation ("There's food over here or there are eligible partners in the next village"). Of course, there are fewer tigers in the modern world, but the principle still applies. Humans need to feel connected to a group of some form, and for most, that is your team at work.

What the Research Tells Us About Connection and New Hires

A consulting project we have recently been undertaking with a large business has allowed us the opportunity to conduct over 35 interviews with new hires. The single biggest challenge most faced, and the one that led to most deciding whether they wanted to stay with the business, was connection.

Whether it be meeting their team, their key stakeholders or working out where they fitted into the business, if new employees struggled to make connections it led to a feeling of frustration, resentment, and mental anguish. This was because they felt like no matter how hard they tried, they were struggling to be successful. All of these factors contributed to burnout and came down to lacking connection.

As a leader, aim to be that kid who smiles at the new person on their first day at school.

New employees need help to create networks and connect with the vision and purpose of the organisation. They also need support to connect the dots about how the different parts of the business fit together and how they fit into the bigger picture. Leaders who help make these connections are perceived as much more effective by employees. Therefore it's a win-win.

Connection Is Not Just for New Starters

You don't need to do it alone though. From our research, we found that 47% of onboarding programmes combine manager-led sessions with buddy connect programmes to ensure there is always support in place and someone new employees can reach out to for support.

Equally, the connection doesn't just apply to new starters. One of the biggest challenges for distributed and hybrid teams is the inability of employees to connect and have those informal conversations. Our work relies on getting people to connect and talk, and so we've spent many hours perfecting facilitation techniques that enable this virtually. It's not easy but it's essential.

All of this effort with new starters, remote and hybrid teams, and workshops is more than just a fluffy well-being item on the agenda for leaders. There is a commercial imperative. Bottom-line performance.

Sure, there is a focus on reducing burnout and improving commercial results but it's more than that. Connection is about clarity, certainty, agility, and innovation. When we know what we are there to do, who works with us, and how to tap into information to help us solve, we can perform better. And this performance builds our mental resilience to burnout. So leaders, help your teams connect and promote connection across your team.

The Role of Internal Marketing in Building Connection

One tool that leaders often overlook when thinking about connection is internal marketing. This is a strategic approach to communicating the organisation's mission, vision, values, and direction in a way that makes every employee feel part of something meaningful. Done well, it is one of the most direct levers you have for reducing disengagement and the creeping disconnection that feeds burnout.

The benefits are practical, not just cultural:

• Increased engagement. Employees who understand where the business is going and why their role matters are more productive, more creative, and more likely to stay.
• Reduced turnover. Engaged employees are less likely to leave, which saves significant cost in recruiting and onboarding.
• Better customer outcomes. People who feel connected to the organisation's purpose go further for customers. That is not a soft claim. It shows up in service quality and repeat business.

How to Put Internal Marketing to Work

You do not need a communications department to do this well. Here are practical starting points:

• Share employee success stories regularly, in team meetings, in written updates, wherever people gather. Recognition that is visible creates a culture where contribution is noticed.
• Use internal channels, whether email, intranet or team meetings, to keep people informed about what is changing and why. Silence breeds rumour and disconnection.
• Run regular engagement surveys and, critically, act visibly on what you hear. The survey itself means little. The response to it means everything.
• Celebrate milestones and project completions. People need to feel the work lands somewhere, not that it disappears into a void.

Leaders play the central role here. Celebrating achievements, providing opportunities for growth, and encouraging open communication are not optional extras. They are the conditions under which people stay connected to their work and to each other.

Learning and Growth as a Connection to Purpose

There is a second, less obvious dimension to connection that our research surfaced: the connection people feel to their own growth. Those who are learning and exploring are significantly more likely to stay engaged and avoid burnout than those who are repeating the same skills on the same problems year after year.

This aligns with the growth mindset concept developed by Carol Dweck. As junior members of a team, people are constantly encountering new situations and adding to their toolkit. That continuous learning releases neurochemicals that support resilience and a sense of achievement. It is the same mechanism that keeps special forces candidates and extreme athletes going when the task looks impossible. They are driven by exploring something they did not previously think possible.

The problem is that as people become more senior, that learning curve flattens dramatically. Most executives cannot remember the last piece of professional development they undertook. They become more time-poor, more reliant on what has worked before, and less willing to experiment because the perceived stakes are higher. The result is a slow disconnection from growth, and eventually from the work itself. This is a common path to the emotional exhaustion that sits at the heart of burnout.

Those who are learning and growing are more able to adapt. Imagine being unfit and being asked to run a 10k with little to no training. Many leaders have found their performance in disrupted environments feels exactly like that.

Practical Ways to Stay in the Learning Zone

Here are approaches that clients have shared during feedback sessions:

• Seek new opportunities internally. This does not mean changing companies. It might mean stepping into a secondment, leading a cross-functional project, or temporarily moving into a role where you are genuinely learning again. One client runs a senior rotation programme where leaders change jobs or projects every two years until they have the breadth of experience needed at executive level.
• Bring new thinking to old problems. Work with younger members of your team to explore different approaches. You expose yourself to fresh ideas. They feel included and developed. Both outcomes matter.
• Spring clean your routine. Ingrained routines can quietly drain mental energy. Look at how you start and finish your day, where you work from, and which environments support deep thinking versus creative work. Small changes here can reduce the low-level cognitive load that accumulates into exhaustion.

The connection to growth mindset is not incidental. Leaders who keep learning model the behaviour they want from their teams, and they stay more connected to the sense of purpose that makes the work worth doing.

Practical Ideas to Build Connection

Here are some suggestions that came up in recent workshops where we discussed connections for both new starters and established employees:

• Have new starters meet 3 to 5 people every day during their first week as part of a scheduled programme. Give them a list, with an org chart, and help them see how the business fits together. Focus on the people they will work with during the initial stages of their role. Introduce new people over the first few months.
• Dedicate the first 10 minutes of a meeting to checking in, asking everyone to share: How are you doing? What's your workload like this week? How can we help? Remember, leaders should go first.
• Create working sessions where people can hang out in an open Zoom or Teams meeting whilst they are working from home or elsewhere. It's not obligatory to attend but it's sometimes nice to have that background connection and be able to ask questions.
• Create specific moments to connect with your team members one on one and discuss with them where they feel they need to boost their network or what they want to learn, and help them connect with someone in your network who can enable that.
• Don't forget about the importance of connecting to other teams. Bring in external speakers and ask other leaders if you can have your team share what they are up to in their meetings.

If engagement keeps slipping no matter what you try, that is often friction in the system rather than a lack of effort. Take the Leadership Friction Finder and see where the drag actually sits. It takes a few minutes.

If you would rather keep reading, here are more articles on burnout.

Want to see how this works with your managers? Here is how I work with GMs.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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