Admitting my LinkedIn Addiction

I am a business news junkie. I devour articles about the return to work debate, the fad of quiet quitting, ?the great resignation, and, of course, the leadership trend du jour. ??I will read every HBR article posted on LinkedIn, maybe even twice.

As a B2B marketer, or Marketing Anthropologist as I prefer, I am enthralled by the way business and humanity meet on LinkedIn.?It is like watching a soap opera on the modern workplace.?Each post heightens the tension between reality and fiction.

There is something deeply troubling, yet fascinating, about the fiction part of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not objective. It is not a journalistic news site. Anyone with “Chief" in their title can get their fifteen minutes of fame. Content abounds about empathetic leadership, purpose driven, transformational, human-led and filled with celebrations of icons in business, some of whom may not have been the best at the “human” part. ?So, why do we trust LinkedIn as a source of business news? What makes the platform so powerful?

LinkedIn provides a rose-colored lens to the world of work. It’s a fiction that good triumphs, people are valued over profits, and furthers Horatio Alger’s myth that anyone could work hard and become a rich, "self-made man." (Sorry Gary Vee, Luck & Pluck came first.)

These narratives make the distinction between “human” and “worker” less clear. So fuzzy, that we must remind ourselves that we are humans between the hours of 9 and 5.?In Marybeth Hyland’s book, Permission to be Human: The Conscious Leaders Guide to Creating a Values-Driven Culture, Hyland explores how, as leaders, we must actively model mindfulness in business – from taking vacation to acknowledging our own physical limits.

For example, in our personal lives, if a friend said: “My doctor says I need to rest because my leg is broken. Do you think I need to skip the 10K tomorrow?” You would not hesitate to say “are you crazy? Your leg is broken.”

Yet, when we come to work and say, “Since 2020, I’ve absorbed the jobs of three people and I am struggling” the answer is the workplace refrain of do more with less.

You put on those sneakers and limp to the finish line in the name of business.

What have you seen as you scroll through LinkedIn? Are we human or workers? How are we doing more with less? And, should Chiefs who pay the most get their voice amplified the loudest?

I ask you to join me on my quest to be a marketing anthropologist and apply a social science lens to the world of modern work.?

Or, perhaps, it is time to create my own content to fill up your feed.

#humancentereddesign #designthinking #leadership #LinkedIn #wmmsm