Why It’s Hard for People to Connect and Engage Right Now

Are you noticing that it’s not as easy as it once was to get involved in your community or your organization’s culture? Do you see a sustained drop in activity and connection?

Transcript:

Hey there! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Have you seen the Apple TV show, The Morning Show starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston? I ask because I loved the first season and the second season came out this fall. They actually started filming the second season and then had to shut down production in March 2020. At that point, they went back to the drawing board to incorporate the pandemic into the story and eventually they ended up picking up the story line at New Years, 2020. 

It’s really odd watching the first few episodes, seeing them deal with so many things that were a big deal to them, hearing the tick-tick of the countdown to when we all realized the pandemic was real. I’m sure there will be thousands of stories told throughout our lifetimes about that window of time from January to June, 2020. In my estimation, that was period of time we went from ignorant bliss to realizing we were dealing with something that would stop our lives as we knew them, to awakening to the fact that this would be a marathon, not a sprint. We would be dealing with the virus and its impact for a long time to come.

Watching these familiar characters on screen live on in ignorance to how much their lives would change, while continuing to live their lives, was surreal. It took me back to how it felt to have the rug ripped out from under me, personally. It reminded me about how everything stopped and then when we hit play again, it was like the film was playing out in slow motion, giving us each time to actually FEEL how much we cared about our family, for some, to feel the relief of not having to go into work and deal with personalities that made us uncomfortable, to FEEL how tired – exhausted we were from living from one race to another. 

And now, here we are, nearly 2 years later, and most of us are still recalibrating to new rules, new expectations, shifting values, and for so many people, a confusion about who we are and where we fit. It’s almost like going back to junior high where no one really knows where they fit in, in this new environment, whether that be questioning our ideals, our politics, our beliefs, our friendships, our careers, or how we work.

There is a lot still at stake.  

Over the past few months I’ve been having conversations with executive leaders and  professionals in organization and leadership development across the country to better understand the challenges they’re facing with the pandemic, social divides, and the Great Resignation. 

I have to say, it is incredibly encouraging to see the genuine care and concern these leaders have for the people in their organizations. They’re open to thinking outside-the-box about how to better listen and show they care, to experiment with new ideas for how to do work, and to find ways to be more flexible with operations, individual schedules, and locations for work. There are a lot of really good people putting their minds and hearts to this issue. Are you one of them?

Today I wanted to highlight one of the high-level concepts that these leaders say is necessary for the future of leadership. Then we’ll bring that concept down to ground-level application. 

OK, in these conversations, the biggest problem organizations are experiencing is around attrition and how hard it is to hire good team members. There are certainly many other sub-problems, but overall the biggest concern is how they’ll attract, keep, and engage employees. And whether these teams are working in-person, hybrid, or remote, leaders see the same need – a need for human connection. This is true of companies, no matter how big or small, regardless of location, and whether they are for-profit or non-profit. Everyone is saying the same thing. “It’s hard to find, keep and engage enough people to meet the demand of our customers and listening to people tells us they want better connection to the purpose and the people of the company.” 

Here’s the thing. Everyone, regardless of position, is struggling with their own experience of the stresses and unexpected changes of day-to-day life. We’re all trying to figure out how to make life work and still feel meaningful. 

But it’s interesting: Even though people say they want better connection, the habits of people across the country have changed. We’re now hesitant to participate in and engage in our companies and communities.  Two years in, participation in community activities is still low. For some people, that’s because of health concerns. For others, it may have less to do with their physical health and more to do with self-protection of another kind. We’ve understandably become emotionally guarded.

I actually find this phenomenon really interesting. I’ve been talking for months about how the workforce feels empowered in unprecedented ways, particularly because the fallout of the pandemic knocked people out of their satisfaction with the status quo, making people more likely to consider what they most care about, as well as where and how they want to work. 

But now we have found a NEW status quo. So whereas people feel like they can take risks and make big career moves, they’ve found stability in the control they’ve taken by staying home more and holding back from participating in anything that feels like a risk of any kind. 

That’s how people often work. They take risks in one area but stabilize in another. If they’re going to have instability at work and uncertainty about when events might be canceled or school is remote for a time, and that sort of thing, they will try to find predictability in other ways. 

I suspect that our habits of community participation and organizational engagement have decreased because these are things that naturally carry risk. Risk of investing time and energy into an event that might never take place. Risk of having to disagree with someone and possibly lose the relationship. Risk of encountering opposition toward ideological beliefs, rocking oneself to the core.

Does any of this resonate with you? Do you feel it in your own being? Do you see it in others?

How many trips or plans have you made that had to be canceled, disappointing you and your colleagues or your family? Have you ever been in a situation where you assume the other person thinks the same way that you do so you share some joke and they are offended or just laugh awkwardly and then walk away? Have you been able to sweep your political beliefs under the rug in most situations but then something came up and you felt like you had to say something because you feel so annoyed or uncomfortable? 

It makes complete sense to me that when our work life is so up in the air, we would pull back from emotionally investing in the culture and function of our work and communities, because being around people can feel more threatening right now than it did in the past. Threatening to our health, but also threatening to the relationships themselves and threatening to our own paradigm of life. 

So what do we do? How can we venture back out into engaged participation in physically and psychologically safe ways? How can we encourage those within our sphere of influence to do so?

In our Deep Impact framework for giving and receiving feedback we recognize the vital importance for people to feel safe and significant before we worry about giving any bit of challenging feedback. This concept is based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 

So let’s think about this in light of how much people have pulled back from investing in their organizations and communities. In unsettling times like these, we recommend that you focus about 70% of your communication (what you say and do) on messages that communicate safety and essentially say, “I care about you and I am FOR you.”  Invest about 15% on messages that communicate recognition of one’s significance by saying something along the lines of, “I RESPECT you and your opinions and what you bring to the table,” and then just 5% or less of your messaging can be challenging, suggesting a course correction. But even when you have to give course-correcting feedback, you’re doing it in a way that says, “I am sharing this with you because BELIEVE in you and your potential.”

By focusing most of your communication on safety and significance, you’re establishing a more stable work atmosphere. When people feel safe and significant, they are able to let down their guard a little and take the risks that are necessary to actually connect with others. 

Do you want to lead a team in a psychologically stable way so that your team can take innovation and business development risks? 

Do you want your team to feel free to share their entrepreneurial spark with your company? 

Do you want the team to get along better and work as a cohesive team rather than individual silos?

We are currently enrolling people into a program for managers. It is a small cohort of 12 that will meet virtually for 8 weeks. Our goal is to first, take care of the people in the group. We want this to be an amazing experience of connection and care for them so they can take that experience back to their own teams. Secondly, our goal is to offer tools and opportunities for self-reflection that will help them grow into their own Voice of Influence – owning their voice and decisions while communicating well with their teams and even drawing out the best in others. 

If you’d like details on this program, now or in the future if you’re listening to this after we’ve closed enrollment for this cohort, reach out. We’ll still be talking to organizations about the program and will start a waiting list for the next group after this one begins. Sign up for emails by downloading our insights paper on the Empowered Workforce or the Free mini-course Deep Impact Method, or Send me a message through the contact form – all found on our website: www.voiceofinfluence.net

Provide stability and support wherever you can, so your team can handle taking the risks you really need them to take. You can do this. Your voice matters.

But the reality is that I’m mostly talking to people who consider engagement and caring for employees as part of their job. There are many other leaders who feel too overwhelmed to think through issues like these. 

One of the biggest groups of employees that seems to be reshuffling between jobs is mid-level managers. This is particularly tough on companies because supervisors are a big factor in whether or not other employees are happy and whether or not the company continues to function well. A lot gets lost with so many mid-level managers changing jobs.

Many companies have experienced an exodus of mid-level managers, leaving huge gaps in leadership and institutional knowledge. Organizations are often filling these roles with people who were previously individual contributors with limited experience in leadership or management. They might be relying on their own intuition and experience to figure out how they’ll deal with conflict and build connection in the team.