The Intentional Flex: Building Stronger Connections in the Workplace

By SIOP Member Alyssa Birnbaum

At my first job out of college, I was hyper-focused on performance. I thought that being an excellent employee meant I should put my head down, crank out top-quality work, and deliver everything on time. Which is why I was flabbergasted when my first performance review didn’t focus on my work at all. Instead, my boss told me that I had to cultivate relationships with my clients.

It takes time and experience to fully understand why connecting with colleagues and clients, the softest of soft skills, is actually critically important to our engagement, work output, and career progression.

Some people are naturally fluent in the art of connecting. I am not. My journey to become a better connector (which is still a work-in-progress) shaped my research and career trajectory as I began to explore why connections were so important and how to help employees connect better with one another. With the surge of remote and hybrid work structures, connecting became an even more interesting challenge, as it required a certain element of intentionality that didn’t exist beforehand.

My research showed that having stronger quality connections throughout the day led to higher levels of engagement – it didn’t even matter if you connected more or for longer periods of time. Interestingly, you could cultivate the same level of connection through videoconferencing as in-person interactions (only audio interactions fared worse, which includes videoconferencing with the camera off or chatting on the phone). Taken together, this demonstrates the importance of building connections at work and that it’s still possible in remote environments.

I identified four ways to help flex your connection muscles with colleagues:

• Expand. Get curious about your colleagues beyond your formal interactions. When you understand someone’s full context rather than just their deliverables, collaboration deepens and empathy grows. This is also a personal challenge for you to expand beyond work topics in conversations and share more about yourself, because it opens the door for more candid interactions.
• Overlap. Find common ground, whether it’s shared projects, interests, family life, or even struggles. These points of connection transform mandatory collaboration into genuine professional relationships.
• Care. Small gestures matter because they show that you value the other person. Put your phone down when chatting. Check in on your peers. Acknowledge great effort. Remember personal details. Care doesn’t require grand gestures, just consistent presence and acknowledgement.
• Authenticity. Expanding, overlapping, and caring don’t matter if it feels like you’re following a script and forcing yourself through the motions. Authenticity builds trust and psychological safety, the foundations of meaningful connection.

Here’s how you can put this into practice:

For employees: Turn your camera on during videoconference calls when possible. Offer genuine compliments. Avoid multitasking when someone is engaging with you. Open up about your personal hobbies. Check in on a colleague. Decorate your desk or virtual background with things you love to spark conversation. Share a personal challenge you’re working through. Keep track of your colleagues – their birthdays, children, recent trips, etc. – and follow up with them about it.

For leaders: Design connection into workflows by building regular one-on-ones, retrospectives, and peer interactions into your team’s routines. Model vulnerability by sharing your own uncertainties or questions. Create low-stakes opportunities for people to connect without an agenda and without eating up too much worktime. Recognize and reward employees who actively support and connect with their teammates.

The future of work doesn’t have to be isolating. Even remote and hybrid models can support thriving, connected teams if we treat connection as essential infrastructure. We’ve spent years optimizing for productivity. Now it’s time to optimize for the relationships that make that productivity sustainable.

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About the Author

Alyssa Birnbaum, Ph.D., is Founder and Principal Consultant of Teal Elephant, an employee listening and organizational consultancy. She specializes in enhancing employee wellbeing by translating research into practical action through listening tactics (surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.), workshops, keynotes, and organizational development. Her TEDx talk, featured on TED.com and TED Radio Hour on building quality workplace connections, has reached over 325,000 people. Dr. Birnbaum’s research focuses on high-quality connections at work, family-building friendly organizations, organizational listening, burnout prevention, and remote and hybrid teams.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology or its affiliates.

If you are interested in submitting an article for Thought Leadership for a Smarter Workplace, email SIOP Senior Brand and Content Strategist Amber Stark at astark@siop.org.