My sister and I had an interesting conversation about AirPods this morning as a result of an article I read this week for my MBA program. There have been numerous articles written about the prevalence of people leaving AirPods in both ears as they go about their daily activities. This has been particularly hard on employees in the service industry that feel unseen and unheard. Brené Brown once wrote an op-ed piece to the Houston Chronicle out of her frustration about cell phone use and the effects on customer service employees. But— perhaps, this trend is even more detrimental to the people choosing to wear the headphones and in doing so “refusing to pretend to be ‘fully present’” as Drew Austin writes in his piece “Always In.”
The article that got us talking this week was from The Wall Street Journal, titled, “Younger Workers Feel Lonely At the Office.” Rachel Feintzeig, the author, shares recent data from a health insurer, Cigna Corp., reporting American employees from both the Millennial generation and Generation Z (the generation after the Millennials) are increasingly lonely at work. This stood out as a red flag from a team management perspective.
Feintzeig points out in her article, loneliness can leave employees feeling empty and disconnected from their teams and the larger organization. She also describes these workers’ need to hide their true selves at work and communicate through emails and texts rather than in-person or by phone.
As a leader and manager, I wanted to better understand what would drive this sense of loneliness and disconnection. The data presented in the article linked increased social media use to more significant loneliness, a trend that is getting worse over time.
I called my sister, who is a Millennial, to ask if she felt lonely at work. She answered “yes, sometimes” and pointed me to the Real Life Magazine article “Always In.” The preface of the article is that as a society we’ve created an alternate world within social media, podcasts, and shows that we prefer.
In the article, Austin writes, “AirPods foster a different approach to detachment: Rather than mute the surrounding world altogether, they visually signal the wearer’s choice to perpetually relegate the immediate environment to the background.”
Do we prefer the digitally crafted world we’ve created? Do we find ourselves lonely at work because we can’t tune into that preferred digital world?
In my weekly podcast, When Sacrifice Calls, I interview American military reservists and National Guardsmen. One thing I hear repeatedly is how the bond of friendships among servicemembers is uniquely strong and can be found nowhere else in society. This coming from military reservists who have one foot in the civilian marketplace and the other in the military. For a long time, I tried to understand what creates such a strong bond among service members. Then during one interview, my guest hypothesized that it was the shared vulnerability within the military that bonds us so tightly.
Are we being vulnerable with one another in the workplace? How, as a leader, can I encourage vulnerability and potentially strengthen teams where employees currently feel a sense of loneliness and disconnection?
The article by Feintzeig references Sigal Barsade, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, who ran a study that demonstrated co-workers will mimic the expressions of others in the workplace and end up owning those emotions. If we want a more engaged and cohesive team, setting the example with vulnerability and being fully-present ourselves might be the best approach.
How do you make sure you are fully present day-to-day? And do you feel lonely at work?
