Setting out to I attend my 40th college reunion, the dominant feeling was anxiety-laced anticipation. Looking forward to seeing friends and familiar places I still felt unsettled. Would people be happy to see me? Would I feel authentic joy upon seeing others? Who would I hang out with between events? While walking to registration on Friday with my husband I said, ‘I really don’t like these things.’ On Sunday as we drove away, I said to my husband, ‘That was so amazing, I loved every minute!’
How does anxiety turn into confidence, worry into peace of mind and heart, uncertainty into clarity, and fear of isolation into love and community? In one word: belonging. Perhaps trite, but still true: the days are long, the years are short and so the shared existential shock of forty years gone by inspired a new level of community and ‘knowing’ among classmates.
I was reminded of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs[1]. Belonging is a basic motivator experienced as a hunger for friends, a romantic partner, affection, a place in one’s group. Maslow said that, “thwarting of these needs is the most commonly found core in cases of maladjustment and more severe psychopathology.”[2] My belonging needs are generally satisfied and I still experienced flutters of that primal drive to be embraced by my classmates.
We social creatures are physically and strategically safer when we are part of a group with a common purpose. Most of us spend the majority of our days until retirement at work. And, I submit to you, that school is also developmentally appropriate work. How do you feel when you walk into the office in the morning? Do you anticipate with trepidation what might happen next? Or are you enthusiastic and curious about what lies ahead? Do colleagues greet you with true kindness or with courteous indifference? Will you create, collaborate, and collectively celebrate achievements? Or will you dread another meeting with individuals around a table who find their smartphones or the invisible voices in their heads more captivating than the matters at hand? What needs to shift within or around you, to release the energy needed to engage in and to enjoy what you are doing together now?
Back to the reunion. A classmate secured a weekend Airbnb for seven of us who were friendly with one another to varying degrees over the four years of college and thereafter. At breakfast each morning, we discussed our plans for the day, talked about whom we had seen; who seems amazing, and who seems troubled. By living together during reunion, we felt like we belonged together. When we saw one another during the course of the day at seminars, passing on the street, or at parties, we always had a welcome place to stand. Belonging to the small group provided an emotional anchor from which we could float freely and independently throughout the weekend.
Do you have an anchor group or person at work? Who are the constants there for you, the ones you can count on during the day? The ones who will tell it to you like it is and you will listen because you trust them? Who cares about you? There are several behaviors and emotions we must check at the door when we enter our workplace, but we cannot fully shed our human need for connection. Without it, good performance, good health, and high morale are unsustainable.
If you are leading a team or an organization, watch for the people who remain more isolated than the rest. Their assignments or their personalities might be well suited to being alone for long periods, but self-sufficiency is not the same as social isolation and a long-term social fast can lead to marginalization, accelerated burnout, and disengagement. Fostering connections is not a waste of precious time and the benefits are measurable.
Former United States Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, M.D., M.Sc., strongly recommends, in an article published in the Harvard Business Review “that companies should foster social connections as a strategic priority.” [3]
Lonely workers are unhealthy. Social isolation and lack of social support are associated serious, health consequences, including: greater risk of cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, compromised immunity, and shortened lifespan. If that isn’t persuasive enough, Isolation in the workplace is costly. The mental and physical effects of social isolation lead to higher costs for sick leave and health insurance claims. And the opposite is also true, positive social relationships strengthen productivity, enjoyment at work, and employee retention.
When we started college in 1975, the rules of engagement were largely about getting an excellent, rigorous, liberal arts education to prepare for life’s complexities, challenges, burdens, and blessings. Forty years later and beyond, the reunion’s rules of engagement are to show up and bear witness to the remarkable fact that we have changed a lot on the outside (some more than others) and still recognize in one another the deepest qualities that have stayed the same. It is from that stable core that our relationships continue to evolve, we share our journeys, and we belong together as classmates in our hearts and minds.
Beth Masterman is and executive coach and the Founder and President of Masterman Executive Coaching, Inc. She helps individuals and teams see the invisible walls that hold them back and cause discomfort for themselves or othersTogether they seek to identify achievable ways over, around, or through so her clients can to reach their objectives – with enjoyment – at work.
[1] “A Theory of Human Motivation” A. H. Maslow (1943) Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm
[2] ibid
[3]Vivek Murthy, Work and the Loneliness Epidemic , Reducing isolation at work is good for business, https://hbr.org/cover-story/2017/09/work-and-the-loneliness-epidemic