Relationships and the Future of Work

Before we talk about the future, I wonder if we could pause just a moment—half a moment, even, right here and now—to feel the connection between your life and mine. However many subscribers there are to this or any newsletter—however many opens and reads, clicks, likes or comments—in this moment there’s none of that. It’s just you and me. I was here typing earlier (Tuesday morning, December 22, 7:32 am Eastern Time in the US, then the following Sunday at 4:33 pm, and then Monday at 3:46 pm) and now you are reading. Go ahead, check the time. 

This is where you and I are meeting across time and space.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. But likely, it does, even more than we know. Because whatever our collective future is, even the most fantastical version of the AI or AGI or ASI world to come, we will still find ourselves with humans needing connections to other humans.

If 2020 taught us nothing else, it taught us that our togetherness matters. 

In this way, the future of work will be the same as the history of work. Relationships are where the magic is.

Consider this past year. I’ve been 95% isolated since February, a month before most people were taking COVID-19 seriously. Yet from a relationship standpoint, it has been nothing short of a banner year for me.

A few details, then a more personal confession...

• I started this newsletter—and here we are. 
• I joined discussion-based groups that went deep and far with people from all over the world. 
• From that, I created a new core group that will bring a new product to market in 2021 and started talks with two more. 
• I had dozens of “coffee meetings” with strangers from all over the world—for no other reason than they were interesting to me. Some led to work. Some led to a friendship. All passed the time quite wonderfully. 
• I took the time to train in Agile, Scrum, and Scrum@Scale—even though I don’t have a job with a team. Not everyone could do that, but I could. So I did.
• I’ve taken on new clients, yes, but I have also reconnected with former clients going through a rough patch. 
• I offered a new year-long online course and put a focus on diversity and depth—and 24 of us are in full swing with both.
• I made a commitment to a few chosen friends—new and old—to spend time with weekly if only for the sole reason of sanity.
• I’ve created a small “masterclass” video watching club with a few women I admire hugely. 
• Finally, I kept up with my adult children (one living near, one who moved away for the first time in the summer) in new ways and made commitments to them, too. 

All of this has helped me become closer to the people I care for, drop away from relationships that were “fine” but not truly connective, and realize just how much my relationships mean to me—and how far I am willing to go to fill my life with meaningful ones. 

Now the more personal confession...

This year allowed me to solve what seemed to be a pretty big "problem" in my COVID life. Lacking a singular romantic and intimate partnership and spending that 95% of my time completely alone, I decided to love everyone, near and far. Not in a light and fluffy way, but in a way that had intention and real-world chops. 

So whomever I was with became my partner for that moment. Sometimes, it was a group on a zoom call. Sometimes it was the person on the street asking for money for a sandwich. Sometimes it was someone close to me and sometimes it was a stranger on the other end of a customer service call.

Sometimes they understood this (because I let them in on it), but most often it was simply showing up with a more loving presence than I might have otherwise. Not surprisingly, the “personal problem” became a “perception problem” and over time, it largely disappeared. I began to spend my days as happy as I’ve been in years. My mental health was not deteriorating, it was blossoming. 

All of which led me to think… If this perception shift can happen in my personal life, why not my leadership life?

Quite naturally, all of this has led to me talking with my clients about people. In specific, we’ve been talking about people as people instead of people as things. We’ve noted how easy it was pre-COVID to box others into categories and shelve them under job descriptions. 

Now that we have seen each other’s living rooms, heard children interrupting in the backgrounds, and watched dogs Zoom-bomb a "serious" meeting, that’s harder to do.

And that is a good thing. A very good thing.

It is astonishing how easy it was to forget that people are people. That teams are made of people. That corporations are run by people. That Italians are a group of people, some of whom like pasta and some of whom don’t. That New York is populated by people—nice ones, grumpy ones, and famous ones as well as the completely unknown. Democrats and Republicans—they are all people. Grocery store clerks and nurses and doctors and nursing home residents—all people with lives that have meaning and purpose. 

Fortunately, through COVID we have begun to remember. 

So when we look at work, and in specific the future of work, it is becoming clear that we are not going to be doing much without one another because we will not want to.

Even more, we will not be able to unconsciously discount how the math adds up when we consider the small, casual touches we get through high fives, handshakes, double kisses to the cheek, a kind hand on our arm, even fingers touching when the coffee cup is handed off. 

All of which leads to a new kind of bottom line—the kind where relationships are not an after-hours option but a critical aspect of everything we do. From that truth emerges another: the leaders of the future will be those who are adept at facilitating positive, healthy relationships. 

This is no small feat. According to the World Economic Forum, some of the top skills for 2025 will include analytical thinking and innovation, active learning and learning strategies, complex problem solving, critical thinking and analysis, leadership and social influence, stress tolerance and flexibility, reasoning, problem-solving and ideation and more. 

Now imagine adding to that list the MetaSkill of “facilitating healthy relationships.” 

It’s not hard to see how that may well be the greatest leverage point for all of these skills.

Here’s one way it might look: As we ring in the new year, we will hear good and bad news. There will be plentiful opportunities for fearful calls toward terrible things. There will also be lovely news, marvelous breakthroughs, happy stories, beautiful pictures, and thoughts about the return of our better days. We as leaders will choose to go down rabbit hole A (tragic) or B (hopeful), and that will set us along either trajectory. Having made our choice, we will speak of these things. Our rabbit hole will become slightly viral without our thinking—which is to say, without our consciousness. 

But what if we were to see ourselves as facilitators of relationships and crafters of the future? What if we made choices for the betterment of the people we lead instead of contributing to polarization by focusing on all that may go wrong? What if we chose leaders who were smart enough to facilitate the room toward wisdom, caring, connection, meaning, purpose, and even—though we might gasp to say it in connection with work—love? 

I am not at all advocating for the Pollyanna view or approach. I am simply stating that we’ve gone pretty far down the dark hole of the tragic and dismal and we could use a counterbalance of the hopeful and positive.

We who lead could take that on. Leaders lead, after all.

Whatever path you choose, this year will not be like last year, and not only because of our global pandemic. This will be unlike any other year because of what we have just come through, together, as teams and companies and countries and as a world.

Through that harrowing journey, we who lead will not only respond to the future of work, we will create it. We can choose to create gold—the alchemical gold that transformation after such a year offers us—through the people we believe in, and root for, and wish goodness for.

This coming year, the much-wished-for 2021, is our opportunity to create the future of work we most want to show up to. I don’t know about you, but I plan to take that opportunity and ride it with all I’ve got. Which is to say, with love. 

Happy New Year!

I'm Robin Rice, a senior advisor in conscious leadership for individuals and organizations. I lead, mentor and teach at the intersection of work, personal relationships, and social impact. I invite you to connect with me here on LinkedIn or through my website at RobinRice.com.

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