Happiness Advantage Principle 7

PRINCIPLE #7

Social Investment -- Why Social Support Is Your Single Greatest Asset

I was 18 years old, lost in a burning building, and blind. As I fumbled through the flames, it occurred to me: Maybe I shouldn’t have volunteered for this. 

It was my senior year of high school, and I was coming to the tail end of my 90 hours of volunteer firefighter training in my home town of Waco, Texas. The final test before completing the training was called the Fire Maze, an exercise in which the veteran firefighters would put us newbies through our first, real-life, full-scale fire. Weighed down with flame-repellent suits, oxygen tanks, and dread, we were led to an empty farm silo called the smoke tank. The firefighters opened the metal door to reveal a giant room filled with an intricate wooden maze, with walls ten feet high and combustibles like old tires and pieces of wood littering the floor. Before we even had time to take in the whole scene, the veteran firefighters put torches to the wood, and the entire maze lit up in flames. 

The Texas sun had already heated the day to nearly 100 degrees, but that seemed cool compared to the furnace blast now racing through the building. We picked up our masks, only to find that they had been completely covered in black paint - to replicate how hard it is to see in a real fire, our instructors said. I looked out at the growing blaze in front of us; this “fake” fire seemed plenty real to me. I put on my mask. I couldn’t see a thing. 

The firefighters yelled our instructions over the roar of the flames:

There is a dummy trapped in the middle of the maze. Your goal is to rescue him as quickly as possible. In a real fire in a strange home, it is exceedingly easy to get lost and disoriented. The only way to avoid this is to keep in constant contact with the wall. You will enter the building in teams of two, holding on to each other, so one of you can hold onto the wall, while the other sweeps the floor for the dummy. This task would be nearly impossible alone, but working with a partner, it can be done fairly easily.

The firefighters assured us that the whole task should take only seven to ten minutes, but we had a whole hour of oxygen in our tanks just in case. An alarm bell would alert us when we were down to our final five minutes of air, giving us plenty of time to exit safely. Finally, the firefighters reminded us again of our human lifelines - our partners. In a fire, it might seem counterintuitive to hold on to your teammate, but that was the best way of getting out alive. 

The veterans flung open the door, and we crawled head first into the inferno. I started gulping oxygen, and I could feel my partner grip my jacked at the wrist and hear him breathing just as hard. We started timidly feeling our way through the smoke. He went first, keeping a hand on the wall, while I held onto him with one hand and used the other to feel along the floor for the dummy. About ten minutes into the maze, everything seemed to be going fine, except for the fact that we couldn’t see anything and felt moments away from heat stroke. But we still hadn’t found the dummy. 

That’s when I heard the bell. Surrounded by females and smoke, blind, and crawling around on my knees, I tried to make sense of what was happening. Why was the alarm on my partner’s air tank going off? There had to be at least 45 minutes of oxygen left, yet the bell meant he had only five minutes of air to go. Must be some kind of mistake, I thought. 

Then my bell went off.

Veteran firefighters would have remained calm. We panicked. Our ability to reason vanished. I unthinkingly let go of my partner, and then he let go of the wall, which meant the worst: We were both alone, and we had both lost the way back out. Disoriented and frightened, we flailed blindly in opposite directions, groping the air and calling each other’s name. But I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the fire and was sure he couldn’t hear me either. As the minutes ticked by, I began to feel increasingly helpless and scared. I crawled around frantically, sure that my oxygen supply was rapidly running out. 

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I felt the heat recede as a pair of strong arms dragged me out of the maze into safety. As I gulped for fresh air, the veterans revealed several things. First, everything that had gone wrong was a part of the training; the bells on the tanks were set to go off early, raising the false alarm that we were out of air. Second, when the firefighters went in after us, they had found me crawling around in circles at a dead end, and my partner 20 feet away, equally lost and doing more or less the same. Third, there had been no dummy. As the firefighters like to say at the end of training every year: The only dummies in the fire are the newbies. And they always have to be saved.

At the time, I remember thinking that this was a particularly cruel trick. But years later, I’m impressed at how memorably the Fire Maze training instilled in me the lesson that is at the heart of Principle 7 - that when we encounter an unexpected challenge or threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.  

The Mistake We Make

This principle is just as true in the modern workplace as it is in the fury smoke tank. In the midst of challenges and stress at work, nothing is more crucial to our success than holding on to the people around us. Yet when the alarm bells at work go off, all too often we become blind to this reality and try to go it alone; and as a result we end up like I did, circling helplessly at some dead end corner until we run out of air.

We don’t have to go to the brink of a collapsing economy to understand how easy it is to retreat into our own little shells at the moment we need to be reaching out to others the most. As the deadline looms and the pressure mounts, we start eating lunch at our desks, working late, coming in on weekends. Soon, we’re “focused like a laser” (or so we tell ourselves), which means no face time with direct reports, no casual hallway chats, no time even for nonessential calls with clients. 

One of two things usually happens at this juncture. Either we falter and fail to finish our project, or we power through and get it done, then immediately get rewarded with another challenging project, though now we have zero oxygen left in our tank. Either way, we’re not only miserable, dejected, and overwhelmed, but lost in a dead end, unable to perform - and all alone. 

The most successful people take the exact opposite approach. Instead of turning inward, they actually hold tighter to their social support. Instead of divesting, they invest. Not only are these people happier, but they are more productive, engaged, energetic, and resilient. They know that their social relationships are the single greatest investment they can make in the Happiness Advantage. 

Investing In The Happiness Advantage

One of the longest-running psychological studies of all time - the Harvard Men study - followed 268 men from their entrance into college in the late 1930s all the way through the present day. From this wealth of data, scientists have been able to identify the life circumstances and personal characteristics that distinguished the happiest, fullest lives from the least successful ones. In the summer of 2009, George Vaillant, the psychologist who has directed this study for the last 40 years, told the Atlantic Monthly that he could sum up the findings in one word” love - full stop.” Could it really be so simple? Vaillant wrote his own follow-up article that analyzed the data in great detail, and his conclusions proved the same: that there are “70 years of evidence that our relationships with other people matter, and matter more than anything else in the world.” 

This study’s findings have been duplicated time and again. In their book Happiness, psychologists Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener review the massive amount of cross-cultural research that has been conducted on happiness over the last free decades, and they conclude that, “like food and air, we seem to need social relationships to thrive.” That’s because when we have a community of people we can count on - souse, family, friends, colleagues - we multiply our emotional, intellectual, and physical resources 

So when a colleague stops you in the hallway at work to say hello and ask about your day, the brief interactions actually sparks a continual upward spiral of happiness and its inherent rewards.

Surviving and Thriving With Social Investment

Our need for social support isn’t just in our heads. Evolutionary psychologists explain that the innate need to affiliate and form social bonds has been literally wired into our biology. When we make a positive social connection, the pleasure-inducing hormone oxytocin is released into our bloodstream, immediately reducing anxiety and improving concentration and focus. Each social connection also bolsters our cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immune systems, so that the more connections we make over time, the better we function. 

We have such a biological need for social support, our bodies can literally malfunction without it. When we enjoy strong social support, on the other hand, we can accomplish impressive feats of resilience, and even extend the length of our lives. 

Social Capital As Stress Relief

The same strategy - hold onto others - is just as crucial for our survival as we navigate the daily stresses of the working world. Studies show that each positive interaction employees have during the course of the work day actually helps return the cardiovascular system back to resting levels (a benefit often termed “work recovery”), and that over the long haul, employees with more of these interactions become protected from the negative effects of job strain. Each connection also lowers levels of cortisol, a hormone related to stress, which helps employees recover faster from work related stress and makes them better prepared to handle it in the future.

Investing In High Performance

We learned in Principle 5, the Zorro Circle, that those of us who believe we have control over the outcome of our fates have a huge advantage in work and in life. HTis fact can’t be denied. But it also doesn’t mean we have to exist in a vacuum or that our success hinges on our efforts alone. Remember the 70-year-long Harvard Men Study? Researchers found that social bonds weren’t just predictive of overall happiness, but also of eventual career achievement, occupational success, and income. We are particularly independent minded when it comes to assigning credit for achievements.

High Quality Connections

To make a difference to work performance and job satisfaction, social contact need not always be deep to be effective. Organizational psychologists have found that even brief encounters can form “high-quality connections,” which fuel openness, energy, and authenticity among coworkers, and in turn lead to a whole host of measurable, tangible gains in performance. 

Google is perhaps the most famous example of a company that truly understands the importance of social connections. This isn’t just lip service - Google reflects this understanding in their practices. Not only do company cafeterias stay open well past the hours of a traditional workday, making it easy for employees to dine together as much as possible, Google employees have access to onsite day care and are even encouraged to make time to visit their kids throughout the day. 

Appreciating Assets

Financial planners tell us that the surest way to grow our stock portfolios is to keep reinvesting the dividends. So it is with our social portfolios as well. Not only do we need to invest in new relationships, we should always be reinvesting in our current relationships because, like our stocks, social support networks grow stronger the longer they are held. Fortunately, there is a whole host of techniques we can use to aid us in this endeavor. 

Every time you cross the office threshold, you have an opportunity to form a high-quality connection. When traveling down busy corridors, greet colleagues you cross paths with, and remember to look them in the eye. This isn’t just for show; neuroscience has revealed that when we make eye contact with someone, it actually sends a signal to the brain that triggers empathy and rapport. Ask interested questions, schedule face-to-face meetings, and initiate conversations that aren’t always talk-oriented. A popular manager at a top 100 law firm once told me that he set out to learn one new thing about a coworker each day, which he would then reference in later conversations. The social capital he invested in each day paid out in increasingly large ways as his employees felt more connected to both him and the firm.

Building A Socially Invested Team

If you’re a leader, you not only have the power to strengthen our own connections, but to foster a work environment that values, instead of hinders, social investment. So if you’re in a leadership position in your company (or even if you’re not!) simply introducing two employees who don’t know each other is probably the easiest and fastest way to invest in social dividends. To be even more effective, the introductions should go beyond just name, department, and job description.

Time for team lunches and after hours socialization is also crucial. Even the classically boring meeting, says Jane Dutton, can be designed in a way to foster high-quality connections. Meeting practices that encourage member contribution and active listening foster group commitment. The leaders most committed to social investment also get moving, quite literally. The best way to form more connections at work is to get out from behind the desk. 

Connecting with employees face-to-face also provides a perfect opportunity to put into practice a recommendation we talked about earlier in the book - frequent recognition and feedback. This is why I often ask managers to write an email of praise or thanks to a friend, family member, or colleague each morning before they start their day’s work - not just because it contributes to their own happiness, but because it very literally cements a relationship. Whether the “thank you” is for years of emotional support or for one day of help around the office, expressions of gratitude at work have been proven to strengthen both personal and professional bonds.

Lessons From A Fire Maze

As I saw when the economy crumbled, sometimes it takes a crisis to teach us the importance of social investment. As one man noted, “People are helping each other and getting back together. You’re not the lone ranger anymore.”