Hello and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast where we talk all things leadership, business, communication and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

Now, I want you to be honest with yourself for just a second. Have you ever felt that little wave of relief when your plans get canceled, when you don't have to go to that happy hour or meet that friend for dinner or commute to that in person meeting at the office? Well, yeah, me too. We've all been there. But what if that feeling, that sweet, cozy sigh of relief is quietly eroding our relationships, our creativity, our career growth, and even our well being? It's something that I've dubbed the acronym EASE E.A.S.E Elective Avoidance of Social exchanges. And I define it as the habitual comfort of putting forth social effort. And that's what we're unpacking in this episode today.

So I talk about EASE E.A.S.E Elective Avoidance of Social exchanges in my keynote, Reconnecting in Disconnected World. Now, I start off by talking about the difference between loneliness and social isolation. So loneliness is a feeling. It is the feeling that nobody gets you or that you are like alone and you're just not connected with other people. But it's a feeling. It's an emotional response. You might be in a crowded room or with your extended family or even in an intimate relationship like a marriage or a partnership and feel lonely because it's a feeling.

Now, social isolation, on the other hand, as I talk about in the keynote, is if we were to do a network map of your social connections with you as a dot in the center and spokes out to the people that you are in relationship with that would identify whether you were relatively socially isolated, like not that many connections, or whether you have a vast number of social connections. But having limited number of social connections, being essentially socially isolated does not necessarily mean you are lonely. They do not necessarily correlate. Sometimes they do, but it is not a matter of necessity. Now I define those two things and then I layer that up with ease. That is again, elective avoidance of social exchanges.

I layer that into the mix, noting that we have really gotten comfortable with not putting forth social effort from staying in to binge watch Netflix instead of going to a movie or going to a play at a theater, to ordering takeout or delivery food instead of sitting down in a restaurant. It has gotten all too easy. Hence E A S E to Avoid Social Exchanges

Now, today's episode is a bit of a continuation of a conversation that we started last week in the episode titled the Paradox of Connectivity. So that was episode 212, and in that episode I shared how we're more digitally connected than ever before, yet many people feel socially isolated and alone. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, you're going to want to download that and give it a listen soon. It's a really nice companion episode to this episode. Now, whether you're all caught up with that episode or not, just buckle up because we're going deeper. So what is EASE? So again, let's start with what I mean by EASE.

That elective avoidance of social exchanges. And this isn't about being introverted, this isn't about being shy, it isn't about social anxiety. And it's definitely not about needing to be alone to recharge. Ease or elective avoidance of social exchanges, is when we continuously and repeatedly choose to avoid social interaction, not because we can't engage, but because it's, well, easier not to. We tell ourselves we're preserving our energy. We call it self care. But over time it becomes something else entirely. Disconnection.

Now at work, ease might look like choosing to participate by zoom or teams in a big town hall meeting when you could attend in person. It might look like avoiding optional team lunches or other kinds of gatherings that are not absolutely required. It could also look like always defaulting to chat or email when a quick face to face conversation would be better, more efficient and, well, more connected. At home, what does ease look like? Well, it looks like letting friendships fade because reaching out is just too much effort. It looks like staying home instead of saying yes to social invites. It looks like feeling fine but not really truly fulfilled and not feeling at your best. It's seductive, it's cozy, and it's quietly powerful in all the wrong ways.

So let's talk about how you know if you, or maybe your team, if we're talking at work, are operating under the premise of ease. So here are a few red flags at work. Maybe you haven't met half the people on your team in person ever. Like you wouldn't even probably recognize them if you bumped into them at the grocery store. You don't know anything personal about your co workers. You don't know their pet, if they have pets or what their pets names are. You don't know if they have kids or what their kids names are. You don't know what their weekend hobbies are. And also there's no hallway chatter.

Even and especially if you are in the office. There are no side conversations, no unplanned collaboration. And those things can happen just as easily on teams and zoom as they can in the office. So you don't get the excuse of, oh, but I'm not in the office, I can't have hallway conversations. Absolutely. You can have the analogy to a hallway conversation on teams showing up a few minutes before the meeting starts or just calling somebody up just because you can.

In your personal life, let's say maybe you haven't initiated a social plan in weeks or months. Or when somebody says, hey, you want to grab coffee, your gut reaction is, oh, I don't have the energy to do that.

And you start saying no to things that you used to love doing. These aren't just coincidences, they're patterns. If it just happens once in a while, why then it's by accident. But if these things are happening regularly, then it's a pattern. So here's a little self checklist. When was the last time you initiated a connection either at work or at home or in your broader community? Not responded to one, but initiated one. You thought up a plan of something brand new and invited people to it. Not your standing meeting if it's at work, but rather you said, hey, let's grab lunch or let's do a happy hour or even let's do a virtual lunch or a virtual happy hour for those of you who are still working from home or have a hybrid schedule.

Or maybe you're just not geographically located next to your co workers nearby. Now if it's been a while since you've done any of these things, you might be living just a little too comfortably in that state of ease. So why do we choose ease? Because it's a choice, my friends. It is absolutely a choice. So let's go into some of the psychology behind it. Why do we do this? Well, there is a crafty. There is a crafty psychological cocktail at work here and it's comprised of a handful of different things. The first is decision fatigue.

Now you are making lots of big decisions and literally thousands of micro decisions every day. Do I want a second cup of coffee right now or not? What am I going to wear today? Do I have time to run to the restroom before that next meeting? Right. You have all these little decisions that are working in your brain every day. And by the time that place where you could invite somebody to do something rolls in, your brain is like, nope, Hard pass. You've made altogether too many decisions today. You don't even know what time you would ask them to meet you, where you would ask them to meet you, or what day you would ask them to meet you. So decision fatigue is your first factor that's at work in this cocktail. The second is social ambiguity.

What if it's awkward? What if it's not fun? What if they talk about the budget report for an hour instead of just talking about like fly fishing or their dog or the things that I would rather hear about? So that social ambiguity, that awkwardness could be there and then there's cognitive depletion. And what do I mean by that? Well, after a long day of digital communication, even low stakes interactions like happy hour feel like one more thing to do on your to do list. And don't forget comfort creep. The longer we live in that cozy little avoidance zone, the harder it becomes to leave it. Now, psychologists call this avoidance coping, dodging discomfort by skipping the situation altogether. And the problem is that avoidance reinforces itself. The more we avoid, the easier it becomes to keep avoiding and the harder it becomes to re engage. Now this isn't just a modern problem.

If you heard last week's episode, you heard me talk about Robert Putman's work on Bowling Alone and how his book that came out in 2000 traced how social capital has been declining for decades. You also heard me talk about Sherry Turkle's work Alone Together. And in her book she shows how digital convenience masquerades as connection. Now, we've been edging towards this concept of ease long before zoom fatigue was even a thing. Now let's talk about why this matters at the work, in the workplace.

So the impact of ease at work, well, this sense of ease, again, avoiding that social interaction, it erodes trust. When we avoid connection, we stop building relationships. And in low trust environments, collaboration dies on the vine, my friends.

And ease stifles innovation. When you don't bump up against people from other departments and people who think differently and people who act differently and people who have different values from you, you're not cross pollinating ideas and creativity shrinks in echo chambers. Ease dilutes culture. Culture isn't a slogan. Organizational culture isn't a sign on the wall. It's built into the moments between meetings. The coffee chats, the hallway jokes, the shared oh man, that was a rough meeting plays out in all of those moments. And here's where it gets really tricky.

As companies try to bring people back into the office, many are running into emotional resistance, not just logistical barriers. People don't want to go back because of traffic time or because of the commute, because of the inconvenience of going to the office. People don't want to go back because they've grown accustomed to it being easy, accustomed to that avoidance of social exchanges. Now, leaders need to take note. Culture won't rebuild itself. Engagement doesn't happen passively. You can't mandate connection. Sure, you can mandate return to office, whether it's two days a week or five days a week, but you can't mandate connection.

You have to invite it, you have to cultivate it. You have to exemplify it. We'll get to how in just a few moments. But first, let's look at the impact of ease in your home life and bring it back into your personal life. Ease might masquerade as a form of self care. I'm staying in this weekend for self care. Now, sometimes that is true when you're absolutely maxed out and you need to take some downtime. But for many of you, that's not the case.

And over time, that elective avoidance of social exchange leads to a shrinking social circle. Less resistance, less resilience during hard times, fewer meaningful memories and new experiences, especially the kind that involve other people. Now, sure, your couch might be comfortable, but relationships are built in discomfort. Relationships are built in showing up, in being present, even when it's inconvenient.

Now, left unchecked, that elective avoidance of social exchanges, well, it becomes loneliness in disguise. So let's look at how to push back against ease both at work and at home. Because remember, it is a seductive psychological cocktail that goes to work in your brain, making you think you're taking care of yourself and looking out for number one. But really what you're doing is putting distance between you and others over time.

So let's look at how to push back and get tactical about it at work. You can do these starting today. Again, these are tactical ways to push back against that elective avoidance of social exchanges that tends to take over. Okay, I'm going to give you a challenge. The first one is to initiate one new connection this week. Reach out to somebody outside of your team and ask for a 15 minute introductory call if you've not met them before, or a 15 minute catch up if it's somebody that you know from work, whether a long time ago or a short while ago, but your work just doesn't intersect on that same regular basis. Okay, so initiate one new connection. It could be a reconnection with somebody you already know or a brand new connection introducing yourself to somebody that you have not yet had much of a chance to work with or have regular connection with.

Okay, Number two, opt for in person when it matters. Now, of course, not every meeting needs to be face to face, but some things truly are better face to face. So if you are working from home, or mostly from home, or you have a certain amount of discretion over your calendar, I want you to look at the week's events coming up. Or if things like parking and commuting and childcare and so forth are challenges for you, then you might look to next week to plan a specific time when you know you are going to go into the office. And also encourage yourself to set up other meetings around that so that you're not just driving in for one meeting, but make a half day of it. Make a full day of it. And number three, revive the informal connections. So start meetings with personal connections.

Celebrate birthdays, employment anniversaries, or just silly things. Create space for those real human moments even, and especially if you are working from home or on that hybrid schedule. All right, so those are three things for you to do. Your throwdown from me at work this week. Initiate one new connection or reconnection. 15 minutes is tops. Opt for in person when it matters. So identify a time when it really is going to make a difference to be face to face and make the effort to do that. And then work in some additional meetings around that. And then number three, revive the informal. Whether you're face to face or online, create some of those informal moments.

All right, now let's look at your at home time, your family, your civic engagement, your connections with your friends. Say yes to one invitation this week, even if your first instinct is to decline. So say yes to something. Number two, host something yourself. So be the one who initiates the invitation. A dinner, a coffee, a game night, a walk in the neighborhood. Be the one who issues the invitation. Be the social catalyst instead of the social avoider. Be the connector. And then number three, reconnect with someone that you miss. Send that text, make that call, you know the one, the one that keeps coming top of mind. But then something else comes up before you get a chance to actually make that connection. So reconnect with someone that you miss.

All right, again, I'll give you that checklist. Say yes to one invitation this week. Host something. Be the inviter one time this week. And reconnect with someone that you miss. It could be as easy as sending a text. All right, all of this requires a mindset shift to get out of ease Collective avoidance of social exchanges. So think of actual social connection like a muscle.

If you don't use it, it's going to atrophy and it's going to get weaker and weaker. But the good news? It's trainable. Just like muscles, every time you put in a rep, it gets stronger. So every time you choose social connection over avoidance of social connection, you build strength. So let me leave you with this my friends. Ease feels good in the short term. Elective avoidance of social exchanges, well, it's easy. But in the long run it costs us our creativity, our resilience, our relationships and our joy. So choosing connection, especially when it's not convenient, it isn't just good for your career, it's good for your relationships outside of the office. And it's good for your soul.

So what is one social interaction you've been avoiding? Could you say yes instead? Could you make the first move? Could you initiate the invitation? Could you send the text, book the coffee date? Or step into that meeting room in person and with a smile? Let's not live at the mercy of what's easiest. Let's choose what's meaningful.

Thank you for being on this journey with me here today and if this episode resonated with you, please share it with a colleague or a friend who might be living a little too much in. Ease elective avoidance of social exchange.

And always, as always, if you are a leader looking to build stronger connection in your organization, please reach out to me. I would love to speak at your next event or do a training, whether that's in person or online, to facilitate these social connections which really are at the heart of the matter in organizational life.

As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve. And tune in next week for another insightful exploration of the trends shaping our professional world.

Now, if you learned something or you just simply enjoy this content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast player of choice and follow me on social media. These are all excellent and no cost ways for you to support me and my work. You'll find the links to my social media over on the show notes page janelanderson.com/213 for episode 213 until next time, keep thriving and keep working towards the future that we all want. Until then, my friends, be well.