It’s two years since the first UK lockdown. What most of us thought would be over in weeks has had a significant and lasting effect on our lives; we worked longer hours, yet our feeling of remoteness and loneliness also increased. In response we over-compensated and over-communicated without making the meaningful connections we naturally crave.
Instead of feeling energised by the day we experienced a sense of treading water and stagnation. Talking to people today, this general disengagement with the world is still present for many despite the vaccines giving us the green light to reclaim our lives.
How do we then reset how we live and work so going to work, working from home or the new hybrid blend of the two fills people with energy rather than fills them with dread?
To beat languishing, we need something fundamental. Whether it is meetings, managing teams and projects, or building a brilliant culture we need to create the right circumstances so that good things happen. It recalls what Rose Kennedy said, “Life isn’t a matter of milestones but of moments”. Make those moments rewarding through connection, consistency, and community.
Connection.
A sense of belonging is a powerful force in any organisation. It is based on chemistry between people that is frequently rooted in laughter and fun. How you carefully curate key moments and how your workplace is designed will have an enormous impact on the quality of connections made.
Open plan offices were supposed to hasten more serendipitous interactions to benefit us as individuals as well as increase idea flow to the benefit of the wider business. But open plan often has the opposite effect. Just think how many in your office sit sending IMs to a colleague a few feet away while staring at their screen and wearing noise cancelling headphones.
Re-design your office to be a place where people enjoy working and produce truly great work. Ask yourself: Do you have enough quiet rooms for tasks that need thoughtful, deliberate work applied to them? Do you have the right kind of collaboration spaces where teams share ideas and build lasting relationships? Are there areas to allow people to linger; whether to pass the time of day, share thoughts on last night’s game or just sit in solitude for a while?
Research has shown that people who have a best friend at work are more engaged in their tasks and perform better as well, while play is a recognised form of mindfulness that helps alleviates stress.
Instead of forced fun like off-sites and happy hours encourage people to opt-in to relaxed social moments such as morning coffee time, afternoon tea and proper lunch breaks. To bring play into the office try placing chess sets or boardgames in your communal areas. Or what about chiselling out five minutes in your all-hands meeting when teammates talk about a hobby or something dear to them? You will get a glimpse of the person outside work that will spark follow up conversations which could be the seeds of future friendships.
Consistency.
During my work on the UK’s pandemic response there were times I felt overwhelmed. I was dealing with issues affecting millions of people, but it was the meetings, e-mails, IMs that fogged my brain and created a constant sense of busyness rather than my to do list.
To paraphrase neuroscientist Donald Hleb, ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together’ – but it is the consistency of the firing that leads to the wiring. Humans are social animals craving deep connections that cannot be found via digital means. We need to block out time to plan how meaningful connections can be a consistent part of our work no matter if you are a CEO, a manager, or a graduate.
Take steps to curb the tyranny of meetings and put in place a process to manage e-mail flow to reduce the demand on your cognitive bandwidth.
Next, plan what to do with that ‘free’ space in your diary like getting moving. A Stanford study concluded that walking boosts creativity and relaxes the brain in a way that makes a ‘eureka moment’ more likely. Indeed, genius like Tchaikovsky and Einstein were habitual walkers. It’s something I prioritise too and desperately missed during my many hours shackled to back-to-back video calls.
Block out time to make telephone calls whether to contacts, clients, or co-workers. The phone is no longer the first form of communication we turn to and yet can be quicker than a succussion of e-mails, vastly more efficient than a diarised meeting, and far more personable than instant messages.
Do regular work shadowing with other teams. Learning about how your product engineers solve complex problems or how supply chain meets seasonal demands will give you a better sense of how your business works but also give you a friendly face who could become a powerful ally on a future project or in a crisis.
Above all else, having some time built into your schedule means you will always have room for the unexpected. The best leaders I have worked with have been those with time to listen and room to think. They create the right circumstances to be ready for the unforeseen and then to make the best of any situation.
Community.
Communities are built by people for people through multi-layered meaningful connections. Most of us want to live as part of a thriving, strong and vibrant community that we feel invested in and are proud to help nurture for the future – why is this rarely true of where we work?
Psychologists studying group dynamics have discovered something called a “compensation effect” between competence and warmth. Sadly, people seen as warm are also perceived to be incompetent while those who are cold, competent. Now think about your community and those who bring people together. They do so through warmth, and, without them, our communities would be far less rich and dynamic.
Give every member of your team your trust, the opportunity, and the support they need to become ‘Happenstance Makers’ to build a community in your workplace.
Ask them to think carefully about the key moments in people’s careers in your business. How are new members brought into the community? How are departing members bid farewell?
In his book about what makes the New Zealand rugby team, the ‘All Blacks’, perennial winners business author James Kerr quotes an Old Greek proverb, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never see”. How can your Happenstance Makers help others leave a positive legacy in your business?
Happenstance = creating the right circumstances for good things to happen
Two years on from the first lockdown, it is time for happenstance.
Happenstance is a practice for individuals, a framework for teams, and a culture to keep refreshing for organisations.
Put happenstance back into your life with connection, consistency and community to create the right circumstances for good things to happen.