Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast, where we talk all things leadership, business, communication, and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

Today, we are diving into a paradox, a big one. You are more reachable than at any other time in human history. And of course, so am I. We can text, ping, dm, email, zoom, facetime, or Slack someone. With just a few clicks, we can find out what our college roommate had for lunch and what our co worker thinks about AI. And what a stranger across the world is live streaming all before your morning coffee gets cold. And yet, something is off. People feel more disconnected than ever.

Even before the pandemic, rates of social isolation and loneliness were on the rise. But here's the twist that I want to dig into today. This disconnection didn't begin with COVID It didn't begin with Slack. It didn't even begin with the smartphone. To understand why we feel so apart in a world that is so wired together, we need to go back. Way back. So let's talk about how we got here. Let's start with where the disconnection really began.

Now, in the year 2000. Okay, so 25 years ago, a Harvard political scientist named Robert Putman, a Harvard political scientist named Robert Putnam published a book that made waves across academia and the broader public. It was titled Bowling the Collapse and Revival of the American Community. In this book, Putnam documented the long and steady decline of civic and social engagement in the United States, starting all the way back in the 1950s 50s. Fewer people were attending town meetings. Church groups were shrinking. PTA involvement dropped. And yes, even bowling leagues, once a staple of American community life, were disappearing. More people were bowling, sure, but they were bowling alone. Now, maybe that doesn't necessarily mean they were literally bowling solo, like all by themselves, but they were no longer part of bowling leagues. So they might go bowling with some friends or family members, but they weren't in this consistent social engagement where they would make friends, oftentimes with people that they didn't know well, who ended up being on the same bowling team. They were bowling alone. Putnam's argument was clear.

Social capital was eroding. The kinds of connections that held communities together and brought new people together were weakening. And it wasn't necessarily about technology yet. It was about cultural shifts, suburbanization, long commutes, and the rise of the television keeping us indoors. Now, that's important because it tells us something critical. We were already drifting apart before the personal computer, the iPad, and the smartphone, before all of that digital technology showed up to accelerate the process and essentially finish the job. Okay, so again, Putnam, 25 years ago, outlines how this is already happening.

Now, fast forward a decade or two into the early 2000s. Now, technology promised to close the distance. Email, instant messaging, chat rooms. Remember the thrill of your AOL login? You've got mail. It absolutely felt like connection. Now, in those early days, the Internet felt magical. You could connect with someone across the country or even across the world from your desktop computer. It felt human because it was novel and it was intentional.

The other thing about it is that you were able to connect with other people who had similar interests in different kinds of chat rooms, places like CompuServe, rooms where you could find people who had interests in some of the same things that you did, who were in far flung places across the world. And certainly it did create some new connection and some new community.

But things changed, and they changed fast. Social media arrived, and texting replaced phone calls. Facebook said, hey, you don't need a real conversation. You just need to see somebody's social update and like it. So connection started to get repackaged as content. Yes, connection got replaced with content.

And by the mid 2010s, we were fully in what MIT professor Sherry Turkel calls the alone together era. In her 2011 book by that same name, she argued that while we're constantly in contact through our devices, we're increasingly isolated. She wrote, we expect more from technology and less from each other. And that line still hits hard. In fact, I remember when that book came out and I was in the midst of reading that book, it occurred to me that my then teenager, my oldest, who was in his early teens at that time, was up in his room on his phone or his computer, connecting with god knows who across whatever parts of the planet, even though we were under the same roof. So we were together alone. He was together potentially with other people. And in fact, he was starting businesses and growing social media followings and all kinds of things right there in the same house where we were together alone.

So as a society, we began prioritizing speed and convenience over depth and meaning. So why meet up with somebody when you can just text them? Why call them when you can send them a dm? Or if you're curious what they were up to, just pop on over to Instagram or Facebook and search them up and see what they've been doing lately. Have they been on a vacation? Has something changed with their job? It's a matter of convenience. And I don't necessarily say that I'm above it. In fact, I have a colleague who's been searching for a new job for some time, and I thought of her this morning, and when I got to the office, instead of texting her or calling her to see how she's doing, I just went on LinkedIn to see if her profile has changed, if she's gotten that new gig yet. So, again, I am not above this. It happens to all of us. But that is when, you know, we're not getting to the heart of the matter, when we're just simply looking at somebody's latest post.

And it is on my to do list this afternoon to give her a call and find out how that job search is going and if she wants to meet up in person for coffee. All right, but you get the sense here of how we definitely traded intimacy, that real, true, authentic connection with other people for immediacy. Because if we can just post on social media and, like, everybody can see what we're doing, or we can update our LinkedIn profile and we don't have to send an email or make a phone call to a whole bunch of people about how something has changed in our career life, again, you see how we have traded that intimacy for immediacy. Now, as we think about how the tools that we're using are designed, they're designed for attention. They're designed for grabbing people's attention and hooking people's attention, not for true connection. So it is worth remembering that these tools were not necessarily designed to make us more connected. They were designed to make us more engaged and more engaged with the platforms themselves. Now, if you're familiar with the history of Facebook, it started by Mark Zuckerberg, of course, but taking what was essentially the college freshman yearbook, it was a book that had everybody's high school picture in it.

And it was known colloquially across campus as the Facebook, because you could look up somebody's face and see their name and then go, oh, that person's in my history class, or that person's in this large lecture that I'm taking. And it was designed initially to develop social connections. In fact, I was at Boston University and just across the river from Harvard, where Mark Zuckerberg. And I'm, of course, a little bit older than Mark Zuckerberg, but literally a decade before Mark Zuckerberg was doing this on campus at Harvard, I was doing this on campus at Boston University. Now, I did not make it into an electronic tool, but this was a paper book that we all had where we freshmen looked up each other's faces to figure out that names and kind of make those connections. So it did certainly facilitate social connection in its paper based form. But then of course it was turned into technology and then that technology was monetized and then it became much more about being hooked on the technology, less so about truly fostering genuine connection. And even the original paper Facebook, it was not necessarily, it was dubbed Facebook, it was like a nickname for it.

But even that paper book, it was designed to foster and facilitate social connections in person. It's not like we walked around campus with our noses in the book. No, we saw that person in our class or the person who made the insightful comment or the attractive person that we wanted to know what their name was and we went back to our Facebook in our dormitory and we searched up that person so that we could put a name with a face and maybe be bold enough to introduce ourselves or at least know who the person who was like talking too much or making the really insightful comments in class, who they were. Okay, so again though, that paper based tool turned software turned social media. And these tools are now designed to make us more engaged with the platform themselves itself and less engaged with each other. Because at its heart, the companies who are behind these are and nothing wrong with capitalism here at all, but these companies are designed to turn a profit, oftentimes at our expense. So every ping, like an alert, a buzz, a beep, an unread message, is a behavioral nudge that is engineered to pull us back into the software, not necessarily to connect with each other, but to stay engaged with the software.

Now take Slack or Microsoft Teams for example. I know I've been dishing here on the likes of Facebook and Instagram, but when we look at these other tools, these workplace tools, they promise collaboration. But what they often create is just some friction, some rub. These constant dings and the pressure to respond immediately. We often refer to these systems as always on media, where we're constantly barraged with the beeps and the buzzes coming from Slack and teams. And these endless channels create the illusion of being connected, but it leaves us feeling more fragmented than ever. It also leaves us more fragmented than ever from the work that we need to do that may require some focus time.

Now, Cal Newport, and you've heard me talk about him on the podcast before. Cal Newport calls this the hyperactive hive mind. So it's a state of constant low quality communication that interrupts our deep work and replaces real connection with that digital noise. Again, I'm always a big fan and if you've heard any of my podcast episodes where I talk about productivity. I'm a big fan of turning off all of the alerts on those systems, especially during the times when you need to get that focused work done. And that also extends to your mobile phone turning off the dings and beeps and buzzes, even if that means putting your phone into a do not disturb mode during the time when you really need to get that deep work done. Now, again, going back to those beeps and buzzes, we have adapted to them all too well.

We stopped walking over to somebody's desk, in fact, instead we just send them a ding or a beep or a slack or a where they might be sitting across the aisle from us. And we started assuming that these asynchronous updates where we're not like in real time, somebody will look at it when they have time. We started to think that those were sufficient. And we got used to managing relationships in 280 characters or 160 characters or whatever the platform supports. And again, all of this was happening well before 2020. Now I bring up the pandemic and 2020 because so often people blame the pandemic for our disconnection, but the pandemic didn't cause it, it merely revealed it at another, deeper level. So when the pandemic hit, we lost our fallback forms of communication. Those accidental, spontaneous, serendipitous moments in the hallway, at work, on the sidewalk, in our neighborhoods.

Those moments which were the glue that held relationships together. So again, no more chatting in the hallway, no more catching up at lunch, no more reading somebody's facial expression during a team meeting because they weren't sitting across the table from us. And we didn't even know for sure if they had their camera on. So if they were on teams or slack or gosh, it was Skype back then, okay? So we really felt that absence because the relationships that we thought were strong turned out to be context dependent. They relied on proximity, not intentionality. And the tools that we had left, things like Zoom and Slack and Skype and email, well, they helped us work, but they didn't necessarily help us feel connected in the same way that a knowing glance across the conference room table from your work BFF makes you feel connected. And by mid pandemic, people were saying things like, I talked to people all day long, but I feel invisible. I have my camera and then people see me, but I don't feel seen.

Now, Microsoft's Work Trend Index showed that meetings doubled during the pandemic. Employees spent more time in communication, but they reported feeling less connected to their teams, their teammates and their managers. Now it turns out that true connection isn't about quantity, it's about quality. Now let's call this what it is. We now live in a culture that prizes convenient communication over meaningful communication. It is a culture of convenience and again, we are all guilty of it. Hence my example earlier about the person I thought of and I wondered, did she get a new job yet? And instead of calling her, I looked her up on social media. So again, we're all guilty of it.

If it's not that, it's something else. Like we send a quick thumbs up when somebody shares something vulnerable. Or we write hey, just checking in instead of really checking in. We default to efficiency when what we really need is empathy. So we've replaced the rituals of connection. Like the Sunday phone call with your mother, many of us, or your parents. Many of us did that, especially in college. It was like especially when we were back in the age of long distance communication where it cost a pretty penny to make that phone call across time zones or across area codes.

And there rituals. Many of us had the ritual of when we called our parents. Now some of us still do have that ritual of a specific day of the week when we make that call to connect in with a parent or a sibling or somebody who lives far away. But a lot of times we have replaced that sense of connection and that ritual with again, Facebook or Instagram or some other just mere gesture of acknowledgement by again liking one of their posts instead of having that true connection. And those rote gestures, well, they don't sustain us. So this is true in our personal lives, of course, but it's especially true in the workplace when leaders are only communicating through Slack channels or regular email updates, or when teams only get to meet to go over deliverables. And when how are you? Becomes more of a formality than a question. Well, we lose the glue that holds the systems together.

And you know what I mean when I say how are you? Becoming a formality instead of a real question. It's the how are you? Oh, I'm fine. How are you? And it's this very like sing song rhythm to it. But when people ask how are you? And they really mean it, they usually have to put a qualifier in it. Something like this how are you? I mean really, how are you? You know, the difference in tone when somebody's asking as a mere formality versus when they're asking to truly connect. You know what I mean? All right, well, what do we do about all this? Where do we go from here? Now, let's be clear. I am the last one to be anti tech. I love technology.

I love tools that help us work smarter and help us bridge distance, whether that be physical distance, whether that be affinity distance, whether that be the operational distance, especially for those of you who have really large teams and you have lots and lots of people to keep in touch with. I love technology. But I also know that technology is not a substitute for connection. Connection isn't something you automate. Connection is something that you choose. So if we want to reverse this trend of being disconnected in this hyper connected world and really overcome this paradox of connection, we absolutely have to be intentional.

So here are three things that you can start doing this week to bridge that distance and create true connection instead of living out the paradox of connection. So number one, replace efficiency with intentionality. Just in one conversation, ask a teammate how they actually are and give them the space to answer. And again, you might have to say, how are you? No, really, how are you? I absolutely want to know and I have time to listen. Okay, so replace efficiency with intentionality.

Number two, send a message that has no ask. Okay, here's what I mean by that. Send a note of appreciation, of encouragement or curiosity. This can be via email to a colleague. This can be over slack or teams or whatever your channel of default is. But make sure that that message has no ask. It comes from a genuine place of concern and curiosity and care. It's not about asking for the new TPS cover sheet to be delivered to your inbox by 5pm it's just a, hey, I was thinking of you or was curious if your son made the baseball team this year. Whatever. It is just something that's genuine and curious and appreciative. Okay, if it's curiosity and it is an ask like did your son make the baseball team? It's not one where you, you need an answer by a certain time. It's asking a question to foster connection. Question for connection. All right, so that was number two, send a message that has no flask.

And number three, use analog for impact, not digital analog. So you could walk over to somebody's desk and say good morning. If they're not there, leave them a post. It not. I know some of you have the hoteling style workspace where you just drop in and you use that desk for the day. So maybe that's not going to work. In case that doesn't work, then maybe you're going to go old school and leave a voicemail.

Or some of you are even like, we don't even have voicemail anymore. Then leave a voice memo, whether it's in teams or Slack or whatever channels you're using. Mix it up a little bit and let them hear the sound of your voice. Okay, so use analog for impact, whether that's walking over to somebody's desk, talking to them in person, leaving them a handwritten note, or sending them a voice memo. Because the future of work, while it doesn't belong to the most connected, it belongs to the most human. So where does this leave us? Well, we're not disconnected because we lack tools. We're not disconnected because of the technology. We're disconnected instead, spite of the technology, we're disconnected because we've forgotten how to use those tools with intention.

Again, Putnam's seminal work way back in 2000, Bowling Alone showed us how our culture began withdrawing from community decades and decades ago. And then alone together, Sherry Turkel in 2011 showed us how we mistook contact for connection. But the story isn't over. We have a chance to write a new chapter, one where connection isn't measured in pings or likes, but in moments of true presence with one another. So let's choose to show up not just online, but emotionally and relationally and yes, sometimes awkwardly, in all of the messy, beautiful ways that make us human. Go forward this week and be messy. Be human. And thanks for listening to this episode.

I will see you here next week with more ideas about the future of work and how we stay grounded in the human side of it all. As always, stay curious, stay informed, and stay ahead of the curve.

And tune in again next week for another insightful exploration of the trends that are shaping our world now. If you learned something or you simply enjoy this content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice, and follow me over on social media. These are all excellent no cost ways for you to support me and my work, and you'll find links to my social media over on the show notes page, and it's kind of ironic that I'm mentioning social media here. You can follow what I'm up to over there on social media and you can find that all on the show notes page at janelanderson.com/212 for episode 212.

Until next time. Keep thriving, keep working together toward a future that we all want and deserve. Be well, my friends.