How to be happy at work: Firm up your ‘weak’ ties

In her regular column, business founder and wellness expert Nicola Elliott looks at one thing we can all do that will make our nine-to-five feel happier and healthier

A sense of belonging is ultimately the best way to connect and share (Getty)

Connecting with the people you work with doesn’t just make your team stronger — it’s good for your wellbeing too. Relationships at work play a huge role in determining how happy you’ll be in the office and how successful you will be at work too. Positive connections give us two valuable things – access to information and social support. Researcher and collaboration expert Mark Rivera says it’s the combination of these two things that makes us most successful, innovative and happy.

Crucially, you need to start by building trust and the quickest most authentic way to do that is to be open and honest with each other. A multi-year study at Google aimed to see which teams worked better and the answer was… those who trusted each other.

People collaborate more sharing their best ideas with those they trust and one of the best ways to build it is through something social scientists call a “vulnerability loop” – the concept that when you open up and show vulnerability with someone, they will do it back, and again, deepening the bond between you as you both respond empathetically.

Opening up a little about a struggle you’re having outside of work, or even a project you’re finding it hard to wrap your head around, will go a long way to building empathy and support.

Secondly, studies show that your closest circles of people aren’t necessarily the ones who will bring you the best, freshest information. This is more likely to come from acquaintances – something social scientists call “weak ties” – characters who have access to new information and different ways of looking at things.

When it comes to innovation, secondary circles are the most important for innovation; so think and connect outside the box. One study showed that people who had more of these “weak ties” that connected different groups in larger organisations were more likely to have higher performance scores, be promoted and even say they were part of a big “creative breakthrough” for the company.

The best way to create these ties is to join groups outside of your day-to-day team or department – sports, philanthropic or social – it doesn’t matter, the more the better. You’d be surprised at how much someone from a different department can give a fresh perspective. I find at Neom some of my most innovative days are talking with people in departments I don’t usually work in, joining the dots and seeing the impact of my work on them and theirs on me.

Finally, it’s our small, incidental connections that make us feel that we belong to something bigger than ourselves. There was an interesting experiment done at one big corporation where each week a new employee was assigned to one of five groups each with a different coloured T-shirt and something interesting began to happen.

Almost immediately people wearing yellow T-shirts started taking breakfast together, people in green T-shirts started walking to different sessions together, and at the end of the week the happy-hour budget was blown because people were hanging out together so much longer than they ever had. Interestingly these people stayed in touch for years after.

The T-shirt experiment had given people an easy way to identify with a new group they now belonged to. And a sense of belonging is ultimately the best way to connect and share, benefiting the business and its community as much as the individual.

Nicola Elliott is the founder of Neom, and her book, ‘The Four Ways to Wellbeing: Better Sleep. Less Stress. More Energy. Mood Boost’, is published by Penguin Life