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.