Interested in more careers-related content? Check out our new weekly Work Life newsletter. Sent every Monday afternoon.
Concerns about work’s impact on health tend to focus on the mental and physical repercussions. But Kasley Killam, a Vancouver native and health consultant now based in California, says that misses an important part of the picture: Social health.
“Even if you have a strong body and mind, you can’t be fully healthy without meaningful connection,” she writes in The Art and Science of Connection.
Giving some attention to connection can help us live longer, healthier and happier. But we underestimate the importance of relationships on our health, studies have shown. As well, today’s trends at work run counter to the need for social connection. Everything is rushed and we are operating in a hybrid era, seeing co-workers face-to-face less frequently. Also, artificial intelligence is offering us a machine rather than a human as a colleague on tasks.
She calls it the paradox of being plugged in. “Ask yourself: Am I using the tools available to connect meaningfully? Or are they substituting for quality time in person with the people I care about?” she writes.
She urges you to take stock of your social health. Start by identifying who fuels it. There will probably be an inner circle of one to five relationships – family members, close friends, a romantic partner and perhaps a work colleague.
Then reflect on the strength of each of those connections. Who would you feel comfortable turning to in an emergency? Who feels like a spark for your soul? Also: Who among the connections should be excluded because they are hurting your health?
Now move on to how to better optimize your connections. Be selective, because relationships take time and energy. She warns that extroverts who say yes to every invitation may benefit from being more selective.
She offers these five guiding principles:
- All for one and one for all: Social health comes not only from relationships with individuals but also from belonging to communities.
- It takes two to tango: Social health is best when bidirectional — we need to both give and receive in our relationships and communities to lead socially healthy lives.
- Quality over quantity: In general, the quality of your sources of connection is more important than the quantity of them.
- To each their own: We all have individual preference of what our connections and social health should look like.
- What goes down will go up: Social health will ebb and flow according to life circumstances and the steps you take.
After evaluating your situation, you can choose to stretch, increasing the number of relationships or communities you connect with. Or you might decide it’s best to rest – keeping things as they are or even reducing the number of key contacts. You can decide to deepen your connections with some individuals. For others, you might choose to just sustain the existing relationship.
Also, consider your style. Based on two factors – your preferred or typical amount of interaction on a spectrum from infrequent to frequent and your preferred or typical type of connection from casual to deep – she came up with these four styles:
- The Butterfly: Thrives on frequent interaction and casual connection.
- The Wallflower: Thrives on infrequent interaction and casual connection.
- Firefly: Thrives on infrequent interaction and deep connection.
- Evergreen: Thrives on frequent interaction and deep connection.
Looking at the list, you may see yourself as one specific style or a mix. And the styles can evolve over time. She stresses that one approach is not better than the other. But each is the route, for you, to social health.
Quick hits
- Molly Graham, who has served in the past decade as chief operating officer for various companies, notes that when you’re working in bigger organizations it’s easy to get sucked into the dynamics of their performance review and rating processes, losing any sense of perspective over your self-worth: “It can feel like a video game: you have to figure out the right combination of buttons to win.” If that’s happening to you, find a friend or an experience that can help you remember what you value in life.
- Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish says “The difference between average results and exceptional is often found in what you don’t do. Everyone can say yes to great opportunities, but only a focused person will say no to average ones.” You can do anything, but not everything.
- “Every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something hard,” writes venture capitalist Sahil Bloom.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.