The Loneliness Paradox
I was working with a HR Manager last week to agree on the content for a Human Skills for Leaders programme that I’m running (more details here) and we got talking about loneliness.
She said that it was a topic that came up time and again in their place of work for all employees (regardless of where they worked), but that they hadn’t developed a good way of talking about it. They’re not alone.
When was the last time you talked about loneliness at your place of work? Even writing about it feels taboo! However, the evidence around loneliness is stark.
Research from Gallup last year revealed that one in five employees worldwide experience loneliness. The Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness “a lethal pandemic” and compared it to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Boston Consulting Group's 2024 research shows psychological safety functions as an equaliser, which is particularly effective for diverse (gender, race, location) employee groups. The very thing we're afraid to discuss is the thing that drives our best people away.
This was reinforced by recent Japanese research which found a direct correlation between workplace loneliness and job turnover within six months.
Finally, research from Cigna found that three in five adults reported feelings of loneliness, which typically spills over into stress, anxiety, and depression, which are all still emotions that we feel shame in talking about or else are passed off by management as a ‘bad day’ or that people just ‘need to get their head in the game.’
For years we’ve treated loneliness like professional kryptonite; where being vulnerable about how you feel equates to weakness, and admitting loneliness feels like career suicide. Whilst it’s fair to say that it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic, the signs were there prior to it.
However here’s the paradox, the teams that perform the best aren't populated by emotional robots, they're filled with people who can say “I'm struggling with connection” or “I miss being around people” without fear of judgment.
Gallup found that employees who feel a sense of connection to each other and to the organisation that they work for (i.e. one that recognises vulnerability as a human trait that everyone has) are 64% less likely to experience loneliness than their disengaged counterparts.
These organisations prioritise meaningful connection. They don’t talk about being ‘one team’ for the purposes of results only or performative culture, they talk about it in the sense of ‘we are together as people and our humanity is our strength, not a weakness to be hidden.’
They understand that loneliness isn't a character flaw, it's an opportunity. When someone says they ‘not feeling themselves’ or they ‘feel disconnected’ there’s no judgement. Team mates recognise that psychological safety lessens feelings of loneliness and fulfils the need for belonging by rallying around each other using empathy and compassion.
These are basic human needs; not only to help us to refocus, but also to help us feel heard and understood.
As the research shows, leaders who think this humanity undermines results are wrong. The strongest teams aren't built by people who never feel lonely, they're built by people brave enough to admit when they do.
