Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 792

How the Architecture of Hospitals Affects Health Outcomes

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A key determinant of everything that matters when it comes to health interventions — the experience, cost, and results — has been hiding in plain sight. It is the buildings and spaces in which patients are treated. The size and layout of a room, whether a bed sits in the middle or against a wall (even which wall), how much space is maintained for patients to walk versus how many beds or operating equipment can be accommodated, have not been considered predictors of health outcomes in the past. That’s changing, as architects and health care organizations come together to incorporate principles of social design into the built health care environment.

“Social design,” a term whose roots go back several decades, fully entered the lexicon around 2006. It refers to the design of relationships, including those that are invisible and intangible. Unlike design thinking, an iterative process for developing alternative ideas and strategies based on understanding a “user” and a specific problem, social design addresses the needs of whole communities or societies. In health care that means reimagining the role a building can play in the health of its inhabitants and the locale in which it is situated.

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Consider the collaboration between Dr. Neel Shah and nonprofit architecture firm MASS Design Group. Shah, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School, directs the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Ariadne Labs, a partnership between the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Cofounded by Michael Murphy, a Harvard-trained architect who has devoted himself to improving the social impact of built environments, MASS is changing the way hospitals are designed and constructed. Murphy has written extensively about the offenses his profession commits against the vulnerable and powerless, especially with hospitals, prisons, and public housing.

In 2014, Murphy made a presentation on the history of hospital design at Ariadne Labs. His observations about the impact of hospital design on patient health and dignity struck a chord with Shah. For the next year, Shah and a MASS research team — led by Murphy, Amie Shao, and nurse-turned-architect Deb Rosenberg — embarked on a study of the growing crisis in unnecessary Caesarean deliveries in the United States, which result in hundreds of thousands of cases of avoidable suffering due to surgical complications and lead to $5 billion in wasted spending each year. They looked at 12 diverse facilities for evidence of how unit design affects Caesarean rates. (Previous studies looked only at room scale, not unit scale.) They found, among other things, that hospitals with relatively more operating rooms and relatively fewer labor rooms tended to do more surgery.

But the story is much bigger than one narrow area of clinical care. In other work, MASS has demonstrated that every aspect of the design of hospitals and clinics is an opportunity to improve patient experience and outcomes. The Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda has become a benchmark for how prioritizing patients’ health can prevent the spread of infectious disease and send patients home faster. Working with Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health, MASS helped design the hospital to mitigate and reduce the transmission of airborne disease through overall layout, patient and staff flow, and natural cross-ventilation. The use of local materials — like volcanic rock from the Virunga mountain chain — and local labor-intensive practices enabled a site-appropriate, sustainable design and stimulated the local economy.

The Cholera Treatment Center in Haiti, developed in partnership with Haitian health care provider Les Centres GHESKIO, incorporates a wastewater-treatment system designed to prevent recontamination of the water table, stopping the spread of disease. Local metalworkers crafted the facility’s façade; local craftsmen helped produce furniture tailored to the needs of cholera patients.

In the work of MASS and in the insights emerging from the research initiative on clinical care in childbirth a number of key social design principles can be seen — principles that are adaptable to any built environment in which health care is delivered. Those principles include the following:

Make sure your vision reflects the ultimate objectives. Shah set out to examine whether health care facilities are designed to deliver, as he says, more health or just more health care. For example, hospitals have traditionally measured their success in terms of bed occupancy. Consequently, their design features many private rooms and little space for walking. But current medical thinking holds that for a great many patients and conditions, getting up and around is essential for recovery. The traditional hospitals are delivering health care, but not necessarily health, which should be the ultimate objective.

Seek input from people who don’t think like you. Patients, families, physicians, nurses, administrators, and architects look at issues through different lenses. They are all important to understanding why things happen the way they do. For example, various stakeholders in the Butaro District Hospital asked why a hospital ward should follow traditional layouts, with patients lying with their heads at the exterior wall while doctors and visitors have views out the windows behind them. What happens when sick people have a view of the countryside instead of staring at other sick people all day long? Why employ traditional designs for ventilation when they depend on a power grid that often fails, exposing patients to airborne diseases that make them sicker than they were when they entered the hospital?

Make the invisible visible. Make maps and draw the systems at work in your facility, including patterns of traffic, people who talk to each other and those who don’t, and room and building layouts. Drawing is the only reliable way to make sure diverse people are seeing the same thing. Shifting the language we use from verbal to visual uncovers the hidden dynamics that form our thinking and behavior and unleashes new thinking. An architect’s instinct to measure size and traffic flow in labor units helped make the causes of the C-section epidemic visible.

Experiment continually. Planning, especially facilities planning, almost inevitably stifles ongoing innovation. Planning builds in assumptions about the future at a time when things change faster than ever — in health care no less than in other areas of our lives. It freezes design — of processes as well as space — in place. And it often puts an end to transformation until the next distant planning cycle. Counterbalance long-term planning through constant experimentation that proceeds on the belief that complex problems can be unraveled and innovation hastened by really listening to feedback gleaned from prototypes that keep designers’ work connected to the needs of the communities they serve. This model is emerging in interdisciplinary innovation labs like the Helix Centre at Imperial College London, the Center for Innovation at the Mayo Clinic, and the Consortium for Medical Technologies at Massachusetts General Hospital, where clinicians, designers, engineers, patients, and business professionals engage in continual innovation.

Adoption of these principles of social design can not only help lead to better health outcomes but also help hospitals thrive at a time when patients increasingly seek information to guide their choice of health care facilities. Those decisions often include elements of design, though consumers may not frame them that way, thinking instead in more concrete terms like whether a facility has dedicated walking spaces to help speed convalescence and shorten hospital stays or waiting areas that don’t feel like bus stations. And some consumers will include in their deliberations larger social goods like the facility’s relations with its neighborhood and its reputation for delivering health, not just health care.

Help Your Team Do More Without Burning Out

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As we begin our coaching session, Nick is fired up. He radiates energy, his eyes are beaming with determination, and he never really comes to a full rest. He speaks passionately of a new initiative he is spearheading, taking on the looming threats from Silicon Valley, and rethinking his company’s business model completely.

I recognize this behavior in Nick, having seen it many times over the years since he was first singled out as a high-potential talent. “Restless and relentless” have been his trademarks as he has risen through the ranks and aced one challenge after another.

But this time, I notice something new. Beneath the usual can-do attitude there is an inkling of something else: Mild disorientation and even signs of exhaustion. “It’s like sprinting all you can, and then you turn a corner and find that you are actually setting out on a marathon,” he remarks at one point. And as we speak, this sneaking feeling of not keeping pace turns out to be Nick’s true concern: Is he about to lose his magic touch and burn out?

Nick is not alone.

In a psychologist’s practice, common themes rise and wane across a cohort of clients. Right now, I see a surge of concern about speed: getting ahead and staying ahead. More clients use similar metaphors about “running to stand still” or feeling “caught on a track.” Invariably, their first response is to speed up and run faster.

But the impulse to simply run faster to escape friction is obviously of no use for the long haul of life-long career. In fact, our immediate behavioral response to friction shares one feature with the much of the general advice about speeding up: It is plainly counterproductive and leads to burn out rather than break out.

To add insult to injury, the way to wrestle effectively with the challenge of sustainable speed is somewhat counterintuitive and even disconcerting — especially to high-performing leaders who have successfully relied on their personal drive to make results.

From ego-drive to co-drive

The key to speeding up without burning up is a concept I call co-drive. Sustainable speed does not come from ego-drive, that is, your own personal performance or energy level, but rather from a different approach to engaging with people around you.

Rather than running faster, Nick needs to make different moves altogether. First, he must let go of his obsession with his own development, his own needs, his own performance, and his own pace. Second, he must start obsessing about other people.

It may seem illogical, but the leap to a new growth curve begins by realizing that the recipe is not to take on more and speed up, but to slow down and let go of some of the issues that have been your driving forces: power, prestige, responsibility, recognition, or face-time.

The talent phase in our careers tends to be profoundly self-centered, even narcissistic. If you need to move on from the first growth curve in your career, and want to take on more challenges, you need to exchange ego-drive for co-drive.

Co-drive requires that you momentarily forget yourself — and instead focus on others. The shift involves an understanding that you have already proven yourself. At this stage, the point is to help those around you perform. The change to co-drive involves moving from a stage of grabbing territory to a stage characterized by letting go of command and control.

Beyond teamwork

So here is what Nick needs to do: Rather than striving to be energetic, he should aim to be energizing. Rather than setting the pace, he should aspire to make teams self-propelling. Instead of delegating tasks, he should learn to lead by congregating.

Be energizing, not energetic. Here is the paradox: You can actually speed things up by slowing down. There is no doubt that being energetic is contagious and therefore a short-term source of momentum. But if you lead by example all the time, your batteries will eventually run dry. You risk being drained at the vey point when your leadership is needed the most. Conveying a sense of urgency is useful, but an excess of urgency suffocates team development and reflection at the very point it is needed. “Code red” should be left for real emergencies.

Nick has always had a weak point for people, who, like himself, are high-energy and get things done. These “Energizer Bunnies” are his star players. However, with the co-drive mindset, Nick needs to widen his sights and recognize and reward people who are good at energizing others. Energizing behavior is unselfish, generous, and praises, not just progress, but personality too.

Seek self-propulsion, not pace-setting. If you lead by beating the drum, setting tight deadlines, and burning the midnight oil, your team becomes overly dependent on your presence. Sustainable speed is achievable only if the team propels itself without your presence. Jim Collins wrote that great leaders don’t waste time telling time, they build clocks.

Self-propulsion comes from letting go of control, resisting the urge to make detailed corrections and allowing for informal leadership to flourish. As Ron Heifetz advocates, true leadership is realizing that you need to “give the work back” instead of being the hero who sweeps in and solves everybody’s problems.

In Nick’s case, he should resist the urge to take the driver’s seat and allow himself to take the passenger seat instead. Leading from the side-line, not the front line will change his perspective. Instead of looking at the road and navigating traffic, he is able to monitor how the driver is actually doing and what needs to improve. In his mind, he should fire himself — momentarily — and see what happens to his team when he sets them free and asks them to take charge instead of looking to him for answers, deadlines and decisions.

Congregate, don’t delegate. From very early on in our careers we learn that in order to solve big, complex issues fast, we must decompose the problem into smaller parts and delegate these pieces to specialists to get leverage. Surely, you can make good music by patching together the tracks of individual recordings. But true masterpieces come alive when the orchestra plays together.

One example is the so-called Trauma Center approach. When a trauma patient comes in, all specialists are in the room assessing the patient at the same time, but constantly allowing the most skilled specialist to take the lead (and talk), not the designated leader.

The most well-run trauma teams I have observed know when to jump in and when to step back. To put it simply, it’s no use working on a finger if the heart is failing. A trauma team relies on trust and patience. They trust each other’s specialty and work very symmetrically. There is a very strong “no one leaves before we are done” mentality in those teams.

To Nick, this may sound like good old teamwork, and while Nick is certainly driven by a good measure of self-interest, he is also an accomplished leader who masters the dynamics of teamwork: Having shared goals, assigning roles and responsibilities, and investing in the team.

But there is more to co-drive than plain teamwork. It is about re-working the collaborative process it self. Rather than cubicled problem-solving, sustainable speed requires a shift toward more collective creation: Gathering often, engaging issues openly and inviting others to improve on your own thoughts and decisions.

Co-drive requires a different mindset. And it goes beyond team-work. Adam Grant from Wharton has done research demonstrating that a generous and giving attitude towards others enhances team performance.

Try, for instance, to take a look at your own behavior yesterday and gauge the balance between giving and taking. Givers offer assistance, share knowledge, and focus on introducing and helping others. Takers attempt to get other people to do something that will ultimately benefit them, while they act as gatekeepers of their own knowledge.

Grant’s conclusion is clear: a willingness to help others is not just the essence of effective cooperation and innovation — it is also the key to accelerating your own performance.

Maturity and Caliber

Headhunters call this change of perspective from ego-drive to co-drive “executive maturity.” The mature leader’s burning question is: how do I help others perform?

The developmental psychologist Robert Kegan calls the leap a subject/object shift. You progress from seeing and navigating in the world on the basis of your own needs and motives — and allowing yourself to be governed by these needs — to seeing yourself from an external position as a part of an organism.

It requires a certain caliber and self-assuredness to act in this way. The ability to put your ego on hold may require a great effort. It might be worthwhile reminding yourself of the words of the American President Harry Truman: “It is incredible what you can achieve, if you don’t care who gets the credit.” If you succeed in making this shift, and thereby improving the skills of the people around you, then you will also experience a greater degree of freedom.

So next time you are feeling stuck, don’t ask: “How can I push harder?” but “Where can I let go?”

How We Teach Digital Skills at PwC

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Across our society and in all industries, leaders and their organizations are racing to unlock the value of data, tech-enable business processes, and create better, more digitally-enhanced experiences for customers, clients, and employees. They are working to disrupt their own businesses before somebody else does. This cannot be done without substantial investment in talent. With about 500,000 unfilled tech jobs in the U.S., a number that’s widely anticipated to double by 2020, executives know they can’t hire their way out of the need for upskilled employees. And workers are keenly focused on organizations that will invest in their development and help secure their future in a digital, data-driven economy.

Executives find themselves confronted with decisions about whether to acquire expertise from outside the company, through recruiting, partnerships, or acquisitions. But they can often overlook the idea of upskilling their current workforce. Upskilling can be a key enabler for driving the data, digital, and technology agenda of a company while also helping employees secure their own personal future and relevance. While employees must opt in to their own digital upskilling, and invest the time and effort required to acquire knowledge and new skills, leaders also need to commit to not leaving anyone behind and to making investments that support the lifelong learning that’s essential for the 21st century. Digital upskilling is fundamentally about culture and people experience — and bringing to life a shared growth mindset among individuals and teams, and across the entire organization.

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At PwC, for example, we have developed a comprehensive workforce upskilling strategy to build the “digital fitness” of all of our people, equipping them with a broad base of knowledge across a variety of domains — such as data, analytics, AI and automation, blockchain, and design   thinking — that we believe are critical for all business people today. This digital upskilling strategy is a core business priority, sponsored by our chairman.

We develop digital fitness through tech-enabled learning — including podcasts, gamification, immersive skill building, multimedia content, and quizzes pushed through mobile platforms, not limited by the traditional boundaries of classrooms. We also built a Digital Fitness app that provides each of our employees with a personalized assessment of their digital acumen, and guides them to the tools and learning resources they need to fill gaps and make improvements. This app provides a customized learning path, while generating valuable information for workforce planning and skill development strategies.

Digital Accelerators

The future-proofing of our workforce includes a variety of fast-track developmental efforts. For example, we are enabling employees who are motivated to further accelerate their skills to do so by offering them a “career pivot” to become what we call “Digital Accelerators”. Accelerators rapidly deepen their skills in digital specialties, such as data, automation, AI, and digital storytelling by learning a variety of self-service tools and coding languages and applying these skills across our business.

With a recognition from our firm leadership that embedding and distributing advanced skills throughout our teams was a critical pillar to our upskilling agenda, we invited all employees across our entire business to opt in and apply for the Digital Accelerator program in a competitive selection process. Roughly 3,500 employees applied for what would ultimately be about 1,000 spaces in 2018.

Learning, Community, and Rapid Application

Almost a year was invested in creating a flexible, forward-thinking learning experience that initially brings Accelerators together for an immersive in-person onboarding, followed by a personalized development path for each person. To ensure the protection of time needed to achieve rapid application of learning, the investment includes clearing the plates of hundreds of Accelerators by taking away their regular responsibilities. They focus on client work full-time while applying these skills for at least two years in this role. Freeing up time for them to learn, collaborate, and execute is a vital part of the program. Genuine digital upskilling isn’t something that can be piled on to other work.

Our Accelerators are already using intelligent and robotic process/desktop automation to improve processes that had, until now, been manually intensive. This can take tasks down from, in some cases, 1,000+ hours to just minutes or seconds, creating capacity for staff and their clients to focus impact on higher-value matters. As Accelerators demonstrate progressive mastery of knowledge and skills through application, they also earn recognition through our Digital Badging program.

Another key is building community among Accelerators and empowering them to self-organize in ways that amplify their successes. Staying connected, working together, and sharing learnings that can elevate the entire organization is essential. That sense of connection is tech-enabled, of course. But it’s the human element that makes it remarkable. The social element of the program encourages accelerated learning through sharing among peers. And it means the benefits of digitization efforts can quickly come “out of the lab” and scale. Now, automations of traditionally manual tasks are available for use by thousands of people across PwC, many of whom have never met before, and most of whom are not in the formal Digital Accelerator program.

Lessons for Executives and Organizations

What did we learn along the way that can help other organizations who wish to put such programs into place?  A few key things:

Digital upskilling is a business and a people priority. It’s important that managers at all levels recognize development and upskilling as a CEO-driven business priority.
Tech-enabled learning can’t happen without the right investments, assets, and processes in place. Employees should be empowered not only with digital tools and resources, but also, the time to apply that learning. The acquisition of new skills and demonstrated impact needs to be celebrated — and credentialed.
Focus on building a growth mindset culture. Commit to leaving nobody behind — as long as they choose not to be left behind. Being committed to lifelong learning is simply table stakes in a digital and data-driven world. Organizationally-enabled learning is an implicit “contract” between the business and the learner/employee, who must be willing to opt in to what’s available.

The work we’re doing is tied to business outcomes and directly linked to culture change. Fundamentally, our digital upskilling is broad, scalable, flexible, fast, and already delivering results not just in terms of transforming our business — but in transforming our people experience.

If Humility Is So Important, Why Are Leaders So Arrogant?

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A recent management column in the Wall Street Journal appeared under the appealing headline, “The Best Bosses Are Humble Bosses.” The article reported that humble leaders “inspire close teamwork, rapid learning and high performance in their teams.” It even reported that one HR consulting firm is planning to introduce an assessment to identify personality traits that include “sincerity, modesty, fairness, truthfulness, and unpretentiousness,” inspired in part by what two psychology professors call the H Factor (“a combination of honesty and humility.”)

This celebration of humility sounds great, and it is, but it flies in the face of daily headlines in the Journal and the realities of our business and political cultures. Exactly no one would use the word “humble” to describe the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be the most visible, influential, high-impact leader in Silicon Valley, yet it’s hard to imagine anyone with less “modesty” or “unpretentiousness.” In sports, Jerry Jones, the brash owner of the Dallas Cowboys, the world’s most valuable athletic franchise, never misses an opportunity to talk a big game, even though his team has not won a big game in decades.

All of which raises an obvious question: If humility is so important, why are so many leaders today, especially our most famous leaders, so arrogant? Or, to flip the question around: In the face of so much evidence that humble leaders do, in fact, outperform arrogant leaders, why is it so hard for leaders at every level to check their egos at the office door?

With all due modesty, I’d offer a few answers to these vexing questions. For one thing, too many leaders think they can’t be humble and ambitious at the same time. One of the great benefits of becoming CEO of a company, head of a business unit, or leader of a team, the prevailing logic goes, is that you’re finally in charge of making things happen and delivering results. Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management, and an expert on leadership and culture, once asked a group of his students what it means to be promoted to the rank of manager. “They said without hesitation, ‘It means I can now tell others what to do.’” Those are the roots of the know-it-all style of leadership. “Deep down, many of us believe that if you are not winning, you are losing,” Schein warns. The “tacit assumption” among executives “is that life is fundamentally and always a competition” — between companies, but also between individuals within companies. That’s not exactly a mindset that recognizes the virtues of humility.

In reality, of course, humility and ambition need not be at odds. Indeed, humility in the service of ambition is the most effective and sustainable mindset for leaders who aspire to do big things in a world filled with huge unknowns. Years ago, a group of HR professionals at IBM embraced a term to capture this mindset. The most effective leaders, they argued, exuded a sense of “humbition,” which they defined as “one part humility and one part ambition.” We “notice that by far the lion’s share of world-changing luminaries are humble people,” they wrote. “They focus on the work, not themselves. They seek success — they are ambitious — but they are humbled when it arrives…They feel lucky, not all-powerful.”

There’s another big reason why it’s so hard for leaders to be humble, and it’s related to the first. Humility can feel soft at a time when problems are hard; it can make leaders appear vulnerable when people are looking for answers and reassurances. Of course, that’s precisely its virtue: The most effective business leaders don’t pretend to have all the answers; the world is just too complicated for that. They understand that their job is to get the best ideas from the right people, whomever and wherever those people may be.

Here too, Edgar Schein offers helpful insights. In a lovely book called Humble Inquiry, in which he explores “the gentle art of asking instead of telling,” Schein identifies three different forms of humility. The first, “the humility that we feel around elders and dignitaries,” is a basic part of social life. The second, “the humility that we feel in the presence of those who awe us with their achievements,” is a standard part of professional life. It’s the third form of humility, which he calls “here-and-now humility,” that is the most rarely observed in business, and the most relevant for leaders who truly want to achieve big things.

What is here-and-now humility? It’s “how I feel when I am dependent on you,” Schein explains. “My status is inferior to yours at this moment because you know something or can do something that I need in order to accomplish some task or goal… I have to be humble because I am temporarily dependent on you. [But] I also have a choice. I can either not commit to tasks that make me dependent on others, or I can deny the dependency, avoid feeling humble, fail to get what I need, and, thereby, fail to accomplish the task or unwittingly sabotage it. Unfortunately people often would rather fail than to admit their dependence on someone else.”

We live in a world where ego gets attention but modesty gets results. Where arrogance makes headlines but humility makes a difference. Which means that all of us, as leaders or aspiring leaders, face questions of our own: Are we confident enough to stay humble? Are we strong enough to admit we don’t have all the answers? Here’s hoping we reach the right answers.

How Men Can Become Better Allies to Women

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Women’s conferences and employee resource groups (ERGs) are increasingly inviting men to attend. By creating events aimed at men, they hope to include men in discussions around gender equity in the workplace, and make organizational diversity efforts more successful.

The evidence shows that when men are deliberately engaged in gender inclusion programs, 96% of organizations see progress — compared to only 30% of organizations where men are not engaged. But today, too many organizations still miss the mark on gender equity efforts by focusing gender initiatives solely on changing women — from the way they network to the way the lead. Individualistic approaches to solving gender inequities overlook systemic structural causes and reinforce the perception that these are women’s issues — effectively telling men they don’t need to be involved. Without the avid support of men, often the most powerful stakeholders in most large corporations, significant progress toward ending gender disparities is unlikely. What’s at stake? A study by McKinsey projects that in a “full potential” scenario in which women participate in the economy identically to men, $28 trillion dollars (26%) would be added to the annual global GDP when compared to the current business-as-usual scenario.

But including men in diversity efforts is not as simple as inviting them to a gender-equity event. These efforts often reveal reluctance, if not palpable anxiety among targeted men. Sexism is a system, and while it’s a system that privileges men, it also polices male behavior. Understanding that is important to changing the system.

Challenges Facing Male Allies

We define male allies as members of an advantaged group committed to building relationships with women, expressing as little sexism in their own behavior as possible, understanding the social privilege conferred by their gender, and demonstrating active efforts to address gender inequities at work and in society. Debra Meyerson and Megan Tompkins refer to such men as tempered radicals — they are catalysts for change, challenging organizational structures that disadvantage women while remaining committed to the success of the organization.

While some research has shown that white men face no penalty for promoting diversity, other studies suggest that there can be a cost to acting as an ally.

First, there’s the dreaded wimp penalty. New research reveals that men perceived as less self-promoting and more collaborative and power-sharing are evaluated by both men and women as less competent (and, not incidentally, less masculine). Egalitarian men can feel the backlash effects of stigma-by-association — perceived as being similar to women by advocating for them. This is more likely in organizations where people endorse a zero-sum perspective on gender equality. Backlash against male allies is a real possibility.

Self-professed male allies can also face criticism from the women they try to ally with. As two men who write and speak about cross-gender allyship and mentorship, we’ve noticed occasional backlash from women when dudes show up at women’s events. At one recent conference for women in technology, a Bingo card was circulated by women in the audience just before a panel composed of men on the topic of male allyship. The — seemingly cynical — objective? To identify as many worn-out clichés and defensive phrases men often utter in these contexts as possible. Some eye-rolling favorites included: “I’m a feminist; We’re all in this together; My mother taught me to respect women; and, I saw the light after the birth of my daughter!”

Understandably, many women are initially skeptical about efforts to include men in women’s conferences and ERGs. First, these gatherings have historically offered women a sense of community and camaraderie, a safe space for sharing experiences and formulating strategies for achieving equality in the workplace. This relational community is inestimably important and men need to respect it. Second, sub-tracks and breakout sessions for men at women’s events are often given labels such as Manbassador or Male Champion, terrific for drawing men in, but in truth, rather grandiose to the ears of women who may sigh and ask, “Really dude? We have to call you a champion just to get you to be fair, respectful, and inclusive?”

This Pedestal Effect in which men are given special treatment and shout outs for even small acts of gender equality is understandably grating for women who for years have done the emotional labor and carried the load for equality with nary a man in sight. And there is always the risk that over-focusing on men in women’s events may ultimately strengthen rather than dismantle the gender hierarchy status quo.

Third, there is the problem of the Fake Male Feminist. You know this guy. He slings on feminism like a superhero cape when his boss is watching, to impress — or worse, seduce — women, or to avoid being labeled as sexist despite his pattern of sexist behavior. Finally, there is the sincere but utterly naïve, ill-informed, or low-EQ man who’s notion of allyship amounts to rescuing, mansplaining, or even attempting to become the spokesman for women in the organization. As Martin Luther King once reflected, shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. When aspiring male allies fail to understand the critical importance of partnering and collaborating with humility, there is a real risk that they may ultimately undermine women’s initiatives by attempting to dominate them.

The Allies Male Allies Need

Women who want to dismantle sexist systems will be well-served by appreciating the wide variation among male allies and the factors most likely to help them get better at collaborating with women to shrink gender disparities. Diversity consultant Jennifer Brown recognizes that not all male allies are equally evolved. She frames allyship on a continuum, ranging from apathetic (clueless and disinterested regarding gender issues) to aware (has some grasp of the issues but not at all active or engaged in addressing them) to active (well-informed and willing to engage in gender equity efforts, but only when asked) to advocate (routinely and proactively champions gender inclusion). Although we might not waste our time recruiting apathetic men to gender-inclusion events, we’re delighted to get in a room with the other three varieties, taking a shot at spurring their internal motivation and sharpening their ally skillset. We just want them in the fight! The evidence is in. The more positive interaction men have with women in professional settings, the less prejudice and exclusion they tend to demonstrate.

Organizers of women’s initiatives who wish to engage male allies should also consider recent research on psychological standing (a perception of legitimacy as an ally to women). Evidence reveals that gender-parity efforts are most effective when men believe they have a dignified and important role to play, that transformation in the workplace is something they can share in. The motivation for this role is often tied to personal examples and a sense of fairness and justice. Moreover, when allies feel accepted by the disadvantaged group they endeavor to support, their internal motivation to participate is bolstered. If men feel like unicorns, met by raised eyebrows when they muster the wherewithal to attend a manbassador track in a women’s conference, gender alliance efforts falter.

How Men Can Be Better Allies

Here are some with tangible recommendations for men who are invited to participate in women’s conferences or other initiatives as allies for gender equality in the workplace. These are best practices for men who want to be better collaborators with women.

First, just listen! Consultant Chuck Shelton reminds men that listening to women’s voices in a way that inspires trust and respect is a fundamental relationship promise you must make, and then keep, with women who invite you to participate around equity. Generous, world-class listening requires focus, sincerity, empathy, refusal to interrupt, and genuine valuing of both her experience and her willingness to share it with you.
Respect the space. Women’s conferences and ERGs are often one outgrowth of experiences of exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination. Many of these experiences are painful. Large events and local resource groups have afforded women a powerful platform for sharing experiences, providing support, and strategizing equity initiatives. Tread respectfully into these spaces and before you utter a word, revisit the recommendation above.
Remember, it’s not about you. Ask women how you can amplify, not replace or usurp existing gender parity efforts. A large dose of gender humility will help here. Decades of research on prosocial (helpful) behavior reveals a stark gender difference in how it is expressed. While women often express helpfulness communally and relationally, men show helpful intentions through action-oriented behaviors. Sometimes, we need to rein this in. Refrain from taking center stage, speaking for women, or mansplaining how women should approach gender equity efforts.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Developing psychological standing requires a commitment to learning and advocating for gender equity. Learning about the professional challenges of women may produce feelings of self-shame or self-blame that cause anxiety. The solution is more interaction and learning, not less.
Engage in supportive partnerships with women. The best cross-gender ally relationships are reciprocal, and mutually growth-enhancing. Share your social capital (influence, information, knowledge, and organizational resources) with women’s groups but ask them — don’t assume — how you can best support their efforts.
Remember the two parts to allyship. Keep in mind that committing to express as little sexism as possible in your interactions with women is the easy part of allyship. The hard part requires you to take informed action. Use your experience in women’s events and initiatives to learn how you can best become a public ally for social justice around gender. When the time comes, this may require you to upset the status quo.

Helping Health Care Workers Avoid Burnout

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To make progress against knotty problems, break them down — dissect the causes and analyze their impact on different groups. That analysis inevitably leads away from dubious “magic bullet” solutions and toward multiple, targeted interventions that are more likely to be effective. The measures and data to perform this type of analysis are now becoming available for burnout, a problem that is growing in all sectors, but is particularly challenging in health care.

To better understand the sources of burnout and resilience against it, we analyzed data for two characteristics associated with burnout for more than 80,000 health care personnel from 40 healthcare systems nationwide (approximately 19,000 nurses, 5,000 physicians and 60,000 non-nurse/MD personnel). The first of these characteristics, “activation,” is the extent to which a person is motivated by his or her work and feels it is meaningful. The second, “decompression,” is the degree to which one can withdraw, recharge and enjoy life outside of work. Our research shows how activation and decompression vary among these different groups, and how they relate to resilience against burnout in each.

To study these issues, we developed and validated an eight-question measure of resilience, with four questions each that gauge the degree of activation and decompression. To measure activation, respondents indicate their level of agreement on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) with these statements:

The work I do makes a real difference;
My work is meaningful;
I care for all patients/clients equally even when it is difficult;
I see every patient as an individual person with specific needs.

To measure decompression, subjects respond to the statements:

I rarely lose sleep over work issues;
I am able to free my mind from work when I am away from it;
I can enjoy my personal time without focusing on work matters;
I am able to disconnect from work communications during my free time.

The greater a person’s agreement with these statements (that is, the higher their score), the more resilience they currently exhibit in the face of stress, and the more likely they will be resistant to burnout. (Resilience is conceptualized here as a moderator of the growing stress faced by the healthcare workforce. As such, low score on gauges of decompression and activation are meant to serve as flags that workplace stress has become overwhelming rather than as indications of a particular individual’s ability or strength in coping.)

We found the doctors, nurses, and non-nurse/MD personnel all had the same average level of activation (4.5), but physicians had lower decompression scores, showing they were less able than others to withdraw and recharge.

We also found that decompression and activation are moderately correlated:  People who are better able to decompress are also somewhat more likely to feel activated in their work.

Decompression, Activation, and Engagement 

Decompression and activation are both related to feelings and behaviors that are traditionally used to measure engagement in health care workforces, specifically being satisfied as an employee, recommending the organization as a good place to work or get care, and being proud of the organization. However, the patterns of relationships vary when comparing correlations among these variables in nurses, physicians and the rest of the healthcare workforce.

For the non-nurse, non-physician group, activation was more strongly correlated with engagement than decompression was. Additionally, the correlations between activation and engagement measures were somewhat greater for this group than for either nurses or physicians. This suggests that for non-nurse/MD personnel the feeling of activation — finding meaning in their work — is even more closely related to their overall engagement than it is for doctors and nurses. Many of these personnel could have built a career in another industry, but they have chosen healthcare. This underscores how important it is for this group to feel tied to the mission of care, for their own well being.

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This pattern was distinct from what we saw for nurse and physician respondents. For these clinicians, the relative importance of activation and decompression depends on which kind of engagement outcome is being addressed. Decompression was more strongly correlated with how nurses and physicians felt about their role as employees in an organization (Overall, I am a satisfied employee; I would recommend this organization as a good place to work).  In contrast, activation was more strongly correlated than decompression with how these clinicians feel about the organization’s performance (I would recommend this organization to family and friends who needed care; I am proud to tell people I work for this organization). The impact of decompression on engagement was strongest for the nursing group.

Taken together, these findings suggest that while meaning in work is of great importance to everyone in health care, clinicians’ ability to disconnect from work and recharge may be even more critical than it is for others to how they experience their work environment and how they feel as employees. 

The science of studying burnout and resilience is young, but our experience suggests that measuring decompression and activation can enrich our understanding of the multiple relevant dynamics and support an array of tailored interventions. While everyone would surely benefit from the ability to decompress more, these analyses suggest that clinicians, and especially nurses, are likely to benefit from programs that enhance their ability to decompress. More importantly, organizations should direct resources and efforts to reducing the stresses that make it challenging for clinicians to decompress. For example, if someone indicates that he or she is losing sleep over work issues (one measure of trouble decompressing), the solution is not simply for them to get more sleep, but to ask, “What is going on in this work environment that is causing people to lose sleep? What can be done to improve that situation? How can we help staff to cope with these stressors as we work to reduce them?” Similarly, if someone indicates that they are unable to disconnect from work communications during free time, leadership must ask why and seek ways to address the sources of the problem. Do they simply not have adequate time to address the demands of their roles during work? Or might they feel there will be some negative consequence for failing to remain connected 24/7?

While physicians, nurses, and other staff showed equivalent levels of activation in our study, all are sure to benefit from initiatives that increase the meaning that they find in their work. But because the correlation between engagement and activation is greatest among the non-MD/nurse workforce, this critical group of employees in particular might benefit from reminders that their efforts are even more important to patient care than they may think — opening up a potential strategy for improving organizational culture that has been largely overlooked up to now.

Stop Complaining About Your Colleagues Behind Their Backs

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In my coaching work with leaders and teams, I often ask my clients whether they engage in workplace gossip. More often than not, they respond, “of course not!” with a look on their faces that indicates that they are insulted to have been asked such a question.

But when I ask them whether they have ever participated in a “confirmation expedition” — whereby they 1) ask a colleague to confirm their own negative or challenging experience with a third colleague who is not present, or 2) welcome a similar line of confirmation inquiry from another colleague about a third colleague who is not present, most admit that this is, in fact, a regular part of their daily work life.

While leaders and teams might consider this behavior to be innocent “blowing off steam” or the more strategic “confirming performance data,” I consider it a form of workplace gossip.

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But it’s not just me. Authors Nancy Kurland and Lisa Hope Pelled, in their research paper, Passing the Word: Toward a Model of Gossip and Power in the Workplace, define gossip as: “informal and evaluative talk in an organization, usually among no more than a few individuals, about another member of that organization who is not present.” When you think about how often your workplace conversations are 1) informal (“I’m just hanging out in Linda’s office”); 2) evaluative (“discussing how difficult it is to get a timely response from Doug in Accounting”); 3) among no more than a few individuals  (“…and Marci’s here too.”); and 4) about another member of that organization who is not present (“Doug’s at his desk, of course!”), you might start to realize how often you’re engaging in gossip, and contributing to gossip’s damaging effects.

Like what? Like the erosion of trust, hurt feelings, decreased morale, damaged reputations, reduced personal and professional credibility, increased anxiety, divisiveness, and attrition.

Despite the high costs of gossip, the drive to engage in it is strong. Dr. Peggy Drexler, research psychologist and professor of psychology at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College writes that “anthropologists say that throughout human history, gossip has been a way to bond with others — even a tool to isolate those who aren’t supporting the group.”

Talking with one or more coworkers about how hard it is to get Doug in Accounting to give a timely response creates a feeling of connection with everyone else who is struggling with Doug’s lack of responsiveness. Those similarly frustrated by Doug treat one another with in-group favoritism, a common and central aspect of human behavior, whereby people act more pro-socially towards members of their own group relative to those outside their group.

Gossip is also a means of venting for those who are reluctant to give direct feedback to or have difficult conversations with their colleagues. As I cited in my HBR article, When to Skip a Difficult Conversation, “In a 2013 Globis survey of more than 200 professionals on the topic of difficult conversations…80% of respondents reported that these conversations were a part of their job, [but] more than half indicated that they didn’t feel like they had adequate training on how to conduct them effectively.”

By talking to anyone, everyone, or even one person about another colleague who isn’t there to hear the feedback, provide his or her perspective, and engage in joint problem solving, you are undermining the benefits of an open, honest relationship and a feedback-rich culture.

Finally, we use gossip as a way to collect evidence that confirms our beliefs, satisfying our confirmation bias — the tendency to look for information that confirms what we already believe to be true. By checking in with a coworker about whether she, too, experiences Doug as slow to respond, we get confirmation for our existing beliefs, and the satisfaction that comes from “being right” about Doug. And as Judith Glaser explains in her article, Your Brain Is Hooked on Being Right, the flood of adrenaline and dopamine that accompanies feeling right can become downright addictive.

Considering how satisfying it is to be right, how tempted we are to avoid giving direct feedback and having difficult conversations, and how often we seek confirmation for what we already believe, it can be hard to break the habit of engaging in gossip — as the instigator or the recipient. Nevertheless, there are several strategies to help you and your team stop engaging in something so wrong that feels so right:

1) Name it, then pivot. First, call gossip “gossip” to stop it in its tracks. If you are engaging in “informal and evaluative talk in an organization, usually among no more than a few individuals, about another member of that organization who is not present,” — especially if the aim is to confirm your experience rather than get constructive solutions — then you are participating in gossip. If you call someone on it, most people will step back at hearing a colleague say, “This sounds like gossip. Is that what you intended?” Second, pivot the conversation by asking, “How can I help you get a better outcome?” Only engage in coaching, brainstorming, and problem-solving conversations — not in problem-confirming ones.

2) Ask yourself or others why you need someone else’s confirmation about a behavior that you’re noticing in a third person. If it’s to justify your feelings, to confirm that you’re right, or to gain support for your point of view, don’t bring someone else into the conversation. If it’s to understand how you might be contributing to the dynamic or problem, to brainstorm helpful solutions, or to go on record to make a formal complaint for further investigation, then go for it.

3) Let people know that you have a policy of “if you have a problem with me, please tell me first.” Adopt the “tell them first” policy with your colleagues, and, when someone approaches you with gossip about someone else, ask “Have you already told her?” to remind them of this policy.

4) Create a feedback-rich environment around you. The more you normalize feedback — both positive and negative, and both giving and receiving — the less likely people will be to look for alternative means to express their frustrations and concerns. Rather than “saving” feedback for annual performance reviews, make discussions about what someone did well, and what he or she could do differently, a part of every supervision meeting or project debrief. And make sure to give people positive feedback when they offer particularly useful feedback — even if it’s hard to hear.

Gossip, even by any other name, is still a destructive communication strategy that negatively impacts individuals, teams and the whole organization. By stopping it in its tracks, choosing healthier and more helpful methods of communicating what’s not working, and engaging in collaborative problem-solving, relationships and organizations can flourish.

Startups Are More Vulnerable to Fraud. Here’s Why.

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In the wake of the Theranos scandal, some commentators have asked whether entrepreneurial companies are particularly inclined to deception and downright fraud. Startups are often focused on disrupting existing markets, occasionally bending the rules while doing so. Their employees need to overcome demanding challenges, including the need to draft processes and responsibilities from scratch. In short, countless firms face strong pressures and tempting incentives to deceive.

But are they also more likely to be deceived themselves? After all, they have to forge business relations with potential customers, suppliers, and investors, all of whom are considerably more powerful and sophisticated than the startup. Recently, our team interviewed 40 founders and venture capitalists and conducted two experiments to uncover whether startups, compared to more mature firms, are more likely to be the victims of fraud.

In our experiments, performed with Christian Schlereth at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and Craig R. Carter at Arizona State University,  we simulated a negotiation episode between two firms. The buying firm, a tablet manufacturer, was interested in procuring an innovative hard disk drive model. We recruited 250 experienced purchasing and sales managers and allocated them between the experiments. In one, participants were sellers for the hard disk maker. In the other, participants were buyers for the tablet manufacturer. We divided each study’s sample into three sub-groups: We informed the first group that the firm they were negotiating with (that is, their counterpart’s employer) was a startup. The second group was negotiating with a mature firm. The third group did not receive any information regarding firm age (our control condition).

During each experiment, participants first read a short case describing the negotiation parameters, the negotiators’ role, and their task (experimental vignette methodology). Subsequently, they received a message from their negotiation counterpart (which had actually been written by us; all participants within a given study received exactly the same message) and needed to select one out of several response options. Among these options was a non-deceptive message as well as deceptive ones.

Roughly 50% of the participants negotiating with a mature firm deceived. A similar proportion of participants in the control condition did the same. But when we told participants that their counterpart was working for a startup these numbers skyrocketed. Two thirds of the buyers and almost three in four sellers opted to deceive the startup.

In order to help startups to guard themselves against deception, we set out to identify the causes of this spike in deceptive behavior. Did the notion of startups as rule-breaking entities, promoted by incidents such as the Theranos fallout, encourage participants to deceive them? This effect was indeed visible in our data, but played only a minor role. Simultaneously, we asked participants how experienced they perceived their negotiation counterpart to be, and found a striking difference. Albeit the (scripted) counterpart behaved in exactly the same manner towards every participant, participants believed that the counterpart was less experienced when she was working for a startup. In other words, participants used the newness of the counterpart’s employer as proxy for the counterpart’s experience – and adapted their behavior accordingly. This prejudice puts startups at a considerable disadvantage. In short, highlighting firm newness is a signaling strategy that can backfire, as others subconsciously regard such a message as invitation to deceive.

Instead, we recommend that employees of startups make an extra effort to demonstrate expertise. But how best to do this? Many startups attempt to hire renowned industry experts to gain legitimacy. Such hiring decisions lead to positive legitimacy spillovers from the new hire to the startup. However, they also cause negative spillover effects: Due to the startup’s lack of legitimacy, the new hire’s personal legitimacy, as perceived by others, suffers. It gradually recovers as the startup strives to become a fully established industry player.

We also believe that contractual safeguards should be used by startups whenever possible. Compared to more mature firms, the pool of potential business partners is considerably smaller for startups. Thus, many cannot afford to turn down offers even when they are not fully convinced of the veracity of their partner’s statements and promises. In such situations, contingent contracts and other contractual safeguards can serve as remedies.

Startups rightly face increased scrutiny when negotiating with partners because of their perceived “fake-it-till-you-make-it” ethos, especially in the light of several recent high-profile scandals. But our research suggests that, if there is to be fraud during a negotiation, it is new companies that are more likely to be the mark—and should they take steps to safeguard themselves accordingly.

Help Your Team Understand What Data Is and Isn’t Good For

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Leaders today increasingly turn to big data and advanced analytics in hopes of solving their most pressing problems, whether it’s a drop-off of repeat customers, a shift in consumption patterns, or an attempt to reach new markets. The prevailing thought is that more data is better, especially given advancements in tools and technologies such as artificial intelligence and predictive analytics.

But when it comes to uncovering the motivations and rationale behind individual behaviors within a social system, data can only do so much. It can guide the discovery of a problem, but it won’t determine the solution. In other words, data analytics can tell you what is happening, but it will rarely tell you why. To effectively bring together the what and the why — a problem and its cause, in order to find a probable solution — leaders need to combine the advanced capabilities of big data and analytics with tried-and-true qualitative approaches such as interviewing groups of individuals, conducting focus groups, and in-depth observation.

In my conversations with business leaders about how they use data analytics, a primary focus is on technical, large-scale systems. This is where big data and analytics can really shine, in applications such as predictive maintenance. Industrial companies, from railroads to oilfields, use predictive analytics to ensure smooth operations; rather than wait for a mechanical breakdown to occur, predictive maintenance prevents problems and avoids downtime.

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What works with locomotives and oil rigs, however, can be far less effective when it comes to influencing people’s behaviors. With social systems and the behaviors generated by large groups of individuals — who does what and under what conditions — it is far harder to identify solutions to problems. This points to the shortcoming of using data analytics alone for solving problems that arise from individual behavior.

That’s not to say big data and analytics don’t play an important part. Rather, by understanding the strengths and limitations of using big data in this way, leaders can employ the most effective strategies for identifying the what and why of a problem, and how to solve it — and can help their teams learn to do the same. Here are five important considerations that everyone who works with big data needs to understand:

Data can determine the “what” of a problem: Data analysis is helpful in determining patterns of behavior, both positive and negative — for example, the success of an organization or enterprise in motivating people to engage in certain activities. Analyses may reveal, for instance, that a certain type of customer is more or less likely to buy a particular product or renew a subscription or membership. Sophisticated data analytics can reveal patterns among large groups and smaller subgroups.
Data rarely reveal the “why”: In the aggregate, individual behaviors show up in the data, revealing patterns among certain demographics and groups. But just because data show, say, what the typical 33-year-old women making less than $100,000 a year who has children is likely to do or not do, that won’t reveal the why. Data may prompt people to make assumptions; for example, that a price point was too high for a particular customer, or that a subscription service related to a leisure activity (e.g., a gym membership) no longer appeals to a consumer who has time constraints. Assumptions also can be made about root causes of behaviors, such as why millennials prefer companies that prioritize social impact or why particular subgroup of employees underperform. Assumptions, though, are only guesses about the rationale of others’ behaviors, not a reliable basis for determining the best solution to address a problem.
The “why” needs a qualitative approach: Whether the social group involves current customers, potential customers, vendors, or any other population, the only way to discover the “why” is to engage with them in qualitative research such as interviews, focus groups, and observation. The result is an iterative process that starts with the “who” and the “what,” which the data can reveal, and proceeds to the next step of diagnosing the “why,” which the data cannot typically reveal. In the past, companies often hired experts in qualitative research to help determine how and why customers use particular products or gravitated to certain brands. Today, though, many business leaders try to use big data and analytics to automate the entire process. But the shortcomings of using data for diagnostics of social behaviors are quickly revealed. For example, social media analytics can identify influencers for well-defined customer segments. But the real challenge is knowing why customers are drawn to those influencers in order to craft effective strategies to entice customers to buy more or become brand advocates themselves.
You need to consider temporal and other factors: Other factors also influence behavior, making solutions more difficult to find and less likely to remain effective over time. For example, several years ago, an auto club discovered that motorists who had longer-than-average wait times by the side of the road were less likely to renew their subscriptions. Based on that data, the company emphasized the need to reduce wait times. Since then, the proliferation of smartphones and other devices have given people ways to occupy themselves, altering their perception of how long they’re waiting. As a result, focusing on wait time alone today (as opposed to other factors such as pricing and quality) has proved to be less effective in reducing churn among auto club members.
You need rigorous testing to find the right solution: With big data analysis and smaller-scale qualitative research combined, organizations can gain deeper insights into both problems and their causes, which can then help inform solutions that are likely to produce a desired result. The best way to know the effectiveness of a solution is to conduct randomized testing using two similar groups: one that is offered the solution and one that is not. Data analysis from this experimentation will reveal whether the solution actually solves the problem. Although randomized experiments can be expensive and complex, the data analysis involved brings the process full circle, and often pays for itself in terms of the return on investment.

Data analytics are most effective as part of an overall process to identify, explore, and test, but are not the only tool for the task. Solving social behaviors still requires small-scale qualitative exploration to engage people and learn more about what’s truly motivating the behaviors that show up in the data.

How Peer Coaching Can Make Work Less Lonely

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A near-constant stream of business and scientific news reminds us that 50% of Americans are lonely. Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s powerful HBR article notes that half of CEOs suffer from loneliness. In addition to its personal toll, there is also an economic cost: workplace loneliness causes burnout, affects job satisfaction, and lowers both performance and retention. It also increases health care costs.

The Causes of Loneliness at Work

Loneliness is a subjective feeling of isolation. Number of coworker interactions and whether or not you work remotely are not causal factors. What matters is the quality and meaningfulness of relationships. It’s common for employees to feel lonely while surrounded by colleagues with whom they don’t genuinely connect. Indeed, do your colleagues see the real you or just a carefully managed, work-safe persona — a brilliant disguise? If the latter, then you’re likely to suffering some degree of loneliness.

Loneliness isn’t usually a failure of the employee but is, rather, a systemic cultural issue. Humans have a need to feel valued by the people around them at work, at home, and in the community. Yet many people keep work relationships at a distance because that’s what they believe is expected. Unless employers demonstrate they value basic human connections at work, it is difficult to change the common gospel that who you are is not who you should be in the office. Psychological safety — the sense that we can be free to be ourselves without fear of retribution — doesn’t exist when our managers don’t model vulnerability, a generator of high-quality connections, because they worry it might undermine their authority. Cultural norms that discourage genuine relationships lead to loneliness.

How Peer Coaching Can Help

Peer coaching is about cultivating a network of allies that can provide mutual support in creating positive change to improve performance. In addition to its many benefits for learning, these relationships address the roots of loneliness at work. On the surface, peer coaching might look like low-budget professional coaching. Employees gain new perspectives on their issues and opportunities, as well as accountability partners to improve follow-through on creating change, but without paying professional coaching fees. But it’s much more than that. When organizations invest in peer coaching systems they signal a cultural shift that normalizes talking candidly about life with colleagues. Employees gain feelings of connection, trust increases, and individuals develop insights into their own problems through helping others. Peer coaching provides opportunities for one-on-one connection and demonstrates that our inner lives are welcome in the workplace. Let’s explain a bit further three of the ways it helps:

Creates a culture that values connection. People develop symptoms of loneliness when they feel isolated, regardless of how much actual social support is available to them. Psychological problems increase when people have little hope for more connection in the future. An employer’s commitment to increasing connections among employees can reduce loneliness even before any coaching begins simply through the signals such initiatives convey. This is especially relevant for younger employees; 71% of millennials want their coworkers to be like a second family. When employers help employees build peer-to-peer coaching networks, it creates a culture of connection. Employees experience being vulnerable with coworkers and begin to view lowering their walls as an asset, not a liability. They see the workplace as a source of personal nourishment. Loneliness dissipates when we feel we are among people engaged in helping each other. As one of our clients said after a peer coaching exchange, “Just having someone who was truly interested in helping me was an incredibly powerful experience.”
Replaces social snacking with meaningful dialogue. Communicating mostly over email or chat and then turning to social media on breaks — that’s social snacking, which gives the illusion of connection without actual nourishment. What matters is not how often we interact, but whether our interactions are meaningful. Peer coaching replaces snacking with satisfying meals of real talk. Those at the table are revealing themselves and accepting others as they are. The reciprocal nature of peer coaching relationships, in which employees take turns talking about work in the context of their whole lives, is a catalyst for deep mutual understanding. By providing opportunities for individuals to talk — without pressure to deliver or impress — peer coaching can reduce loneliness more effectively than staged social events in which people might be laughing and drinking but still hiding behind a mask they’d rather remove.
Increases psychological safety.  When researchers recently asked Americans “How many confidants do you have?” the most common response was “zero,” compared to a modal response of “three” just two decades earlier. Research shows that people who are lonely, compared to those who are not, are less able to make new connections. Because peer coaching involves repeated conversations with consistent partners, it is an effective method of creating confidants that persist over time.  One of our clients said, “I feel like I gained three new family members, people who are supportive and non-judgmental.” Coaching focuses on listening and asking questions. Because participants in peer-to-peer coaching exchanges see their coaches as focused first and foremost on gaining understanding of what’s on the inside, these relationships produce feelings of psychological safety.

Once you are comfortable with the idea of doing something to deepen relationships at work, set up a simple method for two people to try out a peer-to-peer coaching exchange following these basic guidelines. Each pair can take turns coaching each other for 20 minutes each. In essence: Listen and don’t try to fix problems. Start with coaching sessions over lunch; eating together increases trust and is a natural way to schedule a one-on-one that isn’t focused on specific work tasks. Be sure to check in on what people learn about how to be effective as coaches and as clients in their dialogues and use that knowledge to make needed adjustments.

Peer coaching can be effective in fighting loneliness through opt-in one-on-one dialogues where the work of creating stronger human connections can happen.