Be a Friend

Encourage your team members to form social connections at work and in their personal lives.

America has a loneliness crisis, and the most lonely are the young adults. This crisis is negatively impacting businesses because lonely employees are not fully engaged at work or aren’t coming in regularly to work. This lack of engagement and absenteeism impacts customer service, productivity, and innovation.

What You Can Do

Add “be a friend” to your job description in 2024 and then watch those you connect with transform from being reserved, hesitant and passive to being energetic, assertive and active. 🤩

This will not only benefit those you are helping, but it will be good for you and good for business! 📈

• Identify two or three colleagues that you think are holding back. Who has not been bringing their best to work?
• Have a 30-minute in-person catch-up conversation with them.
• Personally connect. Ask them what they do for fun. Find out what their joys are.
• Personal goals. Ask them what they are working on both personally and professionally.
• Actively listen. Make eye contact. Smile. Paraphrase back what you are hearing.
• Push them to grow.
• After you meet, think about how you can push them to grow their IRL business skills (aka social skills).
• Pick meetings you can include them in, or a project you can engage them in that will push them to develop the IRL business skills they need to improve.
• Schedule follow-up in-person check-ins for the remainder of 2024 with each person.
• Challenge your leadership team to also connect with two or three colleagues.

We need to insist our team members build face-time into their daily schedule.

Warm Demanders of IRL Connection ❤️

Inject your workplace culture with warm demanders of In Real Life Connection.

• A Michigan State University study has linked the loneliness problem to technology taking the place of human interaction, which helps explain why young people report the highest rates.
• Many who are lonely suffer from low grade depression, and are unaware that their lack of in-person interaction is a contributing factor.

Encourage others to build social connections.

Intentional IRL Connections — -> IRL Biz Skill Development

Due to the boom in virtual meetings and delivery services, people leave their homes 🏠 less.

As a result, people are not ‘bumping” into others and having the impromptu conversations with familiar faces that result in comradery 😎 because of shared experiences.

Let’s face it, in many workplaces in-person engagement is not happening naturally. Given the choice, too often people will join a meeting virtually from their cubical rather that join a colleague in the conference room.

In many workplaces, that means in-person engagement opportunities need to be scheduled and required.

When you make in-person events a regular and predictable part of your culture, relationships will be built and strengthened. 😀

Start by making part of your job to be a friend to others at work. Plus intentionally model how to be a friend at work, and encourage friendships in your organization.

Then watch the transformation in your culture and bottom line! 💵

If you are ready to tackle this issue in a formal, robust way, let’s talk. I have an IRL Business Practices metric you can use to establish a baseline and from there, set improvement goals. Reach out to me by email colleen@colleenmcfarland.us or schedule 📆 a time here for a conversation.

p.s. Also consider the young adults in your personal life that need some encouragement ❤️. Reach out to one or more of them and schedule a ‘catch-up’ conversation.

p.p.s. I created one-minute videos on Mastering the Networking Meeting. Please pass on this link to anyone you feel could benefit from it.

About me: I am passionate about getting the workplace culture right. I know that cold hard facts combined with compassion is what is needed to motivate individuals to do the hard work that change requires. I help leaders determine what they need to do to modernize their culture and workplace to make it smart, safe and inspiring. I also train people leaders to role model and inspire development of In Real Life business skills that promote camaraderie, relational equity, innovation and belonging.

Here are related stories for leaders. Download or order your copy of my book Disconnected for more practical ideas for how to deliver realness, meaning and belonging to your youngest workers. Visit colleenmcfarland.us for more information.