Are you seeing this too? Suddenly everyone… regular people, celebrities, CEOs… is posting about “human connection” like they just discovered fire.
I call it Human Interaction (H.I.). And it’s not new. I’ve been speaking on this for over 25 years. My first book, “Some Assembly Required: How to Make, Grow, and Keep Your Business Relationships,” came out in 2005. Back then it was already obvious the digital shift would cost us something if we weren’t careful.
I’m not annoyed the newcomers showed up and are owning the topic. I’m glad. Welcome to the party.
Here’s what’s actually happening: we’ve created a class of people I call “Efficient Strangers”. Your coworkers, clients, vendors, people you cross paths with constantly but never actually know. In the past, working alongside someone for years turned into a friendship. Now it just turns into a Slack thread.
Meanwhile tech tools keep getting better (genuinely, I love a lot of them), and at the same time fewer people show up to community groups, industry associations, professional meetups. Loneliness is at record highs. Disconnected is a word people use regularly to describe their engagement.
People don’t feel like they belong anywhere, including in their own companies, industries, and communities.
Is your company talking about this in internal meetings? Do the conferences in your industry have sessio on the people side of your business? If not, why not? (I am attending a conference later this month in an industry where relationships matter, and they are not leading with this topic in a meaningful way).
The fix isn’t rejecting technology. It’s becoming a “Deliberate Human”. Choosing people, on purpose, some of the time.
So here’s my challenge to you, right now, reading this: what are you doing TODAY to engage with an actual human? Not a text. Not a DM.
I am doubling down on this subject as a keynote speaker and in my role at the Austin Technology Council. This matters. It is important.
Later today I’m having lunch with someone who’s hired me to speak twice for virtual events. We’ve never met in person. He’s in Austin this week on vacation. We’re getting lunch just to close that gap, to make it real.
That’s the whole point. That lunch didn’t need to happen. We made it happen because relationships over email, text, and zoom are not the same as sharing time together.
Who are you having lunch with? Forward this email or leave a comment to the person you know you should see face-to-face in the near future and invite them to explore a real world connection.
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Thom Singer, CSP, is a keynote speaker on the subject of Human Connections. He has been speaking about this topic for over 20 years. He is the author of several books, and has been inteviewed in the press and on podcasts about his belief that Human Interaction (What he calls H.I.) is the secret weapon to long term success in an AI-driven world. He is also the CEO at the Austin Technology Council.