Joey Votto and Steph Curry found a secret to workplace happiness. You can, too

New York Times

22-05-2025

Editor's Note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic's new desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Peak aims to connect readers to ideas they can implement in their own personal and professional lives. Follow Peak here.
The realization came to Joey Votto in the middle of his career.
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As a young first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, Votto showed up to work, kept his head down and locked into his routine, the same drills, the same swings, the same results.
'I want to do my routine until it becomes boring,' he told one of his coaches.
He arrived at the clubhouse most days and did not say hi to anyone. Part of that was his personality; he is a natural introvert. But part of it was a conscious choice.
'I was there to work,' he said.
Younger teammates were cautious to approach him, mindful of his intense dedication to his process and wary of disrupting it. 'He got so good that he could do his routine and all the balls would end up in the same spot,' Tony Jaramillo, one of Votto's coaches, said. 'So he'd hit the ball off the net in the batting cage and they'd all end up in a circle right beside each other. No one does that.'
The routine turned Votto into one of the best hitters of his era, a multi-time All-Star, an NL MVP, an on-base machine and a potential Hall of Famer. But then one year, he read the seminal book by Dale Carnegie, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People,' a self-help tome originally published in 1936.
Votto was struck by a passage about connection. One of the best ways to reach others, Carnegie wrote, was to offer sincere appreciation. It wasn't enough to show up; you had to be intentional.
In the months and years that followed, Votto began to change. He came out of his shell and found his voice. He counseled younger players, doling out hitting advice and telling jokes, letting teammates into his world, a charming mix of chess, philosophy, science and dry comedy. 'He was probably the most interesting man in the game,' Reds coach Freddie Benavides said.
For Votto, the shift was transformational.
'My workplace felt warmer,' he said. 'My teammates and I had a stronger bond than I ever thought would be possible. And it helped my general well-being. I felt happier at work. I felt warmer with my new friends.'
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What Votto had discovered was an idea that Jane Dutton, an organizational psychologist at the University of Michigan, has spent nearly three decades researching.
Her key finding: There is a simple formula for being happier at work.
For professional athletes, the closest analog to an office is the locker room. The schedule is daily, and the days are stressful. Players exist close to co-workers, hovering around lockers, attending meetings on strategy and refining skills on the practice field or weight room.
For decades, the intimate confines convinced general managers and coaches to consider team chemistry. Coaches emphasized building relationships and forging ties. The Boston Celtics, for example, hired a Harvard business professor with expertise in conversation to optimize communication and expedite relationship building in the locker room.
But research has suggested that there's an even simpler way to foster happier work places and more cohesiveness among team members. The answer is in what Dutton calls 'high-quality connections,' a term she coined to describe the brief, positive interactions between colleagues.
They can be a quick conversation, an email exchange or an interaction in a meeting, but they are marked by trust, equal engagement from both sides and acceptance. Perhaps more important: They don't require a long or deep relationship.
In some ways, it may seem obvious that having positive interactions would boost team morale. Yet the magnitude of the impact is surprising. Studies have shown that an increase in 'high-quality connections' can improve physiological health outcomes for employees and increase measures of energy and vitality. It can also increase resilience and coordination in organizations. In other words, fostering more connections may be more powerful than trying to change a company's culture.
'This is such a simple idea, but I've been stunned at how powerful it is,' Dutton said. 'It doesn't cost money. It's easier to actually change (that) than culture, which is really hard to change in an organization.'
The origins of Dutton's work began in the 1990s, when researchers were studying people who clean hospitals. Dutton was interested in how people in low-status jobs dealt with feeling, in her words, 'devalued.'
The study offered a surprise. The maintenance workers and custodians were having regular, brief interactions with patients and their families, which allowed the cleaners to reframe their work as meaningful.
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They were able to see themselves as 'part of being healers,' Dutton said.
The result spurred years of research around a simple question: Why are those brief, positive moments with co-workers so invigorating? Dutton, who spent years teaching MBA students at the University of Michigan and executives throughout the business world, came to believe that one of the first ways to foster more connections was to educate about their power.
A second aspect of HQCs, however, could be more useful to coaches and sports executives. When it comes to building resilient organizations, it's sometimes easier to think smaller than to build a deep relationship.
'The idea of changing a relationship can be really daunting,' Dutton said. 'But if you think about, well, that relationship is made up of a whole bunch of little micro bits of connection and disconnection, you're gonna build a better relationship if you have more of these moments of high-quality connecting.'
Through her research, Dutton devised a set of categories and strategies to foster these 'connections' at work.
The first was what she called 'respectful engagement,' which included words of affirmation, praise or genuine interest in a colleague's work.
The second was 'task enabling,' or helping an employee accomplish something. In sports terms, it might include a baseball player offering a tip in the batting cage or a basketball coach introducing a drill to a player. But it could also be more abstract — creating the conditions or culture for success — a concept that former NBA coach Phil Jackson once described as 'invisible leadership.'
The final category was creating trust, either through moments of vulnerability or by soliciting information or input.
The connections are often brief — just 30 or 40 seconds at the most. But Dutton thinks of them 'like vitamins,' nutrients for the mind and spirit. Those moments help propel people forward. Then the cycle continues.
On some level, Steph Curry has understood this intuitively.
When former Warriors guard Glenn Robinson III joined Golden State in 2019, Curry greeted him with a handshake and offered him a list of churches in the area. When Jeff Addiego, who runs the Warriors' youth basketball academy, made a rare appearance at the Chase Center, Curry asked how the basketball season was going for Addiego's daughter. When the Warriors landed late in Indianapolis one night, Curry knocked on young teammate Quinn Cook's door and walked with him to Steak 'n Shake, where they ate burgers and talked until 4 in the morning.
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'He had relationships with everybody,' Cook said.
It's no surprise that the word most Warriors teammates and coaches associate with Curry is joy. It's the kind of connection and communication that every professional sports team hopes to foster. What many don't understand is that the interventions for improvement are simple, too.
Alison Wood Brooks is an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and the author of the recent book, 'Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.' She's also a consultant for the Boston Celtics, where she looks at how conversations move throughout the organization and how those connections can drive culture.
According to Brooks, there are simple tools anyone could use to have better conversations with co-workers. Prep topics beforehand, ask a lot of questions, do not fear small talk but don't be afraid to go deeper quickly.
A recent study by Brooks and a group of researchers delivered an intriguing finding: People with more diverse 'social portfolios' — that is, people who have conversations with others of varying degrees of social connection — tend to be happier.
'Talking to different types of people, and different levels of closeness to you, makes people feel a lot more embedded in the world,' Brooks said. 'You're learning more, different information, you're getting all different kinds of emotional experiences, and those people are happier.'
The point is simple: For someone like Curry, those varied interactions with co-workers and even strangers, according to the research, may be more powerful than having a number of conversations with the same close friends.
The idea of connection was what stuck with Votto. When he decided to be more intentional and engaged in the clubhouse, he looked for tools to help. He started with something basic: Communication.
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Back in high school, he had maintained a group of close friends, but he was never particularly outgoing. He sat in the back row at school. He tended to be reserved. Benavides, a Reds coach and close friend, used to laugh at how Votto could walk to his car after a game and zoom past Benavides' wife without noticing.
To push himself out of his comfort zone in the major leagues, Votto decided to take an improv class at Second City in Toronto, where he grew up.
'I took one class and it just immediately hit home,' Votto said.
Votto was inspired by the classic improv rule of 'Yes, and …,' where performers affirm what another performer has said and then add to it. The training sharpened his listening skills. It also helped him speak extemporaneously to reporters and teammates. Votto continued by refining his Spanish. He texted teammates and experimented with social media. When outfielder Jesse Winker debuted with the Reds in 2017, a decade into Votto's big-league career, there was always one person he wanted to spend time with in the batting cage: Votto.
'He was open,' Winker said. 'He connected with people.'
For Votto, the change began with a small idea. It soon led to something big that anyone can replicate at work.
'I just think, as people, we should all strive for that, to find connection,' Winker said. 'Because I just think the world could probably use some of that.'
Rustin Dodd is a senior writer for Peak, The Athletic's new desk covering leadership, personal development and success. He last wrote about his experience drinking coffee like Dan Campbell for a day. Follow Peak here.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Emilee Chinn, Harry How / Getty Images)