Dr. West recently shared with me that at present approximately 1,100 of the Mayo Clinic’s 3,700 physicians and staff scientists participate in COMPASS.

Could something as simple as regularly having a meal together to discuss work experience-related issues help reduce burnout? It seems too simple, doesn’t it? Although there are several factors that contribute to burnout, there is good reason to believe connection practices such as having regular meals with colleagues provide some degree of protection.

Wired to Connect

In my most recent book, Connection Culture, I lay out the scientific evidence that connection makes us smarter, happier, healthier, and more productive. Amy Banks, MD, author of an excellent recent book titled Wired to Connect, uses the acronym “C.A.R.E.” to summarize the relational benefits of connection. Dr. Banks is a former instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is presently the director of advanced training at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women.

C.A.R.E. summarizes four parts of the neural pathway for connection with each pathway representing an aspect of relationships. The four pathways are as follows:

• Calm – Helps People Feel Clam (via the smart vagus nerve)

• Accept – Helps people feel accepted via the brain’s dorsal anterior cingulate cortex

• Resonate – Helps people resonate with others via the brain’s mirroring system

• Energy – Helps give people energy via the brain’s dopamine reward pathway

Using Dr. Bank’s C.A.R.E. acronym, it’s easy to see why physicians participating in the Mayo Clinic’s COMPASS program would report fewer signs of burnout. The regular meals with colleagues meet their need for connection by helping them feel calm and accepted, helping them resonate in conversations with their colleagues, and giving them greater energy to tackle the considerable workload physicians have today, especially with the changing landscape of healthcare insurance reform and moving to electronic medical records.

Changing Cultures to Promote Connection

The decades-old push for productivity in organizations has had some unintended consequences. Squeezing out time to connect with colleagues over lunch makes people more vulnerable to disengagement, burnout, anxiety, and depression.

Do your team, department, and organization’s cultures promote connection over lunch, or do you feel pressure to have lunch in your office, and if you go to lunch, you feel people look at you as if you’re a slacker?

It’s time for leaders to encourage people in the workplace to take time to connect and reduce burnout. Individuals and organizations perform better when they do. I applaud the Mayo Clinic for its efforts to improve its culture with programs like COMPASS. It’s another reason why the Mayo Clinic is rated the #1 hospital overall in the nation.