Being Social at Work

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, your happiness expert, and this week’s video is all about work relationships, which can be, you know, challenging sometimes. There are people we don’t want to work with, and sometimes we’re going through the adjustment of meeting new people, and frankly, sometimes it seems all business and not really about humans interacting. And the truth is, through the pandemic, we’ve maybe lost some of our social skills, so we’re just not as skilled at being in a relationship, and maybe we’re still talking to people through the little square box of Zoom or just beginning to get back into the office, and it’s all challenging. And on the one hand, like, who cares, but on the other hand, we spend tremendous volumes of time in our workplaces, and when the quality of relationships are good there, it makes a big difference. So let’s watch this video, learn a little bit about the science of quality work relationships, and we’ll walk away happier as a result. So stay tuned.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. I was just reading this really great article, and I’ll create a link in the description below about the importance of our relationships at work, and the author talked about them as micro-moments, you know, the just tiny moments of real connection that, while we’re in the process of doing business, we actually feel like our humanity is on display, and there’s that same hormonal connection that we make with our romantic lovers called oxytocin, where we actually just feel the benefit, the psychosocial chemical benefit of being in real connection, and you know what it’s like, it’s that juicy “Oh, I see you, and you see me” tiny moments, micro-moments that mean a lot, and when we have them, we tend to get into kind of a mirroring relationship, we start to talk in the same tone, we have the same body language, and there’s just this genuine sense of connection, and we love it. It’s great for us, and when it’s present at work quite a bit, there’s a huge number of benefits. You know, even just our cognitive function improves when we’re having these good micro-moments, and our productivity goes up, our creativity is better, our general health peaks because our positivity is there, and just generally, our commitment to work and our performance goes up. So there’s a lot of great benefits to creating these micro-moments at work.

Well, how do we go about doing that? Well, the author of this article had some very practical, reasonable suggestions, and the first one is this idea of being intentional. When you’re in these moments at work, actually intend to connect with other people. Go into it not just with that business orientation that “I’ve got to get something done,” but rather that “I’m going to see the people I’m working with,” and that requires that we kind of lean into it, that we have a curiosity about others, we make space for it, and maybe even importantly, we be fully present, and by being present, it means that we’re there for that person, ask questions that engage them deeper, and you know why questions often don’t get us there, people give simple answers when you ask why, but when you ask “Hey, what about that makes you feel that way?” or “What about that is important?” or “How is it that that could be meaningful in our workplace or in your life?” or even another really good question or way to get a more deep conversation going is just say “Tell me more,” and then when we’re getting that deep, rich conversation, people feel heard, seen, and understood, and they like that, and there’s that connection opportunity really exists, and we can deliberately facilitate conversation. You know, sometimes we have these Icebreaker questions, and they’re fine and I certainly encourage that, but there’s something else I would call when we Circle and we check in with one another, and humans do that quite naturally. We get in a circle and we have a meaningful conversation, and we can ask a simple question, “Hey, before we get started with the agenda, I just want to create this opportunity to check in, what’s going on for people?” and a few people will volunteer some things and they might be kind of superficial one or two sentences, but some people will talk about stuff that’s really important, and it may be way off the agenda you’ve got, and yet the most meaningful and important conversation you as a group actually have, so that’s wonderful, create that Circle time checking in. And finally, there’s all kinds of evidence that when we’re positive, the quality of our relationships improves, and so, you know, maybe there’s that Pareto Principle at play here as well, that is, an 80-20 rule, eighty percent of our engagement with our workforce and our colleagues should be positive and only 20 about weaknesses or performance issues and that kind of stuff, so lots of just looking at what’s going well, complementing other people, looking for opportunities to be creative and generating great new ideas and all that positivity goes a long, long way to facilitating true human connection, to create those micro-moments and the better performance and feelings we have at work.

So if you like this kind of content, you find it helpful, click the like button, share with your friends and family, maybe with your human resource director. Thanks for watching, we’ll see you again next week, bye for now.