So caught up are we in connecting that we fail to connect.

No email. No Facebook. No Twitter.

No online banking.  No online anything.

We couldn’t connect. The Internet was down. Again.

It had plagued us for weeks. And we had lost our minds.

The disembodied troubleshooter from Delhi was flummoxed. The signal kept dropping out. A 30% drop in the line, she said. Whatever that meant. She couldn’t fix it from there. She had to send someone here. Presumably not from Delhi. But it didn’t really matter to us. We just wanted to get back online.

And so Jim arrived: he had tools and meters and measuring devices and a plethora of doodads. He spent hours testing stuff, re-wiring things, taking things out, putting things in, moving stuff around.

New wires. New modem. New router. Definitely a connection problem, he said.

Internet restored.

But what was most remarkable about the event was the connection Jim made with us. He wasn’t in a hurry. He listened to us. He took his time to understand the problem. He empathized with our frustration. He was methodical. Hours went by. The job got done. And still he lingered. To be sure the problem would not recur. To reassure us. To tell us, as if we couldn’t tell, that he liked his work. “Here’s my card with my cell phone on it,” he said. “Call me if it happens again. Call me. And I’ll come right over.”

I thought back to an event a few weeks earlier: Mark at the gate. The plane was late leaving BWI. People were cranky. I was cranky. But this guy Mark who worked for Southwest went out of his way to answer the same questions over and over again, with courtesy and patience and care. He spoke to folks like it mattered – like it mattered to him that they were frustrated and tired and just wanted to get home. He smiled. He spoke gently. He kept folks calm and comfortable in the boarding area. And then he worked thoughtfully to get folks on the plane and on their way. He communicated. More than that, he connected.

In Seth Godin’s parlance, Jim and Mark are linchpins: they are indispensable.  “These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there is no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.”  They are people who bring their gifts to the world and the work they do; people who go out of their way to make a difference in the world and in the lives of others.

They are, in Robin Sharma’s language,  leaders even though they have no lofty titles.

Knowledge matters. But for knowledge we can go to Wikipedia. Skills matter. But robots can master skills. What really matters today is relationship: the ability to connect at a deep level. In an impersonal mechanized world, we need more linchpins, more leaders.

We need more folks like Chris and Mark.

As we hurry and tweet through our busy Linkedin Facebooked lives, the challenge is to worry less about connecting. And connect.