Feeling connected to your colleagues creates a supportive network that can make challenging tasks seem manageable. Photo: Forbes India.
Michelle Gibbings says a workplace where team members are encouraged to be friendly and invested in knowing each other will inevitably result in greater collaboration, increased production and better career outcomes.
Have you ever sat with a group of colleagues and felt like you didn’t belong? If so, you’re not alone. I’ve certainly been there.
You can be physically with a group of people and still feel alone, isolated, disconnected and unseen. You feel lonely.
Loneliness is an emotion with many components, such as sadness, disappointment, envy, anxiety, and pain. It’s also subjective because it’s based on your interpretation and beliefs.
A Harvard Business Review article sums up the feeling of loneliness well: “Few people truly know me or would support me in my time of need.”
At its heart, loneliness centres on the quality of the relationships we form. We are tribal creatures, and we cannot thrive alone.
Neuroscientist, David Rock developed the SCARF model, based on the premise that we have five domains of primary social experience that either draw us toward something or push us away.
The ‘R’ in that model stands for relatedness — how connected we feel with others.
When we feel left out and isolated in social situations, our brain signals that we’re in danger.
The quality of relationships we form impacts us, and not just in our personal lives. It matters at work, too.
A systematic review of research over 23 years found that workplace loneliness is associated with lower job performance, reduced job satisfaction, poorer employee-boss relationships and higher burnout.
When employees feel disconnected, they’re less likely to engage in informal conversations and team activities, which impacts trust and team morale.
As they withdraw, they can avoid seeking help, sharing ideas, or collaborating with others.
Leaders can feel lonely, too. Leadership is inherently lonely. Who do you share your troubles with? Your challenges? Your success? Who do you truly trust that you can confide in?
When leaders are lonely, they can struggle to connect with their team members and build a supportive and inclusive culture. They also experience elevated levels of stress.
Connection and belonging are not just buzzwords, they are fundamental to creating a healthy and productive workplace.
Work is a place for social connection. It’s estimated you will spend about one-third of your life between childhood and retirement at work, so finding time to connect and build deep relationships with your colleagues is crucial.
Feeling connected to your colleagues creates a supportive network that can make challenging tasks seem manageable.
You have someone to bounce ideas off and talk through issues; someone to laugh with, and someone to celebrate successes with.
Belonging goes a step further. It’s about feeling accepted and valued for who you are.
It’s being able to show up at work in a way that is authentically you.
Creating a culture of belonging starts with inclusive leadership — striving to understand and appreciate team members’ diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
Unsurprisingly, underpinning all these efforts is psychological safety.
It’s impossible to feel you belong when you don’t feel safe to be yourself. When you don’t feel safe, you’re more likely to disconnect or try to ‘fit in’.
When we try to ‘fit in’, we leave a part of ourselves behind, which feels psychologically uncomfortable.
Inclusive leaders focus on open communication and transparency and ensure appropriate time for check-ins and discussions. They spend quality time with team members to build genuine relationships.
They use emotional intelligence skills to notice what’s going on — how connected and engaged team members are, while staying alert to behaviour promoting exclusion and division.
It’s not just up to the leaders, though. All team members play a role in developing a connected team where everyone belongs.
Leaders should encourage team members to be friendly and invested in knowing each other and collaborating well by role-modelling the right behaviour.
As a result, the team’s investment in each other will create meaningful relationships that can lead to deep and long-lasting friendships.
The upside of all of this is that the research shows people who have friends at work are happier and healthier.
Additionally, when they feel connected, they’re more likely to be engaged and committed to their work, leading to higher productivity and better performance outcomes, which aids their career progress, too.
Researcher and author Brene Brown wrote: “True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer.
“It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.”
Michelle Gibbings is a Melbourne-based workplace expert, and an award-winning author. She’s on a mission to help leaders, teams and organisations create successful workplaces — where people thrive and progress is accelerated. She can be contacted at [email protected].
