An increasing number of people are suffering from loneliness at work, which can lead to burnout, impact job satisfaction, and reduce both performance and job retention. Health care expenditures rise as a result.
Isolation can cause feelings of loneliness. There is no correlation between the number of interactions you have with your coworkers and whether or not you work from home. What important is the depth and breadth of one’s interpersonal connections. If you’re surrounded by people with whom you don’t sense a genuine connection, you may find yourself feeling alone. It’s hard to tell if your coworkers see the real you or a meticulously staged, work-safe front. If you fall into the second category, you’re more likely to feel isolated.
Many people mistakenly believe that loneliness is a personal matter that can be solved with only one person’s efforts. An effective technique to combat social isolation is peer coaching. Unmeaningful social talks can be replaced with meaningful conversation and significant personal connections through peer coaching.
What is Peer Coaching?
Peer coaching is about building a network of allies who can help each other in making positive changes that will lead to better performance. As well as helping students learn, these partnerships also alleviate workplace loneliness. To better implement change, employees get new views on their problems and possibilities as well as accountability partners. It’s a cultural shift when companies engage in peer coaching systems because they express a willingness to communicate openly about their personal lives with their coworkers. Employees feel more connected, trust grows, and individuals get insight into their own issues by helping others.
Here’s how peer coaching helps to reduce workplace loneliness:
1. Foster A Sense of Belonging and Community
When people feel isolated, regardless of how much social support they have, they experience symptoms of loneliness. Peer-to-peer coaching fosters a sense of belonging among employees when they are supported by their employers. Employees learn to see lowering their walls as an asset, rather than a problem, when they see how exposed they become among peers. When we feel like we’re part of a community that cares about one other, loneliness fades away.
2. Replaces Socializing with Real Conversation
Socializing is when people communicate mostly via email or chat and then occasionally log on to social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn to keep up the appearance of being in touch. It doesn’t matter how frequently we communicate; what counts is whether or not we communicate in a meaningful way. Peer coaching replaces socializing with actual conversation. Peer coaching fosters mutual understanding because of the reciprocal nature of the conversations in which employees take turns discussing work in the context of their entire lives. To combat loneliness, peer coaching can be more helpful than traditional social gatherings since it allows people to speak freely without feeling the need to produce a speech or impress others.
3. Increases Psychological Safety
According to research, persons who are lonely are less able to form new relationships than those who are not. By engaging in recurring talks with the same partners, peer coaching is a powerful tool for cultivating long-term friendships. Coaching focuses on listening and asking questions. Peer-to-peer coaching exchanges provide a sense of psychological safety because participants regard their coaches as primarily focused on knowing what’s on the inside.
How to Start Peer Coaching?
First set up a simple technique for two people to test out a peer-to-peer coaching exchange following these basic criteria after you are comfortable with the idea of doing something to develop relationships at work. For a total of 20 minutes, each partner can coach the other. In other words, pay attention and refrain from intervening. Start with lunchtime coaching sessions to build trust and make it easier to plan one-on-ones that aren’t focused on business. Make sure you keep an eye on what individuals are learning about how to be productive as coaches and clients and utilize that information to make necessary improvements.
Peer coaching can help fight loneliness through one-on-one conversations that people can choose to have and where the work of making stronger human connections can take place.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
