People feel pretty disconnected at work right now: disconnected from their organizations, from their jobs, and especially from their colleagues. You might feel too burned out to do anything about this last one or maybe think that it doesn't matter. But actually, our relationships with our coworkers play a huge role in determining how successful, innovative and happy we'll be at work.
[The Way We Work]
Our work relationships give us two valuable things: social support and access to information. And research shows it's the combination that can make us happier and more successful.
I'm a social scientist and I study how the way we collaborate affects our well-being and professional success. I have a few tips, and you don't have to be a social butterfly to give them a try.
OK, tip number one. Build trust by opening up. Having a close friend at work makes us more effective at our jobs and definitely improves our well-being. If you get along with your coworkers, you probably already have a sense of this, but our work friends are important for another reason and it has to do with access to information. People don't just share their best ideas with anyone. We share with people we know and trust. I ran a multi-year study at Google to find out why some teams are successful and others fail. And what we found is that the teams who trust each other do so much better because people on those teams feel safe sharing their best ideas.
So how can you start to build that trust? There's a concept called a vulnerability loop, and the basic idea is that when you’re vulnerable in front of somebody, it makes it a lot easier for them to be vulnerable in front of you. We usually think you have to trust somebody before you can open up. But what this research suggests is that often, trust comes after we've been vulnerable and people have responded empathetically. So taking that risk to share that this week you feel a little off because your kid's starting at a new school or maybe you’re really worried about the status of your big project, that can actually go a long way towards building a sense of trust that can make you and your teams much more effective.
OK, tip number two, be a joiner. Surprisingly, our closest friends aren't the best people for giving us access to new information. It's often our acquaintances because they connect us to different social circles and consequently new ways of thinking. Social scientists call these relationships weak ties, and when it comes to innovation, they're more important than our strongest connections.
For example, in one study, I found that people who had many weak ties that connected different groups in a large organization were more likely to have high performance scores, more likely to be promoted and even more likely to say they were a part of a creative breakthrough. The best way I've seen for developing weak ties is to join groups outside of your day-to-day work. Things like philanthropic organizations, sports clubs or employee resource groups are great examples. You never know. Tobin from Legal, who you met playing pickleball, might have a great idea that can really help you out in your next project. And for leaders trying to spark innovation, having a regular trivia group might be more effective the best-run strategy summit.
OK, this last tip is especially helpful for managers. Tip three: Make it a little bit easier for people to belong to something. A number of years ago, I helped redesign the onboarding process at a big company. At the time, the onboarding week was maybe informative, but it didn't do a lot to create meaningful connection. So I ran an experiment. Every week, I assigned new employees to one of five groups, each with a different colored T-shirt, and something amazing started to happen. Almost immediately, people wearing yellow T-shirts started having breakfast together. People in the green T-shirts started walking between the different sessions together. And at the end of the week, we blew by our happy hour budget because people hung out together so much longer than they ever had. The best part is, after that onboarding week, many of those people stayed in touch for years, which became a great source of weak ties across the organization. The reason the T-shirt experiment worked so well is because it gave people an easy way to identify the group they belong to. You could be creative here. Even things like swag, T-shirts and project code names can go a long way towards creating a sense of belonging.
Look, people feel really isolated and disconnected right now. That's not surprising, we've all just been through a global pandemic. The best part about reconnecting is that it doesn't just benefit you, it benefits the whole community that you help create.
