Here we discuss the seduction of loneliness and the need to take risk if we are to connect with others. Phil explains that we need to create an environment that is as comfortable as possible for them to be themselves and connect with others.
Click here to find out more about Humans:Connecting.
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Here we discuss the seduction of loneliness and the need to take risk if we are to connect with others. Phil explains that we need to create an environment that is as comfortable as possible for them to be themselves and connect with others.
Click here to find out more about Humans:Connecting.
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Wellbeing at Work World's podcast Conversations. In Wellbeing at Work, we feature discussions with innovative HR and being leaders from around the globe, which reflects very much the summits we run in eight regions across the world, two of which are in Australia, which is where, of course, today's guest hails from. I'm John Brewer, I'm the host of this podcast and also do a little bit of emceeing here and there when the need arises. It's great to have with us our guest today, phil McAuliffe, who's the founder of Humans Connecting, which is based in Canberra, australia. Welcome, phil, great to have you with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, John. I feel like, with that introduction, saying that, yes, I am based in Australia, I feel like I need to say something like g'day or something very Australian, but it's lovely to be here.
Speaker 1:That's okay. You don't have to put on a cartoon Australian act in order to appeal to the audience. We're okay with that. Perhaps we should begin with your story in terms of your sort of loneliness and human connection story. When our paths first crossed, which I think was, uh, over a year ago now um, you were very much known as the lonely diplomat. Yes, and uh, very and again, tell me if I'm wrong but certainly a large part of your audience that time was from the lgbtq plus community and around that their sort of experience of loneliness, plus obviously your own as a diplomat. Tell us about that experience and how you got to where you are now.
Speaker 2:Firstly, I didn't want to do this work In my life's plan as someone in my mid-twenties which feels like it was a few minutes ago this wasn't in the plan for my life. At this point I was meant to be in a quarter office and enjoying the perks of a car park with my name on it or at least my position on it in an underground, sheltered car park in a government office somewhere here in Canberra and going off to Parliament House and talking to the Senate about things that we were working on and all that kind of stuff and talking to stakeholders and things like that. But here I am, working on destigmatizing loneliness and helping humans get the connection that we each need and deserve. And I'm here because I realized that as I was getting to my 40th birthday, I realized that I was experiencing loneliness, but I didn't know that's what it was. I just had this almost existential dread and I had a realization that, close to my 40th birthday, I was in Seoul in South Korea. I'm in diplomatic posting and it was my own, like my second diplomatic posting and our third together as a couple, as a unit and a family and everything on paper.
Speaker 2:John was amazing and so much of my life was amazing and I got to be Australia and talk to important people in governments that were important to Australia about things that were important and I did it well. I was really good at my job. Things that were important and I did it well. I was really good at my job and not only was I responsible for certain policy issues to do with immigration and migration in South Korea for Australia, but I was also responsible for it in Japan. So I was essentially commuting between Seoul and Tokyo and what a joy for a kid from a small country town in regional New South Wales, which I guess is like a wheat town in Saskatchewan to planes and waking up in Seoul and being in Tokyo and having meetings and looking out from the window and seeing the Imperial Palace in downtown Tokyo. And then, anyway, my life was amazing. But there was something within me that really wasn't there and I was looking around myself going well, like happy marriage, happy kids, amazing apartment, great job, that I'm good at living and working overseas again. Why aren't I happy?
Speaker 2:And that kind of percolated for a while and I thought, oh, it must be that I'm like I'm not working hard enough, so I need to work harder, harder do, the thing that got me through these funks before, and I realized that I didn't have the words to describe what I was thinking and feeling. So how can you ask for help when you don't know what words to use? And then I thought, oh, who do I talk to? And the people who were in my life that I was closest to I hadn't seen physically for about seven years, and I don't know how it is in Canada, but I suspect it's very similar there to here. But when you're having that catch-up conversation, you spend an hour. How's the wife, how's the husband, how are the kids, how's work, how's life? All this kind of stuff, what's going on with mutual friends and things. It's like, okay, see ya.
Speaker 2:And I didn't feel like I had anyone with whom I could pick up the phone and go. I don't know what words to say, but I need you to listen to me as I confront how I'm feeling and that, to me, was just awful. I felt like so empty and I realized I saw something in Boston Globe, an article that was about middle-age loneliness in men, or many middle-age experiencing loneliness, and it's a happenstance that I read it. I opened the app and read it and it dawned on me and it wasn't a comfortable epiphany. It was a very uncomfortable realization that the words that the journalist said was that was me. Save for a few nouns, that was me.
Speaker 1:And yeah. Yeah, because the life you describe is actually quite glamorous, right. Yes, you see this jet setting and you mentioned happy marriage, kids, that sort of wheeler-dealer role.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's probably misrepresenting what it is to be a diplomat, but nevertheless, you're working with important people, you're doing important work, and then you have this.
Speaker 1:It struck me when you were saying that and, before I squish it, I want to thank you for sharing that, because I have a lot of conversations with people about loneliness and they tend to be quite clinical. They're people who are in the sort of loneliness business. They're about fixing other people. They don't tend to talk about their own experience, right. But if, if the epiphany was I'm depressed, right, the, the solution to that would likely be therapy of some kind or a medication of some kind. But confronted with the notion of loneliness, particularly if you again I'm not quite clear I know you mentioned about age and stuff, how many years ago that was. It wasn't a time when people spoke about that, no, or that it was something that was addressed in any way.
Speaker 1:Is that fair?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I Googled it because I thought fix this and how do I fix this cleanly and tidily and without making much of a mess? And so I could still be a good husband, be a good dad, be a good employee, and I realized that the support out there was for the elderly and the bereaved.
Speaker 2:There was nothing there for me that I could see myself in. I called my employing agencies, p like the assistants people, and they were kind, but I received poor, what I know now to be very poor advice. I received pity, which made me feel even more alone, and I received the same advice, the same poor advice that I was getting off Google, which was you've just got to put yourself out there. And I think very directly I don't want to say rudely, but I was frustrated at this stage said like my employer gave me eight weeks of Korean and I have an enormous job that requires me to be on all the time, because you're never off, You're always representing your country and I work enormously long hours across two countries. I'm a dad, I'm a husband. Where does this magical time come from to put me out there? And out there is Korea. How, pray tell, do I go about being out there when I can tell the taxi driver where to go to get me home? Or I can order some drinks and food at a restaurant, but I can hardly engage on the finer points of a game, a social game, of something, or I can hardly have a chat to someone without imposing on them and it was very spectacularly poor advice for me, but it actually sparked something in me that stayed lit. I'm mixing metaphors here, please excuse me. I got support.
Speaker 2:I went through a coaching program and I learned more about myself and I actually became connected to myself.
Speaker 2:And when I started being me, then the connection that I was getting around me was so much what I needed because I was allowing myself to be me, and that was really hard in a high stress, high visibility, low risk tolerance, no tolerance for any kind of failure, an environment which we need you to be adventurous and entrepreneurial, but don't ever make a mistake, because if you make a mistake, it's on the front page of a newspaper in our host country or a newspaper at home.
Speaker 2:It's talked about and dissected and it could ruin your career, a career that you've studied a long time to get into. You've worked your way up, you've said the right things to the right people at the right time to get there. And I understand it's terrifying. It's terrifying to seemingly risk that to be you, but the connection that I needed was absolutely came from me being me and, john, I started to notice around me people exhibiting the same kind of words and actions that I'd used and I realized that loneliness, particularly in the diplomatic community, was common. Yes, and it's a near-perfect environment for us to be lonely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go on. I thought it was interesting, just going back a bit, when you said that you spoke to someone about this and there was this response of pity, and then you talk there about how again this sort of realization that actually your experience of loneliness was actually not unique. There were lots of other people who seemed to be exhibiting similar things. There is a real stigma around loneliness, which is one of the things you still get discussions around depression, around stigma but I think that's certainly improved over time, Loneliness is not.
Speaker 1:there's still a real stigma attached to that. So I'm assuming you must have felt that fairly strongly, yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, I do two things, john. I still, after finishing that posting, I and part of connecting to myself is I came out as gay and so I also started the loneliness guy. So I lonely diplomat, the loneliness guy. So lonely diplomat for diplomats, loneliness guy for gay and queer men.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that I realized is that I come out all the time and I come out as gay all the time and I come out as lonely all the time or as a human who experiences loneliness, which, as we all know, every human experiences loneliness because we're meant to, we're meant to experience loneliness. We're meant to, we're meant to experience loneliness, yes, and so what I find is that when I come out as gay, I often receive people saying the right things, the nice things, the right things, the kind supportive things. And what I've realized when I come out as lonely, I get curiosity. There's like a real lifelife person who experiences loneliness. Let's see what goes on there, what's it about, and stuff. But I get some nice platitudes, oftentimes back Pity, sometimes it's getting better. I get a lot of oh my God, me too.
Speaker 1:I receive that too. I'm like of oh my god, me too. I receive that too.
Speaker 2:I'm like you're my people however, what I've learned, john, is that me coming out as gay to someone who is secure in their sexuality, that's not threatening and that's yeah you. You're living your authentic life, congratulations, yay. If I come out as lonely, that holds up a mirror to someone and they are compelled, whether they're ready or not, to sit with the question of are the quality and quantity of my connections in my life as what I want them to be? And I don't think I could do what Phil does and what the humans connecting team do and say that they'd like to do is need to own my loneliness, because if I'm not owning it, it owns me, and so what ends up happening is loneliness.
Speaker 2:This picks up a point that you mentioned before, john. Loneliness is then talked about as a concept in the third person. It's the thing that we get to take away from the humans and study it and talk about it and say how it impacts societies, how it impacts workplaces, how it impacts families, humans and stuff. But loneliness we always need to remember and this is critical to our work here at Humans Connecting. Loneliness is an experience in the first person and we don't connect to the concept unless we go through the first person experience and that's how we do it, so people get to understand the power of owning loneliness, to then get the connection that we need.
Speaker 1:I've got two things that have crossed my mind as you're saying that. First is the analogy with coming out as gay. I had the privilege of working with a few plus group on a an it event, for all things, two years ago, and one of the things I spoke about there was the fact we tend to see coming out and say, we straight people like me, but we see the coming out as an event. Right, but someone, they're gay. And then they have the coming out moment and everyone knows they're gay. But that is actually something that you have to do every day with every new person, in every situation in do I? Do I express that or do I keep it hidden? Who is it safe to do? And that's the same way with loneliness.
Speaker 1:Loneliness is also something which is not an event that is fixed with that moment of revelation. Exactly that would. That would be the comparison. The other thing is, you mentioned you know that, when you come out as being lonely, that then requires someone to reflect on their own loneliness, right? Does it not also, though, require them to respond in some human way to your condition of loneliness, which is different to if you came out and said I'm gay, john, I'd say that's lovely and I'm glad for you and it's nice that you can say that and I'm glad you feel comfortable with me saying that, but it doesn't affect how. I don't feel I have to help you with that in any way or intervene in some way, whereas if you say to me, hey, john, I'm lonely, that does put a. Does that put a responsibility on me? Or can I just say it feels like it does? I mean, I'm not talking about now, but it feels like it does in the general sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of things there. One is we tend to want to fix loneliness yes. So someone admits that they're. We say here at Humans, connecting, not feeling lonely, or I'm lonely, here at Humans, connecting, not feeling lonely, or I'm lonely. They seem to have been contorted in ways that say I am lonely forever and it turns a transitory state into a permanent state and we prefer to say a loneliness experience, okay. And so what we end up saying is like when we're in the midst of a loneliness experience and we say to someone the popular way, like the platitude, the hallmark greeting response is often pity, leaning, pity, but it's pity, and pity places a big distance. It sounds like empathy, but pity puts a distance between us. That says, oh you, poor thing, that's bad for you, but that never happens to me. That's completely wrong. I was going to say it in a more direct way, but I'm using my polite terms here. That's completely wrong. Every human experiences loneliness from time to time as we're meant to and responding with pity.
Speaker 2:It's a platitude, but we don't know how, because we don't know the language of loneliness, we don't know the words to describe it, we don't know the words to sit with it. We respond with kind of the platitudes at the bottom of the bag that say something, but I don't really know what to say. So I'm going to say something and then hope this conversation finishes. That is the response that I think you you want to hear. The other thing that we, the way that respond to, is fixing it, and that fixing goes to your point. It's like loneliness doesn't need fixing, it needs understanding. Yes, fixing loneliness has the connotation that the person experiencing loneliness which is every human from time to time, as we're meant to is broken.
Speaker 1:Yes, when the key to the connection that we're missing to is broken.
Speaker 2:Yes, when the key to the connection that we're missing sits in the loneliness that we're experiencing at that time.
Speaker 1:So it's like grief? Yeah, it's a lot like grief, and obviously loneliness is frequently the companion of grief. Yes, so it's where. Again, if you're grieving something as you've lost, people do have those two responses they feel sorry for you, they feel awkward about what they should say, but they do feel this, and I think probably men feel more like they have to fix things. I don't know if that's true I tend to think it is, but I could be wrong that same desire to fix things.
Speaker 2:And it's understandable, like it's a horrible experience and of course we want someone, at least someone that we love. We don't want them to sit in that feeling for long. But we can get to the fixing stage. We can get to the how about we Google this together? We can get to that. There's so much power. There's so much power in the oh, me too, I feel that way too.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, power in the oh me too, I feel that way too.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah, and actually a genuine way Sorry. Yeah, yeah. So you've got the humans connecting. Is your new sort of vehicle for this, for talking about loneliness and helping people, obviously, who are dealing with that? A lot of your work is? Is you mentioned a little bit about the workplace again, loneliness is not something we associate with work.
Speaker 1:right, work is somewhere where typically we if you've got a job and you're going to every day, or yeah obviously there's the whole virtual work issue, but um, um, but it's not something we typically associate with the workplace and it's somewhere's somewhere where I think it's probably particularly hard to come out feeling that yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:I find it interesting. Somehow we feel that workplaces are immune to the human condition and we know here in Australia one third of humans in Australia, so our population has just gone over 27 million a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2:So, conveniently for someone whose strong suit is not maths, a third of 27 million is nine million people yes and we know that one quarter of the global population again conveniently, of a billion people, but that's two billion people globally experiencing loneliness, yes. To think that somehow that is a situation, that's an experience experienced by the one-third or one-quarter of humans outside of work time, yes, that's completely unrealistic. And we spend so much time at work, we spend so much time either in the office or at home doing work. It consumes so much of our time, our thoughts, indeed, it can be aligned with our purpose, yes. And to think that we're not talking about this in the workplace when, conceivably, at least a quarter of humans, according to the data and data used by the World Health Organization, are experiencing loneliness. That means one quarter of the people, yes, in our workplaces are carrying around the burden of unspoken loneliness yes, but we do talk about belonging, don't we?
Speaker 1:so how does that differ? In the sense that we want to create an organization where everyone feels they belong right, which presumably means things like they feel it's fair, but they get hurt when they express an opinion or an emotion? There's not, there isn't. You know, prejudice is at least, bias is minimized or dispensed with if one can, but that loneliness can still linger, can't it? It's not yet. It's a different quality somehow, how is it different than doing?
Speaker 2:Jesus. I think with belonging, it's a critical, it's a central concept to connection and we humans feel that we belong when we feel seen and when we feel heard. Yes, and sometimes workplaces can have the yep we want you to belong, you're important here and you're valued, you're all this. Now can we just get the work done, please? Yes, and unless an individual human feels that they can be seen, an individual human feels that they can be heard, they're not going to feel. Until they feel seen and heard, they're not going to feel that they belong. Now, if we want so, it's essentially a maths equation.
Speaker 2:It's be seen plus being heard equals belonging. So we can re-engineer the maths equation that if we want to belong, we need to see individuals and we need to see and we need to hear individuals. Now, depending on the size of the organization, the business, that's quite inefficient when, if you're an organization of 5,000 people across many offices, many time zones, perhaps it's a big ask, but belonging requires us to talk about it individually rather than keeping it at that kind of umbrella statement that it's important that you belong here, but we still need to get the work done. We're all allowed to still get the work done, but humans will do amazing things when the individual feels that they can thrive. And when we belong, we thrive.
Speaker 1:So if we return to your experience as a diplomat then and frame that in the language of belonging, you felt the role was something that fitted you and the organisation presumably took good care of you right, and you had good people you worked with who were not hostile. In that sense, did you feel you belonged as a diplomat or not? It?
Speaker 2:depends on the day. Honestly, I want to give an honest answer here. I'm a smart guy, yeah, and I did well at school, went to a good university, did well there, did well in my employing agency. The issue is it is so phenomenally competitive and resilience was a term that was honestly bandied around, and resilience was interpreted as being I wish I could give you so much work With little time. It was an environment ruled by scarcity with little time. It was an environment ruled by scarcity no time, no money, no people, but extremely high demands.
Speaker 2:And because I'm me and because many other people want to do their best, we would sacrifice sleep, we'd sacrifice meals, we'd sacrifice personal time and weekends and all that kind of stuff to get it done and it would get done and the reward for doing that work was more work and so you could show that you can do it. So resilience, rather than like the real definition of psychological resilience, which was flex and return to form, resilience in the workplace culture that I was in and I see this in so many other high visibility, high stress workplaces yes, where the expectation is or resilience has been perverted to mean you will bend all the time and we don't give you an opportunity to bend back to form, and if you do like we just think of a tree. A tree that doesn't bend back to form, it snaps. Yes, and what the message was in my employing agency was oh, you've snapped, or you're saying you're going to break. Are you not resilient enough to do this job Right? And of course, yes, I am resilient. I promise I'm resilient.
Speaker 2:I'll shut up, I'll go back to work and I'll just. I'm so grateful that you're slowly killing me. Honestly, I'm grateful that you're working me like, absolutely to the bone. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I'll shut up and go back to work. I said that kind of flippantly, but that was the culture, and what happens is that the like, the resilience, is the sort of Damocles over us. If you don't want to do this job, there are 50 other people who interviewed for that position, who would love to do what you do. So should we call the next one on the list and you can come host?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And, of course, you want to keep on doing it because you love the job.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, it's things you could only do there and there are so many perks, but we can call these the golden handcuffs, yeah, which is not unique to diplomacy, no, I think yeah, when I think of resiliency, I think the sort of fallacy of resiliency is that it's about being strong and in the stiff upper lip kind of British way, or like you're pumping iron so your muscles get stronger, so you can pick up more weight, you can take on more work, and it doesn't look at what's outside you, the need for resourcefulness, and one of those very meaningful and important resources in order to be resilient is the human connection side of things, and if you put all your efforts into developing your own internal strength to deal with these things, that's a recipe ultimately for disaster. That would be my two cents on resilience. Anyway, I'm happily over time on this conversation because I'm really enjoying it, but I'm mindful of our audiences. They're used to something short, which is fine.
Speaker 1:One thing I do want to touch on is you spoke earlier about this sort of loneliness as being something that you move in and out of personally. We all do. We're all lonely at times. When we are lonely, we mustn't well, we shouldn't think that is forever. How do you, as you move through the world from being lonely and not lonely, how do you know what's that? What's, what's that feeling of being lonely? Now you're experiencing it and what do you? What steps do you take to get past that?
Speaker 2:yeah, really good question. Um, for me, loneliness is an individual experience, so I can only speak of for me. I turn into a master storyteller.
Speaker 2:So, if an opportunity doesn't happen or someone hasn't reached out to me or something happens. I have an uncanny ability to make everything my fault, something happens. I have an uncanny ability to make everything my fault and put me at the center of any kind of narrative. And I mean, it's quite a, quite a talent that I have and I could sit in these stories and attribute the villain role to someone and the savior and the woe is me, whole thing going there. I could sit in that for days. I could sit in that for days and lament and bemoan, and that to me I'm learning john is an enormous tell that I'm starting to be, I'm starting to slip into the, into loneliness as it shows up for me. And it's an invitation when I go, oh, kindly within myself, rather than being really harsh on myself and calling myself all sorts of names and I've done it again. Here I am, I'm doing it again. All right, what do I need?
Speaker 2:And here at Humans Connecting, we talk about the three pillars of connection, because in many instances it just goes back to that first bit of advice that I got from that psychiatrist, psychologist through EAP all those years ago was put yourself out there. We tend to focus on the put yourself out there. So connect with other people, speak to your significant other, talk to a friend, go, I don't know, do sporting things or whatever Canada go curl or something, or watch hockey with someone perhaps. But the critical thing there as well, in that advice is put yourself out there. In that advice is put yourself out there, yes and so for me, and here at humans connecting, we've got three pillars of connection and the first pillar is connection to self.
Speaker 2:So I go through a checklist. It's like all right, honestly, have I eaten? Do I need, do I need, a nap? Do I need to go for a walk? Do I need to, I don't know, put some terrible music on or great music and dance terribly to it. What's going to be the thing that gets me feeling more me and then tick, all right, have I given my partner a hug? Have I given our kids a hug? Have I checked in with them? Have I been nourished by them a hug? Have I checked it with them? Have I been nourished by their um? And then, what do I need to do? Like, how could I be in, how could I be me in community workplaces, all the earliest kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But it's a checklist according to the three pillars of connection okay, now that certainly seems to that makes a lot of sense. I think that starting with yourself in that way is really and that notion that and I think the more question there is a risk isn't there in going out, going outside and connecting with people day. And it was saying we want to make our organization and you hear it all the time we want to make our organizations safe for everyone. Right, there are no places that are safe, that there's always an element of risk and that you have to push yourself a little bit in that regard. Is that, or am I being cruel to people who experience loneliness to say they should?
Speaker 2:No, loneliness is seductive and it's tempting to stay in its comfort, in the comfortable misery of loneliness. Connection is edgy, but connection is how we move beyond loneliness, but it's the connection that we need and creating environments where people feel more comfortable to do the brave, courageous thing. Yeah, it's not completely taking away the risk, but because the risk can't be completely taken away by anyone or anything, but what we're creating? An environment where people feel comfortable enough, yes, comfortable enough, in the discomfort of putting themselves out there. Then that to me, whatever the circumstance, whatever the environment in homes, in communities, but in workplaces, that feels to me to be a really sensible place to start. How can the humans in our workplace feel that they can be them in a way that is comfortable, ish, yes, safe, but they will be seen and heard when they are there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's probably as good a place to end as any, and thank you for being so authentic it's not a phrase that trips off my tongue easily. So authentically yourself for our time together and I'm sure in all situations where you find yourselves, we'll pop the URL for humans connecting into the description. You want to just share that briefly with us. What's the URL for humans connecting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's humansconnecting all. One word org. I realize I spelled O-R-G there, because sometimes the Australian accent is not a fan of the letter R, yeah, so humansconnectingorg.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today and for sharing a little bit of your story so personally and then also linking that to the kinds of things that we as individuals, and also as organizations, can do to both address our own experience of loneliness and also be there for those we work with, we care for and love. So it was an absolute pleasure, phil, thanks a lot, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the opportunity, John. Thank you Bye.