Many years ago when I became for the first time division head, my predecessor left me with a present: a small plaque with written “A manager is alone”. Never a sentence was so true, because in a certain sense, a manager is often alone. But loneliness is a wide spread problem: an almost constant flow of economic and scientific news reminds us, for example, that 50% of Americans perceive a feeling of loneliness. An article in Harvard Business Review notes that half of CEOs suffer from loneliness. In addition to your personal budget, there is also an economic cost: loneliness in the workplace causes burnout, affects job satisfaction and reduces performance.
But why do we feel lonely at work?
Loneliness affects you, and only you.
Loneliness is a subjective feeling of isolation: obviously the number of interactions between colleagues and whether you work remotely or not are not irrelevant factors, but all in all the main issue has to do with the quality and significance of the relationships. It is common for employees to feel lonely while surrounded by colleagues they don’t really connect with. In fact, if you analyse the situation well, colleagues do not always see us as we really are but, due to the role, they could have a different perception of us. So becomes “normal” to feel alone: when this happens is not usually an employee failure, but rather a systemic cultural problem because humans need to feel appreciated by the people around them at work, as they do elsewhere.
We are not alone
If we look a bit more carefully, our loneliness can happen in our organisation or on a wider scale, for different reasons, but around us, at our same level, there’s plenty of people to connect, coach and share with: our peers.
Peer coaching is about cultivating a network of allies who can provide mutual support in creating positive change to improve performance. In addition to its many learning benefits, these relationships address the roots of loneliness at work. On one side, peer coaching might seem like low-budget professional coaching, but it’s not. Through it we gain new perspectives on problems and opportunities. But it is much more than that. When organisations invest in peer coaching systems they signal a cultural shift that normalises openly talking with colleagues, gaining feelings of connection, building trust, and developing insights into their problems while helping others.
Enabling the magic
In order to achieve the benefits, you need to work through the following aspects:
A) Humans are relational beings. Create a culture that values ”connection” because people develop symptoms of loneliness when they feel isolated, regardless of the actual social support available to them. Psychological problems increase when people have little hope for a greater level of connection in the future.
B) Build confidence. People who are alone, compared to those who are not, are less able to make new connections. Since peer coaching involves repeated conversations with homogeneous partners, it is an effective method for creating connections that persist over time.
C) Make it structured. Talking happens often without too much purpose: you have to work to replace unstructured socialisation with meaningful dialogue. Try to avoid people going into “social snack” where they communicate via email or chat and then switching to social media on pause. What matters is not how often we interact, but whether our interactions are meaningful. Peer coaching can effectively increase the connection.
D) Make it regular. The more you have a schedule, the more you will commit to peer coaching.
