If you want to build culture and connection at work, tap emotions

[This article is based on a guest lecture I gave at Wharton. Sharing here as I thought it might be valuable if you, like many leaders today, are thinking about this topic.]

The thrust to fully virtual models and rise in social consciousness has illuminated human connection issues in organizations across industries.

Screens are getting blamed, but the reality is that these issues have been there all along—and they’re increasingly critical to solve now.

People are suffering from this loss of connection, and to address it, we need to get real about what drives human emotion and behavior.

If you only get one thing out of this article, I want it to be this: in business, we have operated with a left-brain bias, favoring logic and data at the expense of emotion—and it's not only disconnecting us, it's preventing us from meaningfully solving problems.

It’s an Achilles heel in a world that is changing exponentially, where we are making more progress in year than what all of humanity has done in an entire century.

We need to take a whole brain approach to solving our most complex human problems, that centers on emotional data as the true driver of human behavior and progress.

To bring the research to life, let's talk about you.

Our human experience research says that you want your experiences with organizations to feel more “human.” You want to be treated as an individual, and not part of a homogenous group. You want to feel welcomed as your whole, real self.

Organizations have been keenly aware of this from a customer experience perspective. Now they are challenged to deliver on it from a workforce experience perspective, too.

It’s even more important now that we are interacting almost exclusively through screens. Let me show you what I mean with some PowerPoint art:

Collectively, we are constantly distracted, and our attention span for anything is on the decline. We actually have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.

Technology, in and of itself, is an incredibly powerful tool for cultivating connection, offering us an opportunity to step outside of the interior worlds of our minds, and share our experiences with others and connect on an authentic, emotional level.

Yet in a world where we are overwhelmed by pings from all our devices, not to mention pings from our own minds that run rampant with negative thoughts, it seems impossible to create the space we need to connect with other humans.

And when you think about the fact that every single human you know is also living in this fishbowl of constant distraction from devices and their own minds, it almost seems futile to attempt to cultivate connection and humanity at work.

But if we want to not only survive, but become resilient in the future, we have to accept that this rate and pace of unprecedented change means:

• The rules have changed, and will continue to change at a faster and faster clip
• The future is abstract and can go in a lot of unpredictable directions, some positive, some negative
• Our brains were programmed for a world that no longer exists, and we need an upgrade

It raises an important question:

What human skills or capabilities might be irreplaceable by technology, and endure in value as the world continues to shift?

The World Economic Forum points to these six skill categories, that are required across industries and job types (and calls the skills gap one of the biggest risks to businesses today).

These are not new skills.

There’s a body of research that suggests these are largely innate human capabilities, but we have deficits because 1) they have not been emphasized in school or workplace learning and development efforts and 2) they are limited by fear, judgment and lack of self-awareness.

(Those same three limitations—fear, judgement and lack of self-awareness—are also linked to what drives negative emotions and negative behaviors that create undesirable experiences for customers, partners and workers.)

It’s a huge problem for organizations, because there is already a large deficit of workers with these skills for jobs that exist now, and they are skills that the entire workforce potentially needs for the future, where we don’t even know what the vast majority of jobs might be. They’re skills required not just to do the job itself, but to cultivate human connection and belonging at work.

These deficits are also damaging from a societal perspective. The empathy gap is something that has been studied since the 1970s, and we’ve had the sharpest decline in empathy, or “concerned feelings for others” over the past 10 years. It’s been playing out in our pandemic response behaviors, and in behaviors related to the upcoming election.

Even worse, it’s fracturing trust and eroding our cardinal human values (often referred to as “me, we, known and unknown”). 

So how do we get out of our fishbowls, and truly connect as human beings at work?

The research suggests we should be challenging the left-brain bias in business and using a whole brain approach that leads with these skills to solve our most complex human problems. Here are three areas of opportunity for how to do that:

1. Place human experience at the center of every problem.

This isn’t new. Customer experience has become a priority across industries, bringing new approaches to solving complex human problems. For example, human-centered design uses empathy to reduce biases, walk in the shoes of the humans affected by the problem, and improve experiences through solution design.

In an age of exponential change, organizations are now challenged to examine everything they do with a human lens. Thinking in silos about customers, workers, and partners is ineffective. Delivering positive human experiences at work drives retention, trust and motivation.

2. Balance left-brain approaches to problem-solving with emotional data.

For organizations navigating culture and connection issues, understanding trust is critical. It lays the groundwork for aligning to the values that drive human emotion and ultimately human behavior:

• Trust is an essential bond that underpins the relationships organizations have with all their humans. 
• Values are what drive human emotions and actions—they are not what we do, but why we do it.

To build trust, organizations must lead with empathy to understand the emotional roots of their most complex human challenges. Instead of approaching the problem with frameworks, beliefs and biases, invite the humans in the middle of the problem to share how they are feeling, and what's making them feel that way.

Then, explore those emotion-based observations and insights through the lens of what we have seen and effectively solved before when it comes to complex human issues.

3. Become a whole-brain thinker by growing these skills.

If you found this article useful, please feel free to share it and leave a comment with any questions you have.