Parasocial Intimacy and a Life Lived Online
You merely adopted the Internet... We were born into it. Molded by it.
I’ve spent the past five years studying remote work and I’ve heard the same refrain from business leaders hundreds of times…
“Developing close relationships among teams is impossible unless they’re in the office.”
This thought process directly contradicts everything I’ve witnessed growing up online. In my opinion, it demonstrates not only a lack of imagination, but a lack of basic knowledge about how the Internet evolved.
What many leaders don’t realize is that they merely adopted the Internet… Their largely Millennial workforce was born in it, molded by it. The soundtrack of our childhood was a 56k dial-up modem and the adrenaline-spiking pings of chatroom messages.
Unlike the latchkey kids of Gen X, we were the AOL kids of the new Millennium.
In Middle School, we posted cryptic lyrics on our AIM Away Message to lament our teenage angst.
In High School, we spent hours custom-designing our MySpace and spent our school days jockeying for a position in our friends’ Top 8.
In College, we shitposted on Twitter and Reddit and formed lifelong bonds with avatars who just happened to like our favorite sports teams and TV shows.
We spent our 20s and early 30s establishing deep bonds with people, some of whom we’ve never met, on platforms like LinkedIn.
If you weren’t born into this world, I think it’s easy to view these connections as superficial—a watered-down, diet version of real human connection. Many leaders view in-person connections as inherently superior because that’s how they formed their closest connections.
To be fair, I get where many of these leaders are coming from… They’re reflecting their lived experiences. They didn’t grow up in this same context and they’re more comfortable in a context that reflects their background.
The leaders who win the next decade, however, will be the ones who are able to adapt their businesses to reflect the lived experiences of the largest plurality of the global workforce… Millennials and Zoomers who grew up developing relationships online.
Trust and the Remote-First Workforce
Over the past year, I’ve talked to countless leaders of distributed teams and “trust” is a word that comes up a lot.
They’re worried about whether they can trust their employees in a remote context, but they’re also worried that their employees won’t trust them as leaders. This is especially true for Managers and Directors who are stuck in the middle between executives and individual contributors.
How can I ensure that my team is doing what they’re supposed to do, but also ensure that my boss knows that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do? Well, the easiest solution to that acute problem is to hop on a Zoom call. If I see your face and hear your voice, I know what you’re doing right this second. For a brief moment, my anxiety is lessened. That is, of course, until a few hours after I hang up the Zoom call and I realize I don’t know what you’re doing again.
This is a mindset problem that originates from the “Nobody knows you’re a dog” era of the Internet.
This cartoon is a very well-known part of Internet culture lampooning the fact that you never truly know who is on the other end of the keyboard. In the pre-social media era, it was a clever reminder that appearances online can be deceiving.
This cartoon was published in 1993—30 years ago. This was the era of “you can’t trust anything you read on the Internet” and “Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source.”
The Internet has evolved a lot since then, and it’s now easier than ever to develop meaningful relationships online. We see this in everything from social media and podcasts to Substack and Patreon. Unfortunately, we don’t see it implemented effectively enough by internal communicators who want their employees to have a stronger relationship with their company.
When executives figure out how to harness this power, they’ll be unstoppable. But first, they have to unlearn everything they know about how people interact online.
Establishing Trust via Parasocial Relationships
There’s a concept I come back to often when I’m coaching leaders on this… Parasocial relationships.
This is an idea that was more commonly associated with stars and celebrities a few decades ago. Your fans have a “parasocial relationship” with you… Observing your behavior, developing a bond with the idea of you based on that behavior, but never developing a two-way relationship with you as a person.
Today, this has become more pervasive than ever before. I have parasocial relationships with my favorite podcast hosts, my favorite Twitter accounts, and even anonymous posters on Reddit. Over the years, I have established a deep level of trust in many of these people. Are some of them dogs? Maybe. I honestly don’t know. But I also don’t think that matters. If someone’s jokes make me smile or their insights help me learn, do I really care if their online identity matches their driver’s license?
I do not.
Now, what if you could harness that exact same phenomenon to ensure that the hundreds of employees at your company felt this way about your mission or executive team? What if the leaders and managers in your organization were as good at developing a following within your online walls as they are on LinkedIn or Twitter?
I believe you can, and it’s not magic… It just requires a little bit of thoughtfulness and effort.
The Mindset Shift for Parasocial Leaders
If you lead a distributed team, I want you to take a moment to reflect… How often does the average IC on your team hear from you?
In a world where we’re heavily indexed on private communication (1:1 Slack messages, email, and Zoom meetings), the answer likely looks something like this…
My direct reports hear from me often… Probably daily.
Their direct reports hear from me occasionally. Maybe 1-2 times per week.
Their direct reports hear from me periodically. Maybe weekly or once every couple weeks.
Their direct reports hear from me rarely. Maybe once a month or quarter.
This is sustainable for small organizations or for managers of small teams, but you start to notice how the cascading effect of a lack of communication leads to a game of telephone. In a 100 - 200 person company, the average IC might hear from the CEO once a month. What’s worse is, when they do hear from the CEO, it’s likely all business. This creates a perception that the executive team is out of touch and doesn’t care about anything outside of numbers and results.
Your team’s perception of you is equal to the sum total of exposure they have to you. Too many companies are struggling in remote environments strictly because their team isn’t hearing from leadership enough. Not only are practical business insights getting lost in translation, but no one outside of the executive suite is able to form a parasocial relationship with the company’s leadership.
What if, instead, you had a deliberate communications strategy focused on both sharing the insights your team needs to thrive and helping them establish deeper bonds with you as a person? What if you were sharing more of your life publicly, both personally and professionally, allowing your entire team to get the glimpses that your executive team gets on a regular basis?
One of the pioneers exploring this idea is Rachel Downey at Share Your Genius. After spending the past several years developing podcasts for B2B companies, she’s seen an increasing need for internal podcasts that can both educate new employees and engage existing employees to deepen teams’ commitment to a mission.
This is a superpower in a remote-first world. Compare these two companies for a minute and imagine which one you’d have a better experience at as a remote employee:
Company A
You get hired and onboarded by HR and your manager. You might meet the CEO in a new hire onboarding session, or maybe if you’re lucky in a 1:1. The next time you hear from any executive other than the one you report up through is a month later in a company all-hands where they share an update on a project you’ve never heard of.
Company B
You get hired and onboarded by HR and your manager, then you receive a link to a private podcast where your CEO is having intimate conversations with other leaders and executives. They’re discussing the company’s founding, mission, and purpose. They’re sharing company lore and stories of the good ol’ days. They’re sharing their perspectives on the industry and economy. You can listen to these episodes at your own pace… Maybe you binge them, or maybe you listen to an episode every once in awhile while you do the dishes. Either way, you’re hearing from the executive team regularly and seeing how they think, talk, and act.
Reflection Questions
Which company would inspire more trust in the leadership team?
Which company would get you more excited about the mission?
Which company would enable you to learn more about the industry?
Which company would you give the benefit of the doubt to?
Which company would you stay at for longer and work harder for?
Maybe you’re different than me, but I know my answer to all five questions would be Company B.
An internal podcast is just one of many tactics you can deploy in your organization to develop this level of parasocial intimacy and trust. Is it weird and different? Sure. But welcome to 2023. Everything’s weird and different. Get used to it.
I’d rather be weird, different, and effective than normal and ineffective.
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