Have you ever felt less than your best at the end of a conversation? Frustrated because you could not fully communicate the genius of your ideas or concern? Perhaps you had no opportunity to participate as someone else’s competitive power in the conversation space created dominance. Maybe it was their title, their words or your fear of being socially punished.
Have you ever heard of social isolation? It is a communication style that is wrapped around power, politics, resources and personalities.
What I am referring to has nothing to do with being physically alone. It has nothing to do with being preoccupied with spending too much time gaming or on the internet. Instead, this is what I call “conversation-based social isolation”; this comes from a temporary and involuntary instance where you experience a lack of social connection or instance of mental and emotional detachment with those involved. Understand that this is the opposite of psychological safety. It can also show up as a passive type of micro-behavior.
From my experience with clients, this communication style is derailing for them as the receiver of it. When it happens, you are intensely assessing if you are in or out of the speaker’s “situational tribe” of stakeholders. Your brain is telling you, “You are not invited into their tribe, and the tribe is moving forward without you,” or you no longer feel like a fully accepted participant in that situational tribe. You are on the outside, left behind. The brain automatically goes into search mode to read every interaction as “friend or foe.”
How does conversation-based social isolation occur? It’s two-pronged. First, it can be due to a lack of focused and meaningful exchange of ideas and information in the conversational space, where you are unable to contribute your reality and understanding. It can also be due to a lack of shifting toward thoughtful behaviors that create social intimacy and connection.
More than likely, these challenging behaviors are showing up in your interactions with this person as an ongoing pattern of behavior, and you are at the receiving end. As a result, for you, a negative emotional impression looms, and it is telling you that you feel rejected, diminished or judged. This is how trust levels drop and suspicion develops.
When the brain registers, unconsciously, a heightened sensitivity to social threats, then you experience a decline in fully accessing your executive brain. The executive brain enables us to think strategically, logically, creatively and with emotional caring. It has the ability to reframe for future needs and involves all critical capacities required for relationship connections to be made. This executive brain functioning is essentially turned off, like a water faucet. Typically, the brain then swiftly shifts its energy force to the amygdala, where fear and distrust reside, because it senses social isolation.
For instance, you learn through the grapevine that your counterpart has just landed a coveted lead role for a national client. You have been working on this client all along, and you know you are most qualified. You learn you were not considered because you have small children. This role would require travel. It seems you were the first choice otherwise. You were not given access to the conversation in order to contribute or make the decision for yourself.
Here is another to consider. You have an executive marketing responsibility, and it overlaps with other market leaders in a cross-functional way. You approach this by being collaborative and communicating early and often as well as closing the loop on task items. You learn one of your market leaders went behind your back and signed contract agreements to use outside service vendors. This market leader’s need should have been turned over to you to drive this decision and vendor relationship, but you were not made aware, and the deed is done. Now you will be held accountable to manage it.
I call these cases of conversation-based social isolation. You are feeling diminished, triggered, rejected. They did not extend trust to you but instead excluded you from situational tribes.
How To Handle Conversation-Based Social Isolation
Now, you have a decision to make: Compete or cooperate? Which do you choose?
According to Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer in their book Friend and Foe, humans are hardwired at an instinctive level to compete for survival (coming out on top). We fight over scarce resources, such as when we believe someone is taking something away from us; compete for situational status gains or recognition and vie for relationship bonds and a group identity of being in the tribe. Furthermore, this competitive side keeps us in pursuit of our own self-interest and needs. At the same time, we humans have a significant, hardwired need for social connection, which is vital to our survival, as well as our physical and mental well-being.
Which one wins out depends on what you believe will derive the best advantage for that situation or relationship. Galinsky and Schweitzer state every relationship has forces of both competitiveness and cooperation, and we’re always shifting toward balancing to reduce tension, as they ebb and flow.
Which one wins out or what do I do next needs to be reframed to include the understanding that leadership and influence happen in the conversational space. What I see as the real question in order to advance communication competence is to ask a relationship question first: “Do I want to create social isolation or social connection?”
In the conversational space, performance is not created equal. If I feel threatened, then I disconnect. There are different intensities of competitiveness; leave aggression, the strongest intensity, at the door.
In working with my clients, I initially see them behaving in ways that are competitive and protective to defend their status and protect their public image and scarce resources. This dominance blindspot creates conversational collisions and social isolation. We work on advancing their communication strength through a model you can follow, as well:
• care
• compassion
• courage
• candor
Open locked doors and get co-creating outcomes by strengthening your conversational competence. Leaders who tie their effectiveness, relationship influence and organizational results back to the conversational space, first, will get extraordinary results. These leaders develop conversational patterns of being mindfully present about their situational goals and relationship goals for every interaction. As one leader put it for each touch point, “I deliver wisdom and care.”