Executive loneliness in times of Corona

The lockdown in the corona crisis is unintentionally the biggest working from home experiment ever and a lot of people seem to believe it is paying off. People argue that it fits better with social preferences, that they can work more efficiently and have more control over their working day. Companies see huge cost savings potential and IT specialists business opportunity. Everybody seems to talk about the new normal. A world were we hardly leave our houses anymore – and office buildings becoming obsolete.

But what do we know after a few months of experimenting? And is it really a wise thing to keep your employees at home, if you want to compete, innovate and ultimately win in the marketplace? Before we decide to shut down the offices, I would recommend some prudence based on my research on executive loneliness in the context of my studies at INSEAD back in 2018.

Personally, I have managed to find my way with Skype, Zoom and an occasional out of home corona compliant lunch (no handshakes, kissing and keeping a distance). Before the crisis my team went agile, and we have never been more effective in the way we work. Output is higher than before. So why change a winning formula? Well something is bothering me and taking a lot of my energy. And I bet that this has to do with the effects of loneliness.

In 2018, I wrote my INSEAD thesis on phenomenon of executive loneliness. For this I used the Transformation Experience Framework (TEF) developed by the Grubb Institute. This dynamic model defines organizations as social structures consisting of interacting roles making decisions and taking action from those decisions. Some of these decisions are made consciously in consultation with others, some are made out of habit and other decisions are driven by influences outside our awareness. My thesis explored if and how the concepts of aloneness and isolation, solitude and loneliness impact (corporate) decision making. And as it turned out more than the average executive likes to admit.

The TEF Model creates clarity on how people can take action through taking up a certain role at the intersection of four domains of experience. The experience of being a person, the experience of being in a system, the experience of being in a context, and the experience of connectedness with the spiritual domain, the domain of deeply held values. It is therefore interesting to use this model to explore what the impact is on how we perform as employees in the context of working from home.

Loneliness is a universal human experience that can affect anyone. Some people feel alone when waiting for the bus. Others only after having spent months alone sailing or climbing mountains. The degree to which we are affected by loneliness depends greatly on your personality. Personality is impelled by both desire and yearning. Psychoanalysis has extensively demonstrated the power that conscious and unconscious desires have on our behavior and our conscious experience. Less discussed is the idea of yearning. Yearning is the experience of deep and extensive longing. Yearning in psychological terms, is established through the process of sublimation, where desire becomes linked to a purpose beyond the ego. It is about finding meaning, values and identity within a purpose beyond the self and for this we need to strike the right balance between ourselves and our social connections. There is no way that we can achieve this through zoom, teams or skype. Using your time in confinement to reconnect to your spiritual source is a good first step. But we will need real life connections to make an impact – so if your organization is driving by a higher purpose, you will need to get back to the office to make an impact.

In the beginning of the confinement I have struggled a lot in combining my home and family life. That makes sense, if you consider your family and company as systems. Both systems have their own culture, language and rules. They provide your role in the organization, and family and also set the expectations that come with the job as executive, or family member. The system influences, helps and limits you in your daily life. The rules and cultural patterns of the system, both conscious and unconscious, not only play an important role in the pushes and pulls to which you are subject in your role as executive, but also in your role as a family member. Systems have a purpose and as a result, the experience of being in a system brings forward the tension between personal needs and desires and those of others. And this plays a major role in the experience of executive loneliness. Before Corona we could more or the less separate the systems. Now suddenly the systems get on top of each other and bring a completely new dimension to the idea of loneliness, solitude and isolation. How can you be connect to your children that are in the same room (with their ipads) if you need to put your whole focus on your task in Zoom? While we are closer to our loved ones than before – could it be that feel lonelier than ever?

The third pillar of the TEF model is the context. The context is the environment within which an organizational system occurs. The environment includes the physical, political, economic, social, international and emotional context for a system. What is happening in the context will have an effect on persons and systems. It is the context that often triggers a crisis – that puts pressure on the system and the executive. If things become unbalanced due to changes in the organization’s competitive context, the feeling of loneliness often occurs. Corona, social unrest, economic downturn. Context is also a key driver for behavior. Think how you behave differently in a bar, church, work or at home. Over the past years most organizations have spent fortunes on designing the right contexts (offices) to drive transformations and stimulate collaboration and innovation. Now think about your own context. Are you working from an inspiring home office or in the middle of your living room with other family members running around? What will the impact of this mean for you behavior and impact on performance in the long run.

Finally we come to spiritual domain. The domain of deeply held values. This is the domain we can access through solitude. Whereas loneliness expresses the pain of feeling alone, solitude expresses the beauty of being alone. It is a state in which we disengage from the immediate demands of others and are free to choose our mental or physical activities.

Leadership requires independence and vision, necessitating the opportunity for executives to be alone with their thoughts. This is increasingly important when executives face increasingly complex demands. Solitude helps to reflect on all aspects of the organization and its challenges. However, because solitude requires temporary withdrawal from social interaction, it potentially increases social disengagement from the demands and expectations of others.

Corona has created the opportunity to redefine the balance between us, our roles at the crossing of the four domains, both in our professional and private lives. From home, the office or the park. But It would be a mistake to think we can be effective only alone from our homes. As human species, we have no choice but to be part of a group or groups and balance our feelings of separateness, individuality and independence, while at the same time needing to feel ourselves part – an accepted member – of the group and for this real life social interactions are paramount.