E148 – Loneliness & Connecting with Taslim Tharani

Hello and welcome to today's world of work podcast. We are in early 2022 what a year it's been. And we're going to have a conversation today where we're going to look at things like loneliness and connection, and you know, our sort of social interactions, and why loneliness and connection matter to us, and what we might be able to learn about them. Got a great guest today. We're going to be speaking to Taslim, and we're going to be talking about other things. So TAs, could you introduce yourself and say a bit about yourself and your background, and then we'll jump into a chat Absolutely.

So yeah, I always find this part interesting, because it's it's always interesting to choose kind of which hat do I introduce myself? So professionally, I'm an organizational psychologist, Coach and Trainer, and my work is really varied, so I work part time as a lecturer, and at the moment, that's with Sussex, Sussex University, and I'm lecturing on masters in occupational psychology, module on on on the social psychology of organizations, so kind of really related to loneliness and connection. And also I'm going to be involved in a new PG cert on kindness and well being, which, again, is really closely connected to the themes that we're going to be talking talking today. And in addition to that, I have also a consultancy career, and I do a lot of work in a lot of different areas, so leadership, development, health and well being at work race, do a lot around the kind of race, equity, space and career coaching as well. Lovely. I mean, what a load of great hats to bring to a conversation

that's really cool. So I've wanted to talk about loneliness and connection for a while. And, you know, one of the reasons I'm so interested in it is I get the sense that there's a fair bit of it about in the world. I get a sense that, you know, we might not really be able to put our finger on it, but I think a lot of people probably feel a little bit lonely, particularly in the Western world. If I look around the UK, if I think about that, I mean, what do you think is your sense for various loneliness out there? Or maybe we should say, What is loneliness as well? What is that feeling?

So, because you were kind of curious about the prevalence of loneliness, I did actually look it up for the session. And this is data from like 2017 2018 ish, and I think in America, something like 50% of working adults feel lonely. And in the UK, it was about 45% so that's a significant portion of the of the population that kind of experiences this thing that we call loneliness, that, like you say, is really hard for us to actually put our fingers on. You know, what is? What is it? And I think I'm going to share a start really, in terms of unpacking the complexity of loneliness by sharing a quote from Robin Williams, which I'm sure many people will have heard before, but he said I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not the worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone. And actually, before we I kind of unpack that. I'm curious about what you what you've heard in that I'm sure you've heard that before, but yeah, what does that, what does that give us in terms of what we think loneliness is, yeah,

I mean, like, you know, this striking visual image for me, or the way I perceive it is almost, you know, an individual, maybe in a sort of black and white photo, standing in a room with the world moving fast around them, but without having an ability to connect to that world and to interact with that world. And that's the sort of visual image I see is sort of dejection and isolation in a fast moving world that we don't feel part of. I don't feel connected to that world. I don't feel potentially valued or accepted or drawn into, or I don't feel maybe that sense of real understanding and reciprocity with that without swirl of humanity around me. And I also take away from that, a longing, a desire to be swept up in that, that tidal movement of humanity, and to feel part of something but but not doing so that's kind of my, my sort of imagery of that that comes into my mind, gosh, that's

really, really powerful, really powerful imagery. And I think it, it kind of brings some of the themes of loneliness to bear, really so. So one, one you talked about this desire, you know, this real desire to connect this fulfillment and, yeah, what you want? Yeah, exactly.

Um, so there's this disconnect between what we what we really want, and what we really hope for when it comes to feeling part of something, or that sense of belonging, or those kind of that connection with society, or with the social groups, and kind of where we feel we actually are are with it, and then. And then, there's also this, this, this, when you were talking about the imagery, it reminded me of actually feelings that I used to have as a child, which was this real kind of lack of presence and ability to connect. So almost like I'm observing everything, and I'm here, but I'm not actually here. So this, it's really hard to describe it, but it's this. It's this. It's what you said about this sense of disconnection and this lack of lack of connection. And how do we connect, especially when things seem to be moving so fast, or we're not able to kind of grasp, grasp at something. And often, for me, that you know, when I think back to my childhood, I find that I'm not able to reminisce in the same way that my friends are, because even though I was there, I wasn't really there. And so that there's something, and there's something in that, but there's also, there's also a distinction as well, between being alone and feeling alone. And I think that's something that Robin Williams quote really emphasizes that actually, we're not alone. We're not we're not necessarily alone in this world. You know, there's 7 billion other people on this planet, and yet we can feel kind of immensely, immensely alone. And I'm just going to share another, just a few more personal examples of when I've experienced loneliness, and I'll bring it back to kind of more formal definitions of loneliness. But so some of the times that I felt most alone is when I'm having an experience that I'm not able to share with other people, or that, that even when I share it, that they're not able to understand it. And often those experiences are on the extremes of emotion. So when I'm feeling, you know, maybe despondent or in or Despairing or hopeless, or those more kind of depressive, anxious type of feelings, but also the the opposite, when, when I, you know, I've achieved something, and I feel so proud of myself for it. And and even though other people might say that they're proud of me, there isn't that same kind of level of elation as as what I'm feeling so those extremes of emotions and really not feeling kind of known and understood. And then, and then, there's also experiences of you mentioned this kind of not quite fitting in, you know, not quite, you know, not not quite being able to conform to the norms around us in society, or feeling kind of out of step, not, not feeling kind of part of a whole. And this can, this can be experienced in many, many different ways. So I remember I before where I live now, I just didn't feel at home in that town. I felt I didn't see people who were like me in that town, it felt incredibly segregated. My neighbors didn't say hello to me, and I just didn't feel I felt a sense of loneliness, kind of almost in the location in the area that I was I was living in, and I thought that was just quite a fascinating experience, and really contrasting to where I live now, where neighbors say in London, which is just bizarre, but where neighbors kind of say hello to you in The lift. And there's really interesting research study. I can't remember the year, and I can't remember the authors, but they were looking at the impact of strangers on our sense of loneliness and also social connection. And so they had, it was, I think people were kind of walking down a street or a bridge, and they had some one of the experimenters would would walk past people, and they would either look at them, look through them, or just not engage with them at all. And then somebody a little while along, would stop that person and ask them how socially connected they were feeling, and the people who were looked through and just not looked at at all, rated themselves significantly less socially connected than the person who had eye contact, and that's like with completely strangers. So I just find find this quite fascinating. But as you can hear, loneliness is actually incredibly complex, and we even in terms of the research around loneliness, you know, people have come at at this concept of loneliness from so many different angles. So is it about, for example, a behavior so where we might find it difficult in fostering meaningful relationships, where we might not have the skills, the social skills that we need? Is it actually this emotion? Or element so something that maybe is a bit more transient So, or is it linked to other emotions like that, self blame or unhappiness or just or depression or despair? Or is it the sense of kind of feeling misunderstood, you know, not being heard, or this kind of lack of closeness? And it could be all of these things and yet none of these things at the same time. And I think the way, the way that, the way of conceptualizing loneliness, that I find most helpful, even though this is at the individual level, is really thinking about the function of loneliness, and you talked about this kind of yearning or desire to connect, and if we think about kind of historically and how we evolved, and this notion of a lone wolf is a dead wolf that actually we have survived as a human species because of human connection, because of community, because of Taking care of each other because of cooperation and collaboration, that there is something around this lone wolf as a dead Wolf. And so actually, if the so is the function of loneliness, therefore, to a message that tells us something's not okay in our social connections, our social relationships and our social groups. Is it a kind of message or a calling for us to say, actually, there is something deficient here. There's something kind of not quite okay, and can I therefore take steps towards social connection, towards, you know, creating those opportunities to have those social those social networks, and to really foster that kind of meaningful connection and that sense of belonging as well. And so I find that the most helpful way of looking at being in this and I think the consensus amongst academics is very much that it tends to be conceptualized as like an individual experience, or a subjective individual experience that can be influenced by lots of other things. So it can be influenced by our environment, the context, how accepted we are by others, and so and so forth. But it's it really points to a kind of deprivation of so meaningful social connection of some in some way, shape or form. And they talk about the difference between the quality of relationships and the quantity of relationships, and actually, what research has found is that the quantity of relationships is important only to a certain extent, but what's really important is those is that quality of the relationship so are we, are our interpersonal needs being met by the relationships that we experience?

Yeah, you know what? There's so much really, really fun stuff in there. I love, or I don't even know where to start. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with lone wolf is a dead Wolf, because I think that's so interesting. And I guess one of my reflections on that is it feels to me like it probably is the case, that historically that was true. Now I don't know if that is true anymore, from a survival from a procreation state. I wonder if one of the challenges that we have is that maybe that is no longer a truism in the in the survival and procreation of humanity. So what does that mean for us in this world of loneliness, are we getting to a stage where people who maybe have less of a propensity to loneliness feel less need for those connections? Because in reality, individuals potentially can thrive and prosper in the technological and material and social worlds that we've created. I just kind of wonder if we're at an inflection point there. I don't know if you've got any thoughts about that.

I mean, it's really interesting, because we can look at this from so many different perspectives. So if we look at it from a Western perspective, one could argue that I could survive and I could live completely by myself in my flat with very little need. It's fairly dystopian, but in the way we perceive it, yeah, but the reality

of that is not true, though, because how do I get my food? How do I how do I get my computers? How do I get all the things that I need? It's through the community, whether I know the people or not, it's through all the people who are involved in, I don't know, picking, picking the fruit, freaking, the fruits in the farms, and then the truck drivers who get them from from that, that from there to the shops, and then the people who work in the shops, and the delivery drivers, etc. So, so we can kind of fool ourselves to think that we don't need other people. But the reality is, is that everything that I do in life, there is an interdependence with people in this world that, like we wouldn't be able to build the buildings that we live in without, without cooperation, without without other people. And so I think that that's potentially a real falsehood in terms of the way that we're thinking, that that actually absolutely everything. I do this computer that I'm talking to you through, it was created by someone. It was built by someone. The keys were manufactured by somebody, and the screen was manufactured, maybe by somebody else, and it was all put together. And all of those people have come together to kind of offer me something that helps me in my day to day, day to day life. So that's kind of one thing that I would say about it. And then the other thing that I would say is that that that there are different individual needs when it comes to social connection. So there are going to be some people who don't need the same level of social connection as other people. So so and this, we can look at this from your kind of introversion, extroversion piece, right? So I'm someone who's very extroverted. I come to, I come to life when I'm with people and and so for me, that kind of, that that kind of regular social in person communication is really, is really key. Other people might have kind of fewer needs for that regularity or that consistency or frequency or intensity of connection, but I would argue that they still need other other humans, just the way that they need them or the way they relate is different. And then I had one more thing that I wanted to share. Let me just see if it will, if it will come back, yeah, this piece of a kind of lone wolf and is a dead Wolf. And is that really true anymore? And I would say that we might think that it's not true, but, but our brains haven't caught up with that yet. And so when we experience whether it's physical isolation or emotional isolation or loneliness, are we brains do. How do I put it? I'm not a neuroscientist, so I'm not going to get this 100% right, but what I do know from the research is that loneliness impacts the way that our brains function. So when people experience loneliness, different parts of the brain become become alive, but also we are so primed for rejection. And I think it was been a been a condola in from pancadola in one of their webinars that they that they did during the pandemic, they talked about this experiment, which was a game, and it was a game of playing ball, like playing catch, and at some point in playing catch on this computer game, or whatever the simulation, the participant stops being thrown the ball. And it's something like within a few milliseconds, again, I can't remember the exact number of milliseconds that person will have an immediate response to that rejection. And so we are wired. We are fundamentally wired for that connection. And even if we have individual differences in terms of how much of it we need and the kind of context within which it's helpful or unhelpful, yeah, I still think that it's it's still pretty true,

yeah, yeah. And it feels like it certainly is very true in US physiologically, even if, to some extent, we are striving to create a world with, you know, disintermediation and transactional relationships to meet our physical needs in a transactional way, we still have, you know, social needs and that that I think are affected by this. When you were speaking earlier, I was also thinking about, you know, something about loneliness, and it's a topic we've explored with a few people, and I wonder if you've got thoughts on it, in relation to you, some of the things that you've looked at in terms of mindfulness and presence and things like that, as a personal reflection on, sort of the ability to feel lonely around others. Sometimes, I have found that for myself, I live in my head, even when I am in environments with others. So I'll find myself regulating, being controlled, not living in the moment, but instead, perhaps sitting above and thinking about what I'm saying and how it was going and all those types of things. So that level of abstraction in a social environment means that I'm not actually in that moment. So I can be there and be exhibiting all the signs and playing all the games and interacting, but still remain distant. I can be the sort of Ghost in the Machine of myself without being present in the moment and at times that can feel lonely and disconnected. So do you have thoughts on the relationship between if there is any such thing between being present and connection or loneliness?

Yeah, I think it's such a brilliant observation, and it resonates with my experiences as well. And I would probably flip it on its head and say, when you feel the most, when you feel that sense of connection with others, what is your experience of. Being in that kind of more ghost like space or being physically present, yeah,

and when I am connected, I have let go of all that ghostliness and that that's, that's my personal reflection. When I have forgotten that I'm in a situation, is when I am most in that situation? Does that make sense?

Absolutely, and so then that brings me to something else that I think it's so important to reflect on, especially when we then start moving into workplace. Loneliness is what are the conditions and contexts that enable us to really connect from that place of presence, from that place of connection, so that we can let go of all that stuff going on in my head about, you know, how am I coming across what, you know, that second guessing of ourselves, and we all do that, like even me. Before this podcast, I actually wrote a Facebook post, and I was like, I'm really anxious about it, and I was massively in my head and saying, you know, will I say the right things? What if I misquote somebody? What if I, you know, don't reference someone well, you know, all this kind of stuff that was going on in my head. And my friend commented, and she said, Taz, just get out of your head and reconnect to your body. And it was such a simple message that it was like, Oh, yeah. Okay. Actually, I you know that there are skills that we can develop that helps us really let go of all that head stuff, the stories we tell ourselves, the second guessing, those negative automatic thoughts that just enables us to ground ourselves and come back into, you know, this, this moment. And actually, I think when it comes to connection, we can sense when other people aren't present with us. And actually, how do we feel the richness of human relationships and connection? It is by being truly present with somebody, you know, really listening. You know, Stephen COVID. You know that, what that wonderful quote around kind of, listen to understand, you know, not to be understood, or you know or not, and also listening to understand, not listening to respond. And I think, I think there's, there's so much that we can learn, you know, from from that space. And you mentioned mindfulness, and what I find fascinating about my mindfulness experience is, is as well this that there's a practice called interpersonal mindfulness, and it's about, how do we learn to bring this presence, not just in terms of our own individual practice, when we're, I don't know, sitting and doing meditation or doing yoga or some something like that. But how do we bring it into our relationship? So how do I, you know, when I'm sitting here talking to you, how do I be really present, really attuned and kind of like you say, learn to that they have. And one of the guidelines is called trust emergence. So instead of trying to rack our brains to say, Oh, what am I going to say next? You know, how do I say something really clever? How do I sum up all the billions of things that you've said? I can just kind of trust that the words will find me. And that's been really amazing learning, I think, for me, over the last well, since, since 2014 since I started this. This this practice, and it's so powerful as well in terms of coaching. Because, you know, most of us who were coaches, especially those they those who are kind of entering into coaching, will be listening to to the people that we're coaching to try and respond or come up with a fancy question, or, oh goodness, what am I going to say here and and actually, what people most want is is just to be heard, just to be listened to, just for us to be really present and really along alongside them, and just kind of really trusting that those those words will just find ourselves. Essentially, I

heard a phrase a couple weeks ago, or maybe even earlier this week. There's a guy. He does a podcast I really like called philosophize. This called Stephen West, and he did a lovely episode about the lily of a field and the bird in the air and being present from from a sort of perspective of philosophy. But anyway, the phrase that he was trying to get out into the world is stewing in your own soup. And I kind of like that little phrase. I find that I end up stewing in my own soup all too often. And for me, it's quite captured those moments of overthinking, over engagement, over frontal lobe ness and all of that kind of stuff, which can be really unhelpful. So I thought I'd just share about who you wanted to get that seated into the world as a phrase, in some little way, this will help a little bit. Um, yeah, super helpful. Um, if we then think about, you know, some of the impacts then so, so we've, we've explored a little bit about what loneliness is, at a personal and at a sort of research based, based level, what are the impacts? Thoughts of loneliness on us. What are some of the outcomes of us feeling lonely at a, I guess, an individual, personal perspective, and then maybe from a working performance perspective, what it's like?

I mean, it's, it's actually really remarkable so that there's been quite a lot of research that's looked into the impact of loneliness. And one of the things that you may have actually seen it was it would definitely received some media attention, was that loneliness can have, if we think about our health, loneliness can have a longer term and more negative impact on our health and well being, for example, than smoking, than obesity. And that's quite shocking. I think so lowness can be the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day when it comes to mortality, and it can, it can increase our likelihood of mortality by about 26% and that's that's equivalent on par with other health risks like smoking, obesity and so and so forth. And it also can impact our immune system. So it can lower our immune system. We can often feel much more stressed when we're by ourselves, or feel lonely. And so that can influence coronary heart disease and high blood pressure as well. So just physically, physiologically, loneliness can have a really significant impact. And I think one of the things for me in the pandemic was thinking about, you know, all the elders in our families and and loneliness can also influence the early onset of dementia. For example, it can exacerbate dementia and so and so. It's really quite significant, the the impact that it can have on on our on our health and well being, and then and then, on on the flip side of that, in terms of on, you know, thinking about workplace and performance, when we feel socially connected to others, it has a huge impact on our ability to learn, for example, our memory. So so when we feel socially connected to others, we learn better, and we most likely have access as well to more social resources. And so, you know, if we think about if we feel very socially connected, and we've got strong relationships, we can, we can offer as well as receive help, and that, that, that that supports us to then achieve, achieve our goals. We tend to be more motivated. We tend to be more engaged, we tend to be better able to connect to a sense of purpose as well. So when I think back to your kind of kind of what, what came that, that kind of visual that came to mind you at the beginning, that kind of struggled to connect to something bigger than yourself as that kind of, this kind of world was going past so quickly. Well, actually, when we feel connected, it does give us a sense of meaning and purpose, and we know that meaning and purpose is so important for psychological well being as well. So there's been a whole host of different outcomes and that that's related to both loneliness and and connection. Yeah, it's

striking, isn't it, when you when you look at some of those mortality things, right? I mean, it really leads one to question approaches to things like health care. And I know a lot of people are in involved in looking at sort of preventative health care and preventative medicine, but it, but it really feels like prescribing of social interaction as a as a way to lower, you know, a tax burden for healthcare would be a fantastic way to go about things, and

that is something that the NHS have introduced, actually, a social prescribing and I listened to a really interesting podcast by Catherine Haslam, who is one of the proponents of the the Oh, the name of their books gone completely out of my health. But it's this, is this idea of the social is that they call it the social cure? So this sense that actually, you know, we can alleviate a lot of our health burdens and the burdens in society through the way that we connect to people. And when they did a bit of research on the impact of social prescribing within the NHS, they found really different, different results. They found inconsistent results. And what they found was that sometimes social prescribing was helpful and other times it wasn't. And what they concluded from that, or I think what the what the research is starting to show, is that is that we need to identify with the groups that we're connecting to in order for us to experience the benefits. So for example, let's say I was depressed or anxious and I. And respect to my GP, and the GP may be offered to connect me with the person responsible for social prescribing, and they suggested, you know, a walking group or walking buddy, or, you know, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or whatever it is. But if I'm not identifying with those people or with that group, then I'm not going to experience the same level of benefit as if, as if there was a strong identification with that.

That's so cool, right? I mean, like you look at some stuff about, you know, as a total side conversation, to where we started looking at things like, you know, trust in medicine and engagement with medical practices, where, particularly within minority communities, in places like the US, and what you find is a lot of minorities will not go to mainstream medical practices because they do not feel seen and connected to. But instead you get, you know, the rise of things like, you know, barber shop type medicine, where people are much more likely to, in some instances, go to a barber shop and speak, particularly men, to speak to their barber about what's going on and have that trusted relationship. And presumably, there's actually a huge amount of benefit for them from a health perspective, in doing that, even though it sits to some extent outside of the framing of a health service that we think about.

And it's interesting because, you know, being a very fair skinned person of color, but you know, a person of color nonetheless, like I've experienced that, and my family and friends really experience experience that, and then it's if we take an intersectional lens, being a woman, and then being a woman of color, you're, you're so much less likely to be believed when you, When you when you know, within the NHS, and there's so much data that shows the discrepancy between, you know, the the the health

yeah, just the discrepancies between health outcomes across across different, different underrepresented groups. And I think, for me, that suggests that, you know, representation is so important, and it's and I and coming back to this theme of loneliness. So again, when we're thinking, when we think about workplace loneliness, and we think about, okay, well, we all might have individual needs when it comes to loneliness. We all might have individual preferences in terms of how much social connection we want, but the environment does have a big impact on how socially connected we feel. And if you are from an underrepresented group and you are subject to stigma and discrimination and bias, that is going to have an impact on your sense of belonging more more more broadly. And I think, and I think that the other thing we're going slightly off topic, but I think it's important, is this notion of identification with groups while society puts society gives different groups different statuses, and so that also can be quite challenging as well, because if the group that one identifies with in society is seen as less than then that has a huge impact as well on your emotional health. So you're going to get a lot of benefit from being part of that group, because you're going to feel known, you're going to feel understood, you're going to feel connected. They're your they're your people. You share histories. But then that's also a source of strain as well, because it's that identification with that group that means you're not getting the medical services that you should be getting. It means that you're not getting the jobs that you should be getting. It means that you're much more likely to be ostracized in the workplace, for example, or you're more likely to be bullied or harassed or experienced discrimination. So it's incredibly complex. Yeah,

it's all interwoven, isn't it, in so many different framings and groupings that we bring into the world. And it's it's not simple. How about that? Yeah, if we think about, you know, things that we can do, we've talked a little bit about, you know, what loneliness is, what connection is, some of the impacts at an individual level, it'd be good to just think a little bit about some of the things that we can do. And I think we've alluded to some things at an individual level, in terms of how we approach things, in terms of finding groups, in terms of almost prescribing to ourselves, and things like that. But I'd like to think about if, instead of thinking about ourselves and reducing our loneliness or increasing our connection, if we are people who happen to be able to influence the environment around us from a work perspective, so either an individual who can influence it, or a leader or a manager, are there things that we can do to try and influence, shape, mold whatever word we want to use, adjust the way that we are and the way that our organizations are to reduce loneliness? You know? Are there things we can do what might

be Yeah, I mean this. So much that we can do actually. And I'm gonna, I wonder whether I start like, really, on an individual level, and then we kind of build up to team group manager. Sounds brilliant. So, so at an individual level, and like you say, we've alluded to this before, there's something about first really recognizing what it is that you're actually feeling, and what is, what is the cause of that loneliness? So what message is this loneliness actually giving us? And I'll give you an example. My friend has given me permission to share this actually, so I was being here yesterday, and both of us have, both of us live alone, and we both have family who live abroad. So my parents live in Uganda, and her family live in another country as well. And we were on the phone, we were chatting away, and suddenly, out of nowhere, she goes, she goes, TAs, you know what? I'm really lonely. And then, and then she, she started crying. And I was like, oh, and I and I asked her, and I said, Oh, tell me more. Like, what is it? What's actually going on? And and once we kind of dug deep underneath, what we realized is that she just felt that she didn't have anything to look forward to, yeah, and so, and that that was just driving this sense of, you know, aloneness that she was feeling. And so we were able to then start to just explore, like, okay, let's, let's do some stuff that we could, like, look forward to. And I don't necessarily think that we should go into that kind of fixing, rescuing straight away, but I do think it's important to really, really drill down to what message is that loneliness giving me? What is it saying that I'm needing? What is it saying that I'm wanting? Because then that gives us a clue in terms of what steps we can take to to to then move, move, move forward, or identify what it is, what it is that we need, that the second thing is, then also kind of what we offer other people. So often it's about, Well, how am I showing up in work, you know, how am I paying attention to somebody? You know, am I really showing an interest in them? If I know someone like even, even with a colleague, if I know a colleague has, you know, just come, come back to the UK from spending time with their family abroad, and they might be missing family, missing home. Might I connect with them? You know, so there's something around am I consciously moving towards showing interest, showing care, showing concern to the people around me? Am I interested in getting to know them, understanding them, understanding who they are, and and to caveat that with, sometimes people don't want that in the workplace, so sometimes people don't want that level of connection, and that's okay, then we respect that as well, you know. So there's something about really sensing into what's helpful and what's helpful, what's helpful and what's unhelpful in these in these contexts. So I think that that's, that's kind of one thing, and then, and then building on from that. I think, you know, when you and I first had a conversation, we talked about this notion of kind of understanding each other, and, you know, what is, what does that actually mean, and what does that actually look like? And I talked about, you know, sometimes, sometimes the moments that I feel most alone is when I'm not able to share what what's actually going on for me. And often that is in moments of crisis or, you know, or after experiencing a bereavement, or if I'm feeling particularly stressed or anxious or depressed or whatever it is. And so how do we as human beings really develop our ability to be with other people in their pain and in their suffering, because often that's when loneliness arises, and and and so. And then I think, and I and so when we think about what empathy is. And Brene Brown has a brilliant little video clip on this where she talks about the difference between sympathy and empathy. To be truly empathic towards somebody else, I have to be willing to experience uncomfortable emotions, because if I can't hold or contain the sense of being with my you know, my friend or family member or colleagues, difficult and uncomfortable. Emotions, I'm going to immediately go to rescuing I'm going to or I'm going to be dismissive, or I'm not really going to pay attention, because I can't tolerate that. And in the psychology space of there's this therapeutic approach called compassion focus therapy. And they talk about, you know, what, what are the things that kind of make up compassion? And one of these things is actually developing distress tolerance. So how much distress can I? Can I tolerate? And, and, and how that actually supports in building. And cultivating empathy. So I'm going to pause there because there's, I've only really focused on the kind of very close interpersonal relationships, and I want to broaden this out to kind of team groups, managers, organizations. But I'll just pause there because I've spoken a lot, and I'm just curious about whether you've got any thoughts or reflections. Yeah,

absolutely. And you know, the first thing I'm going to say is nothing to look forward to. What a sign of our times. That is right. As I said, this is January 2022 we've had years of of not only maybe not having things to look forward to, but not believing that the things we look forward to will come to pass, and that there's something very unsettling about that. So I just wanted to reflect on that, because I'm sure a lot of people who I'm sure a lot of people think about that. You talked a little bit at the beginning about how we as individuals can help those around us, and you talked about looking at, how am I showing up? And I think there's something really powerful in that piece about almost, almost paying it forward, almost the sort of trusting in the other. If I give to others a space to be, you know who they are, and to to be what they need, then that is a cyclical thing, and in the systemic nature of the world, if I put a little bit of goodness into that system, trusting that it will come back to me, there's a chance that it will within these smaller social groups that we live in. So I think there's something really good there for me. There's another piece that sits next to that piece around, not only can I show up in a way that sort of helps others by sort of being something in that space, be it, you know, inquisitive, present, attentive. I think there's a piece about what can I leave, what can I let go of when I go into that space that's very helpful as well. So I can actively do things that can drive that and, you know, be present, but I think I can also let go of things. I can do things around bringing my vulnerability. I can make my mistakes. I can embrace that fallibility of myself in those moments, but I think lower the barriers to some extent, to that meaningful connection, particularly if we find commonality in our fallibility or something like that. Was something that came into my mind, this thought of reducing the armor that we take into these social situations being a really, really helpful thing. And the last thing that I was thinking about, you know, when we were talking about that meaning, meaningful sort of communication with others, and you talked about the ability to empathize, being the ability to stand in the discomfort of others, to some extent, I think there's something about our ability to convey what it is that we want people to understand that's there. So do I have the tools and the faculties to let me paint a picture so that you can see it in the way that I imagine it, with my language, with my body language, with my physical communication. And if I can do that, then we can have a sense of connection. I believe we can see that same picture. And I think there are sort of two sides to that. One is my skills, with my language, with my self awareness, with my patience to explore with all those things, to let me craft that moment that I'm trying to convey. And that's one side. But on the other side, I think there are the skills of the other person to intuit and to to grasp on to metaphor, to navigate conversation, to draw out further and to have that shared understanding. So I think there are things both parties can learn in that space. Are some of my some of my reflections. So those were my thoughts on those pieces.

I think that's so interesting about about this kind of reciprocity in a human connection, which is, what, what am I communicating? How is that landing and how is that received? And then, how is that responded to? And, and, and, and this and the skillfulness on both sides and at the same time, sometimes when we experience things, especially when it's related to loneliness or any other kind of challenging or difficult emotions we don't know. Sometimes it's not expressible in words. And you use that beautiful metaphor, didn't you earlier on, that visual which was really powerful, and someone who maybe isn't a visual communicator might not be able to express what they're experiencing in those in those terms. And I think, and I think that sometimes what, what, what can also be really helpful is the person who's listening is just their patience and their interest and their curiosity to really try and understand what someone's trying to communicate, even if they're struggling to name it, even if they're not able to find the words or find the way to express what it is that they're, that they're that they're experiencing and sometimes and this, this does require a lot of skillfulness. Is that when we're describing something, someone else. Can name it, name just name the word, and you just feel so understood in that moment. Like, I remember, it was actually just the other day, earlier this week, we were just talking about the general awareness that people are feeling at the moment. And one of my colleagues said, Yeah, jaded, that's the word Jaden. I was like, yes, jaded, that's the word and like, so I think we can also support each other like I think there's something quite beautiful about supporting each other in you know, how we can find those words to describe almost sometimes the in the indescribable, but I think you've touched on some other really important things, and just trying to think about how

I just want to jump in with one thing, because when you were speaking, something jumped into my mind, and it's something that people might want to look at at some point. I read a book a while ago by a guy called Brian Christian, who's a philosopher and computer scientist, and he wrote a book called The most human, human, and he took part in the Turing test. You know, the tests to work out if computers are you know, how can you create a computer that can be misinterpreted as human in communication? And when they run those Turing tests, they run them on an annual basis, and they give a prize to the computer that is most human, but they also give a prize to the human that is the most human, right? So, can you be the most human of the humans who are the pretend computers, right? So, so, so, that's the way it works. And so he went off and looked at, what is it about human interaction that is really different from machine? And how could he be, you know, one of those fake computers that people were, you know, trying to work out if it was a computer or not. How could he be one of the people on the other side of that screen and communicate in such a way that he was voted for most human of the people the humans were interacting with. And the book's a bit of his story about how he does that. And one of the things that was interesting is another analogy that I particularly liked, or a metaphor, was he talks about conversation as obviously a two way thing, but he says a lot of the best conversations come about when people introduce handholds into their conversation that other people can grasp onto. So as a conversation, it's a collaborative, generative process whereby I offer up a hand hold, I leave something in the conversation that you as my interlocutor, can grab onto and pull yourself further up that conversation. And that's one of the real indicators of a human, human in these conversations. So I just thought that was

fun. I love that analogy about kind of almost giving a hand and then kind of holding it's so beautiful. Wow, that's really lovely. I'm not

sure how much it moves this on. But what if we, what if we expand away from that individual and think about maybe leaders or managers, and some of the things that say that we can do

there? So so one of so there's, there's a really interesting researcher called Jane Dutton, and she's done a lot of research on high quality connections in the workplace, and she talks about high quality connections being those that you know, that are mutual, that give us that sense of vitality and energy, and this notion that every conversation that we have has this opportunity to be really energizing. And I think that analogy that you just gave about kind of giving a hand that you can then pick up is a wonderful example of that. And she talks about these four different pathways of of high quality connections. And so I just going to talk really briefly through through all of them. So the first one is really around trust, and that's where some of what we've already been talking about can really come into play. But trust isn't just about that kind of interpersonal piece. Trust in the workplace is also about, you know, how reliable are we? Do we follow through on what we say we're going to do? Am I seen as someone who's competent? Am I seen as someone who also cares. So trust goes, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of kind of different layers to trust and then, and there are lots of ways of building trust as well. And you mentioned earlier on about this sense of kind of openness and vulnerability, and actually, that we connect through our vulnerability. And I love that, that idea of, actually, if I, if I'm able, in the workplace as a leader or a manager, to share something real that's happening to me at the moment, you know, my hopes, but also what I'm finding really, really difficult at the moment, that gives an opportunity or gives permission for other people to share kind of what, what's going on for them as well. And I talk about often when I deliver leadership training, I talk a lot about kind of skillful transparency, and so it's not that we go in and we say, Oh, my goodness, I'm so stressed and this, and that's happening as a leader, as a manager, because then people might not want to approach us, because we'll they'll be worried that. You know, well, we're so stressed, then if I go and ask them a question, they're just not going to be able to handle it, etc. And so there's something about, you know, this being transparent, but being transparent in a skillful way, and really coming from a sense of groundedness. I think, I think within, within that, within that, within that piece. So, so how do we use openness, sharing conversations to support and kind of really building that sense of trust. That's one of the pathways. Another pathway, which actually I came across quite recently, is playfulness. This, you know, I think the world has got so serious. We've I speak for myself, I've become so serious, I'm not always very good at not taking myself so seriously. And there's something about playfulness as adults that can be, that can, that can really spark something new and something different in in developing these high quality connections. And it can, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be like. What we imagine playfulness to be like, you know, kids playing, I don't know, on the seesaw or something. It can be playfulness with the way that we're creative or the way that we innovate, or how we have conversations, or how we run our meetings, or, you know, just doing something slightly different, in a different in a different way, and allowing that space for innovation and creativity, and, you know, improvising, and it really builds the sense of kind of flexibility and perspective taking as well. Then, then the other two areas. So one of them is around what's called Task task enablement. And I just want to talk through this a little bit more in detail. I'm going to have to dig for some notes, because I forget a lot of things. But so task enablement is really around empowering individuals. So it's what, what are the kinds of things that we can do in the workplace that really enables people to work at their best? So it can be things about sharing resources. For example, is one is one key thing, but that there are five different strategies that's generally talked about in this task, enabling pathway. So one is about kind of training, teaching, coaching. So do people have the right skills to really bring the best of themselves to work, and then it's also kind of how we design jobs. So are we designing jobs, for example, aligned to people's strengths? Do Are we designing jobs in a way that affords people autonomy and opportunities for connection as well. And this really relates back I know Kevin in his in his podcast with you, talked about social determination theory. Sorry, self, self determination theory, and talked about the kind of ABC of our psychological needs, so autonomy, belongingness and competence and so why are we designing work around around these things is really important. Then there's something about advocating for people at work. So when people will take a real interest in us, when they, when they help us navigate organizational politics, when they they support us in kind of developing and shaping our network. So sponsors and organizations often take on this role. But are we advocating for others? Do we know people enough? Do we know about their skills? Do we understand the strengths they bring so that we're able to help them navigate their kind of complex social networks within within the organizations that we that we participate in, and then on the flip side of that, there's the kind of reasonable adjustments accommodating piece, you know, how do we support people so that they're able to connect and also do their jobs really well? And and then finally, is this piece about nurturing. So really thinking about, well, what do my team need? So for example, I'm somebody I'm incredibly expressive, and I'm someone that I like to be expressive and I like to share what's going on in my life. And that might be a real pain for whoever has to manage me, but that's something that that I would feel nurtured if someone took five minutes of their day and said, Oh, Taz, you know, how are you? How was your weekend? And I might, you know, say about a new exercise regime that I'm on or whatever, but just, but that, that that's something that would be important for me as an extrovert, you know, that kind of constant kind of chatter, which sometimes can get in the way of getting work done. But anyway, so, so that's the kind of task enabling. And then the last one is around respectful engagement. And this comes back to what we were talking about before, about really listening, really showing an interest, really tuning in, being aware of when we're sometimes dismissive to other people. And. And there's again, another, another really interesting psychologist called Shelly Gable. And she, she does, she she's done work in in looking at whether we can be active and constructive in the way that we respond to people. And she's her research looks particularly at when where people are sharing celebratory news and how we respond to it. So are we responding in a dismissive way? Are we responding in a way that we're showing engagement and that that really has an impact in developing these high quality connections? I'm going to stop there. I've talked

a lot, yeah, loads of great stuff. So we talked about trust, we talked about task enablement, we talked about play. We talked about respectful engagement with deep dives, or not deep dives, little dives into into all those different areas, which is a brilliant breadth of great stuff to cover and and I guess a couple things stand up for me so often with a lot of these types of things that we can do within shaping our interactions and our relationships. So often, they all seem, individually, very clear and doable, but one of one of the challenges, I think, is the need to be to have them as an intention and to hold on to that and stay present and connected with our intentions throughout our existences and and I think that, you know, there are things like job design, task design that we can do is a sort of discrete thing at times, but a lot of this, this stuff requires us to go into all our interactions with a bit of an intent, or Maybe to change ourselves. So these things are habituated. So have you got any thoughts on on, you know, maybe things that we can do to make this seem easier, or to make it so it moves it from that intent based cognitively depleting type of mental activity into something that's just, hey, this is the way I do stuff. And

I think, I think that's the bit that's really challenging because, because we're especially if we think about the moment, we've got low resources, really high demands, high workloads, we're stressed, we're burnt out, we're pretty wary. And I think that that's that's a real challenge, is that this is all well and good in practice, but when you're tired, when you know we can lose our tempers, we can just not have the energy and capacity. And I think, I think one of the things is, is about, how do we bring what is where? Where do we want to start? And maybe just starting with one thing. So what is that kind of one thing that we're going to start start, and also we can do it as a team, so we'd never have to feel alone, I think, in starting a journey which is around kind of fostering more of a climate which allows for high quality connection. So, so what is that kind of one thing that we can we can start with, and how do we kind of build up, build up from build up from there. The other thing that I would say is, and this, this is quite a lot of work in and of itself, but really about, how do I bring my strengths into these things, and what, what's kind of going to take me a bit more effort. So if I, if I think about task enabling, I'm a natural teacher and I'm a natural nurturer, what I'm less good at is designing. Is the is the kind of designing tasks according to people's strengths and skills, like, I'm not very good at that kind of thing. And so is there somebody else within my team, or another leader or another manager who's brilliant at that, and we can kind of come together and work together, on, on, on this, this type of stuff as well. So I think there's something in in me not feeling that I kind of have to know everything, I have to do everything now, and have to do everything by myself. There's something in kind of figuring out kind of where are my strengths? Where do I struggle? How do I bring my strengths into what I do more and into my relationships more? How do I allow other people to do that as well? But where can we collaborate so that it just doesn't feel so difficult and so wary, and I think if teams are incredibly depleted, then it, then it, then it's starting with, okay, what? How? Like, what's actually going to what's actually going to help us, what's, what's one thing that we could do that will just give us that little bit of nourishment that we that we need? Yeah,

I like that. I like that sort of one thing. And I love focusing on strengths. I mean, why? Why make it hard if we can make it a little bit easier? But that's kind of a way I see it. I think we can do that and and, you know, we talked about picking one thing and doing it. I think occasionally, depending on where we are, it might be good to pick one thing, but we do and focus on celebrating that strength and sort of build on it from there. Question. So for you, I am not sure that everybody wants to do this sort of connecting in the workplace, right, like, so I can imagine, I can imagine somebody listening to this, and if they're, you know, somebody like me, they'd be like, Oh, great. We can have, like, a big connected fun, everybody being playful and having a good time in work. And let's do that. But I can imagine if they thought about introducing this as an idea into their team, or talking about loneliness at work, or talking about connection, those are scary topics to introduce into the workplace. Some people will will really not want those you know, work is work, and it's not for me to say anything about me. All that stuff kind of exists so. So what do you think would be like opening this, this sort of topic, up in the workplace. Are there challenges? How can you do it now?

Yeah. And I think also some contexts allow for more of this conversation to take place. So if we think about the different types of organizational cultures that exist, and particularly if we think about relational cultures, so if we think about organizations where they're set up on the on, you know, we were talking about this earlier, about kind of individual targets, competitiveness, social comparison, you know, performance, all of those kind of kind of context. Well, this is going to be, this is they're going to see this as kind of soft and not really particularly helpful. But if you look at the loneliness and those types of in those types of contexts, I'd be interested to know where there are people in those contexts more lonely or less lonely. I don't, don't know. And then there are other organizational contexts away where you have a relational climate which is more around collaboration and connect and connection. So I think it's really knowing and understanding the organizational climate that we're in to know kind of where that starting place might be, and for an organization where this would just go over people's people's heads, then I wonder whether there's something around really just assessing, well, what is our culture here? What culture do we want to have? You know, are people feeling alienated? So it's almost doing a kind of a bit of a diagnosis of, kind of what's going on here, before we find where that point of where that where, where that starting place might be. And a really good tool to do this is actually thinking about psychological safety in organizations, because if, if there isn't a culture of psychological safety, then all of this stuff that we've just talked about is going to fall flat, fall flat on your face. No one's going to be willing to be open or self disclose in a context that is it, that is that is threatening. So I think that kind of focus on psychological safety is also important. And then this other piece that you've brought in, which is, well, what if people just don't want this? And you'll say, right? Like, I know so many people who go to work and they just want to do their job, and then they want to go home, and all the social connection stuff happens outside of work, and so I think there's something around thinking again about, what are the norms within this particular organization, but also, how can there be space For people to to be able to how do I put this so you can have both? So it can be both and rather than either or, because we don't want to create environments that are alienating, because everyone wants to be really personal and really connecting, when actually some people don't want that as well. So how do we afford people the agency, because you can still have high quality connections without being friends with everybody, because high quality connections at work is also about giving and receiving resources. It's about supporting people. It we don't necessarily have to be friends like I don't have to be friends with you to look at a report that you've written and offer you feedback. It might help if we've got some kind of affinity, but I don't have to like you necessarily to be able to still be a high quality connection in the workplace. So I think, yeah, I'm probably not really making much sense now, but it's a very, very difficult question, and it is very complex, but I think that it's figuring out, well, what is the climate here and what's actually needed at the moment, and then creating space for there to be difference in terms of the way people want to connect to work,

yeah, and I think that would lead us on to a whole different conversation about the difficulties of personalization and individualization at work while maintaining a little bit of fairness in this ever changing world. But yeah, in the interest of time, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to start to wrap things up. And in my mind, I've got a question which I'm going to take away. And it's wondering if, if highly competitive people are lonelier around other highly competitive people, or if they're lonelier around people who are not very competitive, that's something I'm going to toy with. But. I will, I will take that away with me. In the meantime, just wrap up. Could you let people know how they could find a little bit more about find out a little bit more about you and the work that you're doing and the things that you're involved

in. So probably the best place is to find me on LinkedIn. So yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best, the best LinkedIn or Twitter, the two of the places where I wear, where I have a presence that people can find, find me great. And what's your Twitter handle? So it's at Taslim Tharani, shall I don't know if it shall I spell it Yeah. Why don't you spell it out? Spell it out? Yeah. Why not? So

it's T, A, S for sugar, L for Lima, I m for mother. And then thirani is T H, A R, a n for November, I so I should be findable on LinkedIn with that name as well as Twitter. Fantastic.