Part of our DNA is that we evolved in small groups. Humans aren’t particularly strong or fast. We’re not poisonous. We can’t fly. Our evolutionary advantage is that we can cooperate, unlike almost any other species on Earth, and communicate with each other. We can build amazing innovations, out-compete other species, and this has allowed us to spread around the world. Our main fear is getting socially ostracized because our ancestors who did that died. They didn’t live a very long life.
Indeed. This is all about ideas of belonging, avoiding loneliness, and — nice, big work concept of the past 10–15 years — “psychological safety.” One of the core problems with work is that the idea of belonging is actually not that common. Instead, it falls under HR conceptually, which means it’s a buzzword where nothing happens. A lot of managers in companies are absentee managers, meaning they barely know your name five years into being your boss, and that doesn’t foster much belonging either. Then there’s the general issue of respect at work, which is none too rosy a picture, and where some managers say on surveys that they simply “don’t have the time” to respect their employees. Loneliness is an increasing topic at work, and people report having less-close work colleagues, which only exacerbated during COVID. Isolation at work is real. Silos, pens, swim lanes, turf wars, etc.
