Solving the Loneliness Crisis in the Workplace: An Interview with Steven Van Cohen

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Steven, thanks for joining us today.

Yeah, my pleasure to be here with you.

It is our pleasure to have you, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. So my name is Steven Van Coen and I've been a leadership consultant. And I guess you would consider me a thought leader, even though I really dislike that term. For the past decade and most recently, the work that I've been focused on is around eradicating loneliness in the workplace, which seems like a very strange thing to be focused on. But two years ago, my partner and I wrote a bestselling book on the topic of the significance of loneliness at work and why it's on the rise and why it's important and what we can do to combat it. And I've been focused a lot recently with working with my clients to better understand and solve this very real problem. So that's a quick background and bio on me.

I love this. And listeners, we will put a link to Steven's book and his website and everything in the comments, so make sure you check that out. And now I want to dig into this too, because I don't want to gloss over the fact that loneliness is a significant crisis because some people might not be aware. And so when they hear the term loneliness, they might think about it as something trivial. But I want to give you a chance to get into why this is such a passion for you.

It is a very misunderstood emotional state that is impacting lots and lots of people. So pre pandemic, there was some statistics from Cigna that found that 61% of Americans feel regularly alone. Our research during the pandemic, where we interviewed and surveyed more than 3,000 people from around the world, we saw that 72% of people said that they feel lonely on a monthly basis, but with 55% saying they feel lonely every single week. And what happens is when we feel lonely, when we feel excluded from a group, the part of the brain that registers that experience is the same part of the brain that registers physical pain. That means that when we feel excluded, lonely, disconnected, et cetera, our body actually goes through a fight or flight response. And that fight or flight response releases stress hormones that are really bad for us. And the US Surgeon General has come out recently to declare a state of emergency around this epidemic around loneliness. And the most compelling statistic on why this matters to all of us is because loneliness is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Because that's how harmful these stress hormones are that we're being released and we're feeling this way on a chronic basis. So all of that to say people are very lonely, according to the statistics, it's very bad for us. And it's not something many of us are really wrapping our heads around or combating proactively with this.

It's killing us, and it's killing us in an unenjoyable type of way. It is a slow and painful death. This is incredible because again, it seems so trivial, but it's so fundamental to our human existence. And again, we can get so distracted by these things that are happening in the media and things like that, and we lose focus that there are some things that are central to our humanity that we are missing out on.

Yeah. It's really the only reason why our species at is at the top of the food chain.

Right.

Because when you think about how fragile we are, like, we can't out muscle a bear, we can't out swim a shark, we can't fly, we don't have protective armor. We're really not that remarkable from a physical standpoint. And yet here we are, right? The main species who's dominating the world. And it's because we learned very early on that it was collaboration. It was coming together and building homes and foraging for food and protecting children and working in tribes to be able to take down the saber toothed tigers and the woolly mammoths of the day. And our brains have evolved to be able to still have this very important requirement of that level of social connectedness. Because many years ago, if we became removed from our tribe, like our survival rate plummeted and our brain still goes off when we are feeling this way, even today, so many years later. So, yes, it is a very important biological requirement that we aren't taking as seriously as we should.

Bingo. Yeah. And to your point of that physical pain aspect, because they've tied this to the pain of rejection as well, and I'm assuming it's very similar, they found that the pain is so real that if you give the person an analgesic like Tylenol, it actually reduces the pain. It's a very real pain. Even though from the outside looking in, there's no physical manifestation of that pain. Well, I'm sold on the legitimacy of this mission. So this is great. So now how do we go about combating that?

Yeah, that's such a big question, Kwame. We're not going to be able to get through all of the strategies per se today, but we'll maybe start with a couple of high level ones. One of the most important things that we have to be really mindful of is there's a very big difference between communication and connection. We're communicating all day long and we are exchanging information, especially at work, when things tend to be very tactical in nature. But the part of our brain that responds to communication and the data and that information is our frontal lobe. That feeling of connectedness like when me and you are having a moment and I feel seen and understood, interested in and empathized with. And all of these behaviors that are called pro social behaviors, when those things take place, I feel connected. So what we need to start is with separating these two phenomenons of communication and connection, because they're not the same. And there are very specific things we have to do if we're going to feel a certain way in other people's presence. And it's really interesting because the definition of loneliness is not one that's defined by the absence of people. It's defined by the absence of connection. Because I could be surrounded by people and I can feel totally alone and I could be living by myself in a studio apartment and feel incredibly connected. It's all about the quality of my interactions throughout my day and how those interactions make me feel about my level of social connectedness. So that's a big topic. That way we can start to unpack, but we need to start there.

This is incredible because I'm realizing we just really don't know what loneliness is at all. Because it's not just saying, hey, you feel lonely? Great. Here, Jeff, go hang out with Jeff. That's not it. It's so much deeper. I really wanted to dig into this because this is really important for us to understand, just as friends, family members, leaders, colleagues, how can we really create that connection? And I think a great way to do this would be giving an example of an interaction communication that we might think creates connection, but doesn't really check that box and then give an example of how we could tweak it to make a true connection.

Yeah. So the idea of loneliness is this idea where loneliness is when you're being seen through belonging, is when you're being seen as it's me and you right now. I see you, like, I can physically and I can tell that you really care about what we're talking about. And throughout the day, when I am able to really focus on making that person feel seen by going above and beyond and just asking this stereotypical question of, hey, how are you? Or, like, how was your weekend? Or what are you up to? That oftentimes is not enough for me to get a little bit deeper and to prove to, like, I really care. There's a difference between me saying, call me like, how are you doing? And you say, oh, I'm good, and then me saying, no, man, like, how are you doing? Tell me. I really want to know when I can do the second phrasing of that question and you can really start to tell me what's up. Now I've proven to you I really care. I really want to know. And it's those little tiny moments that we have in exchanges with others that make the difference between me all of a sudden, feeling seen and feeling cared for and feeling, hey, this person wants to understand where I'm at, and me feeling like, hey, that was just a very transactional exchange between me and this person where he was nice, but he didn't give me any kind of reassurance that he was really interested in me in the moment.

This is great. And I think when we think about ourselves in let's bring this to the business world in a transactional type of sense for a moment. But then I want to get Back to the core of this too, because this made me think about rapport. Because rapport, again, has become a buzzword that has been utilized to the point of meaningless. Right. So, hey, establish rapport. Great. All right. The book said establish rapport. Hey, Steven, how you. Good. Now negotiate. That's not rapport. And so this is really fascinating because if we look at this through a business lens and we're trying to create a connection, but we also look at it through a human interpersonal lens as a family member, a friend of whatever it happens to be, we're recognizing that it requires a little bit of vulnerability in order to create that connection. And sometimes it's like we want to get that connection with somebody without having to open ourselves up and truly care.

Yeah, I don't think it's possible. I don't think you can establish a very real, genuine connection with somebody if you are just in it. Because there is something that you need within this exchange. If it is purely transactional, it's going to be almost impossible for you to build a moment with that person. And it might seem counterintuitive, but I really believe that taking the time up front to do some of these rapport building, I guess you can call them rapport building exercises, it really does make a difference because it's very, very hard, if not impossible to influence someone if they don't respect you, if they're not interested in you, if they don't feel like you're genuine in whatever you're talking about. And all of that requires a little bit of time and energy and effort and to not just happen right away. Unless we're building that in and we're intentional about how to do that. Sometimes it's when negotiations get off on the wrong foot and we're really not in lock stop. Right. We're fighting each other versus working in tandem.

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. You're so right. And now I. This is a Question I've never asked because it's never become. It's never been so obvious that it needed to be asked. It's going to sound very strange. So let's say we're talking to a business person who's listening to this podcast and saying, all right, cool. So I need to. The way that I thought about rapport and connection was off because they were. I was thinking about it through a transit, transactional type of way. That's what they might be saying to themselves. Then it begs the question, if we have somebody who is transactional and wants to create this connection, how do they care?

Yeah, Kwame, I wish I knew exactly what to tell that person out there, because if it's not genuine, it's going to come off in a really unauthentic way. And most of us are pretty good at picking up when people are being disingenuine and inauthentic. The only thing that I can say is if we find a way just to be genuinely more curious, like really curious, it tends to be really magical. So I'll give you an example. I was working with a client yesterday and it was a large team that has been having real issues with regards to their performance and their retention and their engagement. And there was 15 people who were a part of this experience yesterday. And I'd never met any of these individuals before. It was my first interaction and after an hour of just exploring and asking people, like, tell me what's going on, I really want to know where you're having hard times. And they would share something. I said, oh, give me some more information. Or I'd say, oh man, that sounds really tough. Like, how are you navigating this? Really? It was just me just probing a little bit and really listening with an empathetic ear because I wanted to understand. And after about two hours, one of the guys sit up and said, I've never been listened to like this. This feels really, really good. And I really appreciate that we're all here together talking about what we're talking about. And it didn't. It wasn't like a crazy, magical, out of this world process I was using. It was just some subtle questions with some subtle follow ups with real intentional, active listening that made a huge difference in how they felt about me being in their space. So I think if you have someone who is mostly transactional, if you can just get a little bit better at asking a few more follow up questions and just leaning in and being more of like a conversational minor where it's not Just the first response. You want to dig a little bit deeper and understand a little bit more. Just that in and of itself tends to go a long way.

I love that example because you simplify it, because I think a lot of people might have said, oh, man, I need to care. Do I need to get all mushy, gushy? But I like. I like this, and I'm. This is freestyling here. So, Stephen, I want to get your point, your perspective on this. Have you ever watched a show where you did not care about the show? You just happened to watch the show, and then you watch, like, 15 minutes, it's like, man, I don't even like this show. But now I'm invested. Now I need to know how this.

Yeah. Yes.

I'm wondering if this is, like. It's almost like a sunk cost fallacy to a certain extent. As you get more curious, you gather more information. It's almost like you can't help but care because you've invested so much in the person and learning about what they need and why they need it. And now that could almost organically start to generate that caring feeling that we need for connection, even if we didn't start with it.

Yeah, I think there's something to that, Kwame. But you sparked something in my brain that is worth sharing, because for me personally, and I can only speak to how this makes me feel, but one of the things that makes me feel really good is when I know I'm listening and I can tell that the person appreciates it. And as soon as I get that validation from the person, I am more fueled to want to continue that, because I know I'm making this person feel good, feel heard, feel appreciated or understood or whatever. And that, to me, is, like, really motivating, because to make somebody else feel like they really are the center of attention and in the spotlight, that's a pretty powerful sensation. Most of us don't get activated on a regular basis. So I feel like it's a gift when I can do that to someone, and that tends to fuel my desire to want to do it more and more.

Yeah, this is great, because I think we're onto something here because we have to. Even if what brings us together is business oriented. Right. We still have to create a connection in order to be effective. It's almost like if we were to bifurcate the conversation and say, all right, the business side of the conversation, I have to earn my way there. So I need to start off with that connection. Because if we focus exclusively on the Transactional aspect. It drive us, could drive us apart. But if I say no, before we even start, my goal is to talk to Steven until he feels that connection, until I can sense that, and until I can make him feel heard and appreciated.

Yeah.

Then we move on.

Yeah.

I don't know. I think there could be some benefit in mentally saying exclusively in this fraction of the conversation, my only goal is connection before we move on.

Yeah. And it doesn't take that long. And oftentimes when you're intentional about it, it's pretty powerful. So, like, for example, I do a lot of executive coaching, and one of the very first things that I'll do when I meet somebody for the first time is I'll say, hey, Kwame, this is going to be really strange, but the first thing we're going to do is we're going to do an exercise called Fishbowl. And the way that it works is you pick a number from 1 to 30. I'm going to read you a random question from this list that you chose. We're each going to answer it, and that's how we're going to begin this exchange. And the questions tend to be, who would you have dinner with if you could have dinner with anybody dead or alive? Or, like, who's three people that make you laugh the most, and what do they do to make you laugh? It's these kinds of questions. And what happens is when I can cue to the person that this is how we're going to start. Trust me in this process, they engage. And what happens is right away, we find some commonalities. Right away, we smile. Right away, we're able to feel like we're not in a professional executive coaching role where I'm the coach and this is the coachee. And it just creates, I don't know, like, a bit of a breaking down of these oftentimes kind of uncomfortable silos. And then when we get into the coaching, they're a bit more relaxed, and they've got to know me a little bit more, and hopefully we've shared a laugh, and all of those little things add up in a really big way. And we don't do that because we're just so focused on getting down to whatever we need to do. But it can take as little as three minutes. Right. Just with a couple of strategic questions, and it just sets a tone. And I think if the listeners of your podcast were a bit more intentional by doing some of that, they'd be surprised at just how quickly they can build some of that connectedness with the person they're exchanging.

When before we started, you mentioned that human interaction is a lot easier than we make it out to be. And this is really encouraging because the things that you've described, they're very human and they're not hard to do in terms of difficulty of understanding. They're just hard to do because of maybe our mentality, maybe our fear of vulnerability, or maybe the lie that we tell ourselves that we're too busy to create a connection. That's the big one, right?

That's it. There was this really awesome study by a guy named Nick Epley. He's a behavioral scientist out of the University of Chicago. And he lived in the suburbs of Chicago. So he'd take the train, it's like a 45 minute train ride. And he got so perplexed. Why every single morning he was on this train with a couple hundred people and nobody was talking to anyone. And he's like, this is so weird. You have all of these, like Chicagoans who tend to be very friendly people. I myself am a Chicagoan, so I could vouch for Nick. And he said these people have amazing stories and wisdom and knowledge and ideas and things to share. And yet it's completely silent. So being the behavioral scientist that he is, he ran some experiments and he created these three controls. The first control was the solitary control. And he had groups of people who were omitted from having any interaction with anybody they were sitting next to. There was the normal control and people could either communicate or not. They do what they normally do. And most people, what do they do? They keep to themselves. They're not talking to strangers, especially on a train. And then there was the third control, it's called the connection control. And people were forced to talk to somebody sitting next to them. And he did this in buses, in trains, in waiting rooms and taxi cabs. And all of these different in human to human interaction opportunities. And what happened is people overwhelmingly said that they had the most enjoyable and the most restorative time when they were in the connection condition. And it didn't matter if they were introverted or extroverted. And what was most important is when the people before they were in the connection condition were asked, which of these three conditions do you think you'd be happiest in? Almost all of them said the solitude. Don't talk to me, I'm going to go on my phone, or I'm going to look out the window, or I'm going to read a book. They thought that's what they needed. And yet when they had the forced reasoning to actually communicate with somebody around them, they overwhelmingly said this was awesome. And this study has been replicated with thousands of people. And it's pretty powerful to say that our brain gives us a head fake. Our brain says, don't do this. It's going to be awkward. This person doesn't want to talk to you. What are you going to talk about? This might be very strange. And yet most people are pretty cool. And if you lean in a little bit, oftentimes they want to lean back. And I can't tell you, Kwame, how many really awesome conversations I've had with people on airplanes and on trains and waiting in line at the grocery store. And I take advantage of these opportunities because I know it's good for me. And I almost always leave that exchange on a bit of a high.

I love this. I love this. It's so counterintuitive, but so important for us to recognize this too. So I want to break down a little bit how we can do this, because a lot of leaders listen to the podcast and then they have questions about culture, connection, trust issues within teams and things like that. So let's say a leader is listening to this podcast and they want to know how they can start to fight this epidemic of loneliness and create connection in their team. What advice would you have?

Yeah, there's two big things. The first piece of advice is to spotlight others significance. So one of the fastest way to build a connection with somebody is, is to make that person feel like they matter. If I'm a leader of a team, I'm going to go out of my way to make people on my team feel incredibly valuable to whatever we're doing at work. And that value could come in the form of asking for somebody to do something. But prefacing that task with call me like you're so good at A, B and C. I need you, you specifically to do this for me. Because I can count on you to do this work, right? That's a very small shift in how we tend to ask people to do things that can make that person feel a bit more valued. I could also go to you and say, kwame, like I have a problem. I need advice. I need your advice. I really respect your opinion. Tell me what you think I should do. Right. There's all of these little things to make the people around us feel like they matter and to feel desired and appreciated. That's a huge indicator and a key strategy in making people feel more connected to you and in line. Oftentimes I start conversations by saying, I love your sneakers, man. Where'd you get those, right? Or, that is a really cool bracelet. Tell me, like, where you found that and how can I get one? And by starting with some kind of a subtle compliment. And people love to be complimented. That breaks the ice, and it makes them smile, and then it causes them to feel a little bit more comfortable leaning into the conversation. The second thing that leaders and all of us have to be mindful of is this concept of interruptability. We need to be more interruptible. It's very hard to lean into the moments for social connection. If we're behind a screen, if we're tuned in with our AirPods, if we're reading something, all of these little subtle cues are essentially like rejecting all of these opportunities for people to lean in and ask you questions. And at work, this is so prevalent, especially with leaders, they're so busy, they close their door, they turn off the notifications on their phone. And when people come in and try to interrupt them, oftentimes that response can be negative. And while we need some time for single tasking and to do deep, meaningful work, and we got to plan our days so we aren't interrupted 24, 7, the more opportunities we can lean into our interruptions and let the person know who interrupted us, that they matter, that they're more important than the task at hand, that you swivel towards them and right away say, oh, I'm so glad you came to me. What can I do for you? That validates right to those individuals that you care. And as a leader, that's a pretty important requirement. So being interruptible, spotlighting people's significance, These are two things that I would encourage your listeners to do.

This is great. So spotlighting people, being more interruptible, I would add a third one. Inviting Steven Van Cohen to your company. More consulting and training. This is a masterclass, my friend. Masterclass. Before you go, I just want to give you another opportunity to shout out the book and how people can get in touch with you.

Yeah, you got it. So the book is called Connectable How Leaders Can Move Teams from Isolated to all in. It's all over Amazon and on Audible and Barnes and Noble and wherever you get your books, you can get it. And then. This is gonna sound strange, Kwame, but if people wanna get in touch with me, they can go to lesslonely. Com. And I swear, it's not a dating site. I know it sounds questionable. It's not a dating site. Lesslonely.

Com.

It's our hub of resources. For how to create more connected workplaces. And there's assessments and there's tools and there's all kinds of stuff we've built to help leaders and employees find more belonging wherever they work. And you can get in touch with me at that website as well.

Love it. Stephen, thank you so much. Really.

My pleasure, my friend. Thank you.

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