156 | Inside Disconnection at Work: Bridging the Connection Gap Report with Sadhbh O'Flaherty

Culture isn't a nice-to-have, it's the infrastructure that holds an organization together. And I don't think I've ever heard something as true in work. The thread, those red threads, just, it's what holds stuff together, right?

100%, 100%. Even if you think about yourself and any time you've worked anywhere, the difference it makes when you have made connections within the workplace and how you enjoy the work that you're doing, you can't measure it, but you can feel it.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients build work cultures that bring out the best in their people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from those who are shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa and pop in your earbuds wherever you are. You're very welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you back. Thanks for joining me. My usual ask, please do, if you get 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, seconds while you're listening to this podcast episode, please give us a follow, give us a like, give us a comment, whatever you can do on the platform that you're listening on really, really helps to get the message and the word out there, really helps to get the podcast out to more people. So I'd really very much appreciate that. And of course, if you hit that follow button, then you'll get all the most up-to-date episodes straight into your feed the minute they come out. So slightly different today, it's me and Saeve O'Flaherty, both of us from Inspiring Change. Good morning, Saeve.

Good morning.

Thanks for coming on. So, we are at Inspiring Change. We recently did a piece of research, and let me give you a quick backstory on that. We did a piece of research last year called Mind the Gap, where we went out to CPOs and CEOs, and we said, what are the top 3 things that are getting in the way of you having a strong and aligned culture? And 5 themes came out of that. You can find that research on our website at inspiringchange.ie. It's 5 themes came out. One of those themes was disconnection. And we looked at that this year and we said, we should double down on that maybe a bit more. Look at that in a bit more detail because it feels like the way that we are working now, post-COVID, really, probably, because of course, during COVID we were, those of us that work in offices with bums on seats, were working at home pretty much fully remotely. But now, this hybrid world, I wonder what the impact is there. And of course, we keep hearing about loneliness. I was only reading yesterday about the new Toy Story movie is very much about loneliness and kids being online and not playing with each other. Research with the European Commission back in 2022 said that the world is getting lonelier. And I think we can see and feel that in many places and areas in our lives. So, we did this research. Why did we do it? Because we think that connection really, really matters. It underpins trust. It drives performance. It helps your well-being. It drives innovation and it makes us more resilient, having people around us to be able to jump into and dive into and just be with, whether that be maybe online if we know the person well enough or just in person. We had a wee event in the office yesterday to launch the research and there was only 7 of us, but the energy in that room was electric. And just being able to be with people and have fun and laugh and talk about silly things and just have those connections was so, so powerful. We know that when connection breaks down, things get harder. And I think we've probably all been in those situations in work where we've, you know, a relationship in work has broken down for whatever reason and trying to get stuff done just becomes more tricky. It's just like swimming through treacle. And of course, research would suggest that if people do feel more connected at work, they're more likely to stay.. And of course, in the current economic environment we're in, where we've got quite high employment, we want people to stay in our businesses. We don't want them to go off somewhere else. So, as much as we can do to keep them, the better. And that's a really, really, really, really important thing. There was a really nice quote, and there's lots of these in the report, which actually I'll tell you now, you can find it inspiringchange.ie/bridgingthegap, all one word. But a really nice quote: Culture isn't a nice-to-have. It's the infrastructure structure that holds an organization together. And I don't think I've ever heard something as true in work. The thread, those red threads, there's just, it's what holds stuff together, right?

100%. 100%. I think it is. It's when you think about, even if you think about yourself and any time you've worked anywhere, the difference it makes when you have made connections within the workplace on how you enjoy the work that you're doing. You can't measure it, but you can feel it. And I do think, like, the places where I know for myself, in terms of my my own experience of work where I had really good connections with people, I enjoyed the work no matter what the work was. And that's the point, I think, is that we all have to do work. Work, you know, sometimes is great, sometimes is tricky, sometimes is boring, you know, but when you have those connections in work, it changes that for you. So I think, yeah, for me, connection in the workplace is just so important. So I, and I think this research just is coming at such a timely time. And I think we're talking a lot about connection at the moment, because people are missing it. And that's, that's just the bottom line. So, yeah.

And I think, I think what's really interesting is that some of what we pulled out will explain maybe why people are missing it. But I think we do need to be— something that I know we spend a lot of time talking to clients about is intentionality. And for me, that was the one word that was woven through everything that we found and everything that we've suggested in the report, which could be ways in which to mitigate or meet the challenges that we raised, just that little bit more intentionality being so fundamentally important. We just, for you listeners, quick bit of background on the research on this piece. So it was a one-question survey. I said to CPOs, can I talk to you for 10 or 15 minutes? That's all I need. And Saive and I split the interviews. One question, which was, how do you— what are the 3 things that are getting in the way of you building a strong and human connection with people in your organization? And I was very specific that we said, we want to know about your organization, because I can Claude or ChatGPT or Google general things about HR, but I want to know what it's like in your organization. And then what we said was, our commitment was, we'll take your insights and your feedback, we'll anonymize that, and we'll roll that up into themes. And the 6 themes that we came up with, just to very quickly spin through them were: busyness, hybrid working, structures and silos, leadership and their influence on connection in the workplace, digital, and generations. And what Saive will do over the rest of the podcast now is just explore each of those in a little bit more detail. But as I keep saying, you'll find more in the report, inspiringchange.ie/bridgingthegap.

All one word.

So let me kick off with the first one, Saeed, and you jump in as and when. And then we'll maybe just switch and we'll do one each and then we'll see where we get to. As you can probably tell, listeners, this is fully unrehearsed. So we'll just see where we get to. But it'll be good. I promise it'll be good. There was a quote from one of our respondents when talking about busyness that they said, The muscle of connection has never fully reignited. We lost something during the pandemic years. We became a lot more transactional. And one thing that we kept hearing was, we're busy, we're busy, we're busy, we're busy, we're busy. We're too busy to connect. There's too much work. We're under too much pressure. And that pace of work and pace of life, actually, we're busy in life. You think about how many things now that maybe you do that you didn't do before, that your kids do they didn't do before. The numbers of WhatsApp groups you're in, the news channels, 24/7 news, all of that stuff is taking our brains in space. And I think what we heard was the relationships were the first things that were getting squeezed because we're in, we're transactional, we're doing the work. And that muscle, that connection muscle, if you like, somebody said was kind of atrophying. We're not using it. So, that muscle is dying away. I remember saying to one respondent, but surely you're using AI and that's giving you back loads of time. And he said, yeah, loads of time to do more work. So, that's a big challenge that we're not actually thinking, well, if I'm getting time back, what can I use that for to build better connections? And I think that probably the last piece for me, which is one that you hear all the time, and in fairness, I'm probably guilty of it myself, you know, "Oh, how are you getting on?" Somebody asks you and the stock answer is, "Oh, I'm so busy," or "I'm up the walls," or it's that kind of almost badge of honor that I'm so busy. That I don't have time to do this other stuff. And it kind of stops then even that conversation. What do you think, Sinead?

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting. I always think with that particular phrase with the, you know, I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I'm so busy. And, you know, I remember, like, actively trying to say the opposite. You know, I feel, and you know, actually, I've got a good bit of time this week. You know, I've managed to get through things. But the guilt that goes along with it, you're like, oh, they're gonna think that I'm not doing enough, that I'm not using my time the way I should be. So there's on both sides, I think, there's this concept that if we're not busy, we're not achieving, we're not reaching the productivity milestones that maybe are being set for us, or we're not getting what it is the organization needs from us. And I think that is something that's really driving that busyness. And it's a hard one to shift because I think it is ingrained in people. So it's— and I know we'll talk, as you say, a lot about the intentionality, and I think that's where it has to come in to be intentional about those types of things, that sort of culture of busyness. Because once we start pulling that back and not having that as that badge of honor or feeling guilty if we actually do have time to do some other nice things or make those connections that we're like, oh, we're wasting our time, we could be doing work, that it's trying to think about it in a different way. And that's where when we talk about the other ones, how they all weave in together, because to do that requires something else. It requires structures to be changed, maybe around the way we work hybrid, the way the leaders lead, you know, which we'll talk about further on. But like, I do think that is a very key driver. And then, you know, in terms of the world of work at the moment, there's a lot of, you know, purse strings being pulled in, you know, organizations are being squeezed. And I think with the introduction of AI, there's also maybe businesses who are starting to say, well, we don't need as many people because AI is going to do the work for us. And then the people who are left are going to be squeezed even more. So, so it's— there's lots of things to think think about when it comes to this too busy, you know.

Feels like a downward spiral then, the way you described it there. And so we have to do something about it. Like, we can't, we can't just keep it down, we can't just leave it downward spiraling, can we?

No, no. And, and that's why I think it's— the conversation is so big at the moment, because I think people really feel that and see that, and they not— they don't necessarily have the control over it. So it is about it being quite a systemic kind of a thing where leadership are thinking about it. It becomes a really important part of how a business works. They do make the time for the connection within the busyness. So it is, it's one that I think it's starting to become, because the conversation is becoming so big, I do think something will hopefully happen and that intentionality is starting to come into organizations. And that's why doing something like this is so important because it gets shines a light on that particular point.

It sprung to my mind there as you were chatting that the whole idea of what gets measured gets done. And I think that if you built perhaps the idea of the importance of connection into your culture and into the culture that you want to have in your organization, then it becomes a cultural norm. At the moment, it sounds like busyness is a cultural norm. And that's not necessarily perhaps a cultural norm that we want to have, although I think your point's really well made. It's being reinforced by the fact that perhaps people are going, "Well, crikey, if I don't say I'm not busy, then people are going to think I'm not doing enough work and I'm going to get even more work. And then, so I'll just say I'm busy and then I'll be protected." But so I think if we can kind of wind that into the culture that we're trying to create in organizations, I think that's going to make a huge difference, which I think actually leads us beautifully into the second one, which is hybrid, which you're going to pick up on. Let's hear a little bit about that.

And I will. And when you think about, and think about the link there between that busyness and then the hybrid working and what we talked about, what we heard from the people we were talking about was that it wasn't that hybrid was wrong or that hybrid was breaking anything necessarily. It's just that it's not intentional. So what's happening is, you know, you might have back-to-back meetings in a hybrid environment and that does not allow any room for connection between those meetings. But then when you have the physical environment where people do actually turn up and maybe, you know, an organization has mandated that we're in 3 days a week and we're home 2 days a week and you're in work, so there's this appearance of togetherness, but maybe not necessarily any nurturing around the connection piece while you're in the office. So what we heard from people was things like you know, meetings going on, Zoom meetings or Teams meetings or whatever meetings going on, and people are sitting in different parts of the room online having these conversations rather than saying, do you know what, there's 3 or 4 of us in the office today, let's go, we'll all sit together in a room and we'll dial in whoever else we need to dial in. But then obviously infrastructure has to allow for that. But I think it's around that sort of thing where when we come into the office, we're really asking like, what is our time together actually for? Are we in to sit on desks and plug in and not talk to each other, but we look like we're in the same room, so that's great, but it's not really inspiring the connection piece. And the informal moments then between those meetings that are happening just aren't happening maybe as much. But if we come in, maybe we have our team meeting every time we're in, or there's very particular things that we do when we're in together, it allows for those informal moments, those conversations that might happen at the edges of the meetings, like the coming into the meeting as you're walking in, the walking out, maybe having a coffee, whatever it might be. And those are so valuable to building that connection because you understand the person rather than the role. And I think that's where the hybrid piece is. Like you said, I know we talked about this yesterday morning, but we're only 3 years really into this. So we're still trying to figure it out in a lot of organizations. And I think there has to be a leeway to try and figure this out as well. It's not going to be perfect straight away.

So, yeah, we did it the other way for 100 years. The 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, we did that for 100 years. And as you said, we're now 3 years into this and people are getting a bit kind of a bit hot under the collar that it's not really working. So we're kind of pushing the big nuclear button of get everyone back into the office because this isn't working, as opposed to working out, well, how do we make it work? How do we make it work? How can we make it work better? It's interesting. I've got a real bee in my bonnet about this, and I'm kind of glad it came up in the research because for me, there's kind of 3 there's 3 parties that need to be involved in working out how hybrid works best. There's the organization. So, what do our policies and procedures look like? What do our spaces look like, to your point earlier on? Because if we're saying, come into the office and don't, you know, don't sit in booths and don't sit at desks, if we've nowhere for people to actually go and sit together to have a call, then of course, the infrastructure is getting in the way of us being able to do that. So, there's very much the organization. There's leaders.. So, from a manager point of view, my manager, my supervisor, my people leader, whatever you call it in your organization, that person is the person who's saying, "Okay, well, on Wednesday, that's when we do our team meeting. As the team manager, I'll do my one-to-ones on our core days. And by the way, guys, please just try not to have one-to-one meetings with clients or other colleagues on our core days. Let's try and keep those for being present. And equally, as somebody said yesterday, it's really annoying when you're trying to do deep thinking work in the office and people keep coming to your desk. So the answer to that is, as you said yesterday, Saive, don't do the deep thinking work in the office then. Do the deep thinking work at home where you can have some quiet time. So I think we need to think about that much more. And then the third one, which is always a little unpalatable for people, is the responsibility on the employee. The responsibility on people in work, that when you and I are in the office and Sandra and Aminsha, that we are not on Teams calls all day with people in other places, that we've not scheduled and we haven't, because we look after our own diaries, that we haven't scheduled those types of interactions for that day. Yes, we have to do some sometimes, and that's okay, but it shouldn't be the norm. It should be the exception. And thinking about how we then run our diaries is really important. At the moment, we only think about one thing when we're talking about hybrid, and it's where are you today? Is Saeve working at home or is she working in the office? That's all we talk about. We don't talk about what Saeve's doing, where she's doing it, how she's doing it, who she needs to do it with, any of those things. And that's the gold, that's the color, I think, that makes hybrid better. And they're not conversations that we're having.

Yeah, and I know that was one of the things that we called out as a potential way in which we can be intentional about this. And that's around developing those team commitments. So thinking about it in terms of how your team works and really making commitments between yourselves and understanding each other in terms of how you'd like to connect, how you like to communicate, you know, all those things, because there's differences. And we'll talk about the differences again later on in one of the other challenges that came out. But I think everybody has different expectations of what connection looks like. Feels like, what they need from an organization. So it's about making those commitments of like, well, this is what's going to work for our team. And I mean, I think that's where, again, where leaders come in because they have to allow for that to happen, for there to be some level of flexibility within teams. Because if you do a one-size-fits-all, it's harder to make that work. Whereas if you do it at a team level, you can really understand this is how we're going to connect, you know, and maybe this is how we're going to connect with the rest of the organization as well. So that we're not just boxing ourselves off and we'll talk our next challenges about silos. So, yeah, I think, I think that's a really key one because understanding what the expectations are around connection and how we're working within a hybrid environment will really help to make it work better.

Yeah, and I think when you, I think when you think back to that, that kind of triangle that I described earlier on, the organization saying we're in 2 days a week, The team then saying, okay, great, what are we going to use that time for? And then the individual saying, okay, well, this is what I need to do to make sure that I fit within those commitments that I made with the team. I think it's that whole idea of a team charter, our team commitments to each other is really, really powerful. This episode is brought to you by Inspiring Change. We work with senior teams to help them be clear and intentional about the culture they need to be successful, to communicate change in a in a more human way and to give their leaders the skills, tools, and confidence to be amazing catalysts for change. To learn more about our work and who we do it for, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie. Let's move on to silos, as you so beautifully segued into it. You know, silos get a bit of a bad rap, I think. We talk about organizations wanting more collaboration. We want to work best together, work more closely, and the silo, the poor old silo often gets a bit of a bashing. Now, I have to say, as perhaps unfashionable an opinion as it might be, I quite like a silo. I want organizations to have really deep knowledge and expertise. I want them to be able to know exactly what they're doing and when they're doing it. But what I also want is the ability for them to be able to punch out of those silos when and if they need to, when they need to hand off things to other departments, when we need expertise from somebody else that we don't have. So, I want to see that. Now, of course, when it comes to connection, the challenge with silos is that we slowly form our own rhythms and our own ways of doing things. We form our own cliques. If we are a geographically dispersed organization, geography gets in the way of connection. So there are people, if you work in, let's say, Amazon with hundreds of thousands of people, there are hundreds of thousands of people probably you've never met because they work all over the planet on night shift in Guatemala, wherever it might be. And I think that geographical distance amplifies the cultural distance from people, the connection distance from people. I think it can promote isolation, is what we heard in some of the research, and it can promote a sense of almost insularness, if that's a word. But barely an episode of this podcast goes past without me making up a word. So this word, the word this episode, people, is insularness. And I think that if you've got people out in Reykjavík and it's a small satellite team of 4, they're going to be looking after each other and not really looking out for anybody else potentially. So how do you build systems and processes and things that actually help to pull them back into the fold. I think something else that sits very squarely in the whole idea of collaboration and silos, the challenge of silos, is empathy. That when we're working in our silo with our blinkers on, we're just doing our work. We're not looking at other people's work. We don't really understand what their day looks like, what their challenges are, what's coming at them. If we don't have empathy with other people, That's a big challenge. We can't really meet them where they are. And I think that then continues to then kind of drive us apart and really kind of get in the way of really strong connection.

Yeah, yeah. And it reminds me actually of a previous job that I had before, an ERP company, and I was in the development team. And within the— we were creating, it was a bespoke piece of software. So, we were building the software itself. It was our software. But what I was finding was, when I was working in that team that sometimes maybe some connections were breaking down with the sales team who maybe were outselling something that then eventually had to be built by the development team. And then the support team who were supporting the customers who were getting this piece of software, they needed to understand what had been changed so that when they were supporting the client that they knew what they were supporting them on. What was this new piece of functionality that was being built, whatever it was. And definitely there was, and I, and I became very aware of the need for connection and empathy between each of these teams because they had to understand that what the actions were that maybe they were doing, what knock-on effect it had for another team and how they were working. And we did, we built up kind of stand-ups between different teams. We built up connections, we had representatives who came in and looked at work that we were doing. And so it built that kind of muscle of empathy, of understanding, so that the product was being built as best as it could be built for its clients. And I just thought that was a really good way of— and even within the development team, the QA team versus the developers, you know, making sure that they were talking to each other, working together well together, and had a good relationship because you knew once a relationship broke down, it impacted the product. So there's the connection piece, I think, for each other because it makes work so much more enjoyable. And that empathy is so key, and there's always going to be silos, there's always going to be geographical differences within, especially global ones, and even smaller ones, they might be between Ireland and the UK, you know. So it's really understanding that the linkages between them and allowing people to have their expertise, because as you say, so important to have the expertise within their silos and to be working very closely within those. But it's understanding, well, what way do we need to connect between each other? That will help us work well, but also improve the business. So, you know, it's kind of twofold when it comes to that side of it.

And then actually going out and doing it. Back to that intentionality piece, we can talk about it all week. But if we don't do it, that just becomes inaction.

Exactly, exactly. Setting up whatever it is that needs to happen, whatever touchpoints that need to happen, whatever connection pieces that need to happen, and being genuine about it. It's not just tick-box exercise. It's actually, you know, getting to know the people, getting to understand their pain points, their frustrations, whatever it might be. And that helps, I think, build the trust. And that helps build connection. So it's, you know, there's so many facets to it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, self-fulfilling prophecy, vicious cycle, one of those things. Let's talk about leaders, because we know that leaders have an inordinate impact on people down through the organization. And that whole idea of leadership influence was the fourth challenge that came up in the research.

Yeah, and I mean, it may have been the fourth, but in one sense, and I think this came out with our conversation yesterday morning, number one is leadership influence and leadership ability within just the whole sphere of connection within an organization. They can influence it at a much stronger level than anybody else in the organization. So that makes them key to actually driving how it happens, and it's key to the conversation around, 'Oh, we're too busy, we're too busy.' You know, they helped influence that. They influence the connections across the silos, they influence how the hybrid is working. So, you know, there's really— the connection is only as strong as your weakest leader, which is, you know, that sounds kind of negative, but— or it's only as strong as your strongest leader. So you need to really think about it. And there's such an accountability piece on leaders to really value connection in an organization rather than thinking it's something that just happens, you know, Usher listen, they're all together in a room, so you know, they're obviously connecting, but you can't assume the connection is happening just because of certain things that you've done. You have to really get into the weeds of it, you know, and then on the flip side, leaders are busy. They're in the same trap that everybody else is in, so they're too busy, they're stretched, the focus is on delivery, which is the way a business works. So these pressures mount all the time on leaders, and it is hard, and you have to have— and that's where the empathy comes in again. There has to be empathy for leaders as well who are trying to do everything, and it is getting harder. It's getting harder, and I think there's more asked of leaders now than ever before. So it's recognizing that as a bit of a tension, even though they are the most influential piece in an organization, they're also probably one of the most stressed in the organization as well. So it's, and something that we heard from people that we spoke to, you know, was inconsistent leadership styles within organizations as well. So, you know, where one group might experience this lovely leadership style where they're really embracing connection, really flexible, they understand what's going on, they're moving between different leadership styles depending on what's required, which is, you know, exceptional, but It's not the norm always. So, and then you have leaders that maybe that isn't as natural to them, so it's much harder for them, they need to work on it. So it's, it's just again, comes back to our intentionality and how do we build that into an organization so that leaders are all consistent in how they approach this and what's the value put on it within an organization as well.

It's probably worth mentioning just for, for clarity that when we talk about leaders, we're talking about people leaders, we're talking about managers, supervisors, people who lead teams, not necessarily the executive team or the very top echelons of the organization. And I do, I think it's really interesting that I think you and I would both agree, and we know in the work that we do with our clients that we often say, well, you know, those middle managers, they are the glue in the organization. They're the ones that make stuff happen. They translate and they contextualize. And they're those leaders you said earlier on, you know, they're really, really busy as well. And here's, you know, people like us coming in and saying, well, now we need you to focus on connection. As well as being authentic and vulnerable and thinking about culture and translating purpose and all these other 90 things that we're going to do. And actually, I think for me, it's not about doing more. It's just thinking about how you do what you're doing already. So can I build little moments that help to build connection into our team meetings? Can I help to build them into our day? Do we do coffee and buns every Wednesday morning? Does that become a team thing that we do as part of our team charter that you mentioned earlier on. So it's just, again, God, I wish we had a euro for every time we said "intentionality." We'll keep saying it, listeners. It's going to get boring. If we had a, you know, just about being, just thinking about it, just being a little bit more intentional about it, for sure.

Yeah, exactly. And putting connection at the heart of that kind of leadership philosophy within work. And, but also allowing the space to have the ability to do the connection piece. So, and I think that's where it does come from, from the higher echelons as well within an organization to support those leaders throughout the different levels or whatever way an organization is built where the people leaders actually have the, you know, because the value is put in it, they feel it is important. So it becomes one of their priorities within how they work as well. Because I think if it looks like it's not important or there's more things important, it will fall down the list, you know. So there is definitely the philosophy side of us building it into, like you said, team charters, but also into organizational values, maybe whatever way it happens. But then it has to be role modeled from the top as well. So it's a— so listen, I don't think we're saying anything that people don't necessarily know already, and, but I think it's just always good to keep talking about it and, and, and thinking it is important and seeing the value of it. Because it's not, as you say, not necessarily the easiest thing to measure. So it's, it's, it's more of a felt thing rather than a measurable thing, necessarily.

And despite the fact that we keep saying the same thing, perhaps, and people are hearing the same things, if that conversation just moves us forward a little half a step every time, then that's a win. I don't think in areas like this, we don't see wholesale change overnight. But if we can see little tiny positive steps forward to a better place, then that's a really, really good thing. Let's talk about our penultimate challenge, which was digital. And this idea now that as a generation in work, we are the most digitally connected— and out of work, actually— we are the most digitally connected than we have ever been. Like, just as we're talking, listeners, just have a little run-off in your head about all the channels that you have access to right now. TV to radio to podcasts to Slack and SharePoint and email and all those those things. So, we've, you know, the amount of times we're on Teams calls now, we're on back-to-back Teams calls because it's so easy. But actually, we might be very, very digitally connected. We might have more channels than we've ever had before, but actually the quality of the connection is declining. Because when we're on a Teams call, we don't get to have those little— you don't get those little body language things that happen. You don't get those little comments that happen. You don't get the little laugh, "What was that you said over there, Saeed?" You don't get those because we can't hear each other on a Teams call. So it becomes, as we said earlier on, really transactional. And the overload of all that stuff actually just depletes us as human beings. I was only— my son just switched phones and his old phone was sitting on the table, but it still had Snapchat on it. And literally, I'm sitting eating my breakfast and I swear to God, all I heard for 15 minutes was zzz, zzz, zzz, zzz. It was like water torture. It was constant. And then in my head, I'm going, my God, how does he ever get anything done being pulled over here all the time? It's insane. But I think there's probably a level of that happening in work. I think that some of the tech is taking over. We're hearing stories of people sending AI note-takers to meetings instead of going themselves so that they'll just get back a précis of what the meeting was about and any actions that they were given when they weren't there. Which in itself is a bit wrong, which probably ties back to busyness because I can't be at two meetings at the same time, which is a challenge. And we end up in that place where the personal knowledge of people erodes because we don't necessarily, again, unless we're being intentional about giving over some time to be a bit more human and personal on our Teams calls, then knowing somebody as a person starts to erode and we simply know them as the CFO or as a legal executive or as a marketing manager. And we don't really know the person as much as we did perhaps before because we spent a lot of time with them before 2020. We were in the office, we walked around buildings, we said hello, we had those cringe— I hate the term— water cooler moments. We could walk to someone's desk and say, do you fancy grabbing a cup of coffee? We can't do those things anymore. And I don't really think that the tech Tech is allowing us to have that same level of humanness, I think, is kind of where I'm going. It doesn't allow us to have that same level of humanness that perhaps we had before. Not perhaps we had before, we had before in spades. So yeah, that was some thoughts that came out.

Yeah. And one interesting thing, and I think it was something that one of the participants said, they talked about technology removing that physical, sensory, emotional context, which is where the caring happens. About a person in an organization. So you're not getting that because you're not getting the cues, you're not getting the signs. You know, it's down to very much the human energy side, which I won't go into on this call, but that idea—

that could derail us for a week.

I know, I could get onto that completely, but there is that thing that you pick up from people. It's the unknown, and we're missing that, those cues. Like, I remember reading something before where it was like, if you can hear somebody just doing big sighs, you know, that kind of large sighs, that there, there's something not right. And it's— and there— and you just pick up on that cue, and then you can go, right, I better go talk to that person. You know, maybe something— maybe they're stressed at work, it could be something outside of work, whatever it is, but there's something that person is, is not I'm not feeling well. And I think we miss that when we're digitally going all the time because we're sitting looking at each other on screens. We miss all that. Somebody might put themselves on mute so you don't hear that thing that is happening that is such a natural kind of just human behavior thing that is triggering flags to go, right, I'm not doing so good, whatever it is. And I think another thing that's happening a lot now is burnout, and there's a lot of overwhelm. And I do think the connection piece has a lot to do with that, and digital you know, the way we're working digitally is just encouraging, you know, that kind of burnout feeling, or at least behaviors, because, because with the caring side of it is, is missing a little bit and missing a lot. Some organizations do it well. I have seen it done quite well. I know where, where I was before in Deloitte, we, they were very much about encouraging coffees. Go for coffee with someone, set in time in your diary for coffee. There was a coffee, there was a cafe on site, so you could go and you could get a coffee with somebody and you could just have a chat. Chat for half an hour. And they really encouraged that when you were in the office, and you saw people doing it all over the place. So, and I think that was a lovely norm that they had set in the organization. Maybe it wasn't in every department, you know, with the department that I was in, it was definitely a norm that I felt and that I did, and I saw other people doing it. So, and it really helped. A thing that I remember hearing out of like their surveys that they would do is what people loved most about the business was the and that showed a lot around the connection that they allowed to happen within the organization. And I think that's something that when organizations do that, it really helps to build that kind of richness of connection within, within people. And it takes you away from the digital, it gets you sitting in a coffee shop, and even though you're in work, but again, it comes back to the hybrid intentionality piece where if you're in the office, you're not sitting on calls all day long, so you don't have an opportunity to do that. So Yeah, again, all ties in, ties in. And then I think we can move to that, the very last one of our themes, which is the differences, generational differences, which I found very interesting that anybody who mentioned this in our conversations were like, I know this is probably a bit— I'm not sure if, you know, people are seeing this or if this is a bit unusual, but we're really finding this generational difference And loads of people said it, and they all said it. So I was like, no, it's not unusual. It's a thing. Definitely a thing. Yeah, because I think there's a lot of discussion around differences, and I, and I think there's great conversations around neurodiversity and differences within all different spheres of differences. Um, and generational difference is something that is really coming to the workplace now because we're looking at 4 to 5 5 generations now working in the same building or working in the same organizations, and they are looking for totally different things when it comes to connection, communication, their expectations of what work actually gives them. There's a huge piece there around generational differences basically equal just different connection needs, and that it's opening that conversation because it's obviously happening. Everybody spoke about it that we talked to, but they all talked about it with a bit of a, well, it's a bit of a surprise, you know, so, or it's not something I don't think anybody's talking about. So maybe that's the kind of the one piece to come out of this that needs a little bit more of a light shone on it. So what would your thinking be around that kind of that one?

I think that probably one of the biggest challenges with the whole generation discussion is that we judge what's right or wrong based on our own experiences. So, you know, I think that going out to the pub on a Thursday evening, which doesn't really happen anymore because we have to plan these things in now because you might not be in the office on a Thursday, therefore going for a drink on Thursday might not happen. For me, that's, that's kind of a norm. For somebody that doesn't drink, which a lot of people coming into the, the workplace now They are, you know, the Gen Xs and the Gen Zs. A lot of them are more gym, cinema, you know, that drinking culture is kind of gone. And so that doesn't work for them. What would work for me? The thought of going to a table quiz gives probably Gen Alphas the ick, you know, because they're only 16 and, you know, they only come into the workplace in 2010. So, you know, they're those people that have just joined us recently. Exactly. And I think that what we need to do, and it was interesting, somebody said to me recently, I was chatting about this, that we'd done this bit of work and generational stuff came up. And they said, why are people not just talking to each other about it to find out what they want and what works for them? And why can't we just go out and say, well, as a team, we're all a bit different. What would work for all of us in terms of a bit of a get-together or a team day out or an evening or whatever? And I think that's probably at the core of love it is, let's just actually have the conversation. Let's have the conversation about what is it that everybody wants? Because actually now, we've got a much better, arguably, work-life balance, and people want to finish at 5 and go home. It doesn't mean they're not committed to the team or the organization or their work or each other. It just means that they want to get back to their young children, their families, their partners, their whatevers. And I think that conversation can really help to just pull that out and have an open, honest conversation about it.

Yeah, because when you think about the commitments that different people have outside of work that might decide how they need to work, how they need to work, and like leaving in the evening. And I mean, it's, as you say, kids, family, it could be caring of your parents when you get to a certain age, you know, and that's— there's huge commitments. And then there's younger people who want to really be connected within an organization. They want to make friends. There's a social aspect to it. And so that Thursday drinks might actually become a really important thing, even if it's not drinks, it might be going for something else, it might be a slightly different setup, but, and I think that when you think about it, it's the one-size-fits-all again approach that, that just isn't necessarily the one to have in an organization. And this can be around communication as well as connection, and it's so you're trying to make sure that what you're doing it may be encouraging one group, or maybe they may love what is being done, but another group might feel completely alienated, and it might feel totally weird and, and absolutely not something they want to do. That means you think of it— I've seen like the very younger generations coming into work, and, and they're more— it's more important to them to have time outside of work. So they're not looking for that connection, they're not looking for that Thursday evening thing, they're not looking for going for lunch with people. They want to go to the gym for their lunch break, you know. So there's, there's different expectations and wants and needs. And the other side of it is the younger generations coming into the workplace now are asking for what they need. They know what they need, they know what they want, and they're asking for it, whereas other generations maybe feel that they're waiting to be told they can do something, or they're waiting to be given it, acknowledged that they're doing great work, and here you go, instead of asking for it. And I know I definitely come from that, where I didn't ask for things. I just hoped if I did a really good job, I someone would recognize it and then I would get the things that I needed without ever asking for what I actually needed, you know. So whereas I think generations coming in now are much better at asking for what they need and knowing what they need and knowing what the boundaries are in terms of their work, but it's how do we build those kind of cross-generational networks deliberately so that we have different generations talking to each other and understanding each other. And again, back to the empathy and understanding, and you know, that could be anywhere from your reverse mentoring, which I love the idea of reverse mentoring.

I love it as well.

Yeah, or that mixed cohort project. So you have different people on a project, you know, and structuring those conversations around how work is changing. This can really build that understanding that simply working alongside each other can achieve so much more and so much more understanding of each other, you know. So rather than, you know, sometimes generations can kind of split off from each each other. And because it feels normal, feels safe, I understand what you think, I understand what you think. So I'm just gonna— and it's the same as any difference. This is what happens. We go to what we know. So it's trying to, again, be intentional about how we mix it up so that people are learning from each other.

Beautiful. You know what? I think we're going to leave it there because that's a great place to finish, given that we've said the word intentional. There it is again, 44,000 times. I think for me, it was a red thread that ran through the entirety of the conversations that you and I had, the themes that we came up with, and then some of the practical things in the report that leaders and organizations can do to start to address some of these challenges. So if anything here chimed with you, if we've talked about something that you thought, oh yeah, that is a challenge that we're having actually really, go and download the report. Go and have a look at the report. We've put in some really practical ways in there that you can address some of these challenges that have popped up. You can go to inspiringchange.ie/bridgingthegap, all one word, and you'll be able to download the full report there. But for now, Saive, thanks a million. Really enjoyed the chat. It was great to be able to explore that with you. And yeah, let's go.

Fantastic. Thank you.

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