Not Posting = Not Working?

“Oh they are posting so much about the work, must be upto some really good and interesting stuff at work”

“Oh they do not post much, must be an under performer at work”?

“Oh they talk a lot about a sector, must be super intelligent”?

“Oh they attend a good number of events, must be well connected”?

We all either had these thoughts or sometimes heard these lines from friends, colleagues, networks, etc. I can’t help but wonder, when did we get into this mode, where a social media/networking platform has an insidious effect on our career. Like when? When did we get into this mode where the impact of our work is defined by our social media presence, and attributes such as number of likes, shares, reposts, and comments actually have an effect on our work and its authenticity?

I kept thinking, is there any psychological backing towards this phenomenon? Then digging deeper took me straight to a 1950s social psychological experiment called - the Asch Experiment. In this experiment, among a group of people, a particular individual is asked to match the length of two similar lines placed in different pictures as shown below.

I don’t know what answer would you choose in a similar situation. But there was a twist to this experiment, apart from the chosen individual, the rest of the crowd already knew the right answer. When asked, the group intentionally gave wrong answers to confuse the individual. This was done in order to understand “whether common collective opinions of others have an effect on individual perspectives”. In 18 different trials of the experiment, 12 times the crowd intentionally gave a wrong answer, to see its influence on one member who’s guessing the answer for the first time. Astonishingly, in the whole trials, 75% of the outside participants have selected the wrong answer because he/she is influenced by the answers of crowd.?The individual did not want to look stupid in front of other people, by choosing a different answer that's contradicting the common answers of people.

Take a moment to reflect on this phenomenon. Imagine how many times we would give our perspectives based on the influence and opinions of a particular crowd just because they are commonly prevalent perspectives. We do this sometimes because we try to fit into the crowd. Now, back this with our constant desire to seek social validation on social media/networking platforms. And then see how our thoughts are forming from this combined need (conformity + social validation) to express our influenced opinions through a social media/networking platform, that too in a professional context. Isn’t this phenomenon a bit alarming...

This is what I call a “Showoff-Work Mode”, where most of our actions at work are indirectly affected by the need for seeking social validation and conformity. Instead of working from an impact and process-focused perspective, we tend to do things thinking more about the social projection that we want to project. We are so caught up being perfectionists, that we fail to understand that the real stuff is never perfect, but it’s always raw and nonlinear!

In the current world, words like “Sabbatical, Career Break, Travel Break, etc.,” do not look good on our so-called perfect virtual resume.?Because most of us these days want to create a perfect virtual brand. I think that’s why we could observe over the past couple of years there’s an increase in the number of podcasts that being aired online :)

I’m not saying everything that’s done on these social media platforms is wrong. I would never say that. In fact, we all know some amazing things happen on these platforms like knowledge sharing, seeking and giving help, supporting larger goals of various communities, etc. But the point is how can we collectively and consistently do this at scale without holding back ourselves from the effects of conformity and social validation? I would love to hear from you and learn more about how we can collectively promote authenticity and empathy on these platforms!

P.S. The sole purpose of this blog is not to get likes, shares, comments, etc. It’s just a medium to share perspectives and resonate with like-minded folks. If it resonates with you I’m happy and if it doesn’t still happy. Have a great day ahead folks!

You can read more about the Asch Experiment - here.