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Oh gosh… a few minutes left for my next meeting, have to wrap up this email quickly. Or not [argh]. Can I still take a coffee? [Sigh] Never mind. But where's this Zoom link?! There it is… finally logging in. Alright, one deep breath, and then: "Ah, there you are! How are you?" is what I hear immediately after joining the session. "Uh, fine! How about you?" is what I hear myself reply…
Okay, let's hold there. What just happened might sound very familiar to us, but if we have a closer look we may nevertheless find some oddness about this brief conversation. Indeed, there are few other questions we hear on a daily basis that sound as simple and obvious, yet are highly puzzling and (socially) ambiguous. So, I think it's time for some clarity.
Why do we actually start our conversations with “how are you (doing)”? Is it a social evolutionary trait? And how deliberately are we doing this nowadays? Do we expect a genuine response, whatever that may mean? Is it supposed to be an ice-breaker? Perhaps just one of those conversational habits? Or are we truly interested in ‘how it is going’ with the person we are talking to?
What we know, however, is that something is clearly going wrong. Somewhere between the question and the answer, I suspect. That isn't something I am saying without evidence, of course. Mental health was already becoming an urgent issue before corona hit us. Now, it has become even worse. Talking has been shown to be the best prevention method to maintain our mental health, but COVID-19 has increased the threshold to talk to our colleagues about our personal issues. Blogs about this issue already appeared in our newsletter several times. So, no. It is not likely to me that the most common response to the question is genuinely “I am fine”. But why then are we still hearing it so often? Is it lack of trust, or of time? Is it an ethical issue? Is it the abundance of our social contacts, or is it our inability to deal with an answer other than “fine”? If we said yes to any of these questions, then why do most of us still ask?
We can deal with the ethical aspects first. Should we really care about our colleagues (and friends)? I assume, and I hope, many of us will opt for it. If yes indeed, then to what degree should we care? In other words, is it ethical to be concerned about my colleagues, and spend some time accordingly during my working hours? Or vice versa, can I spend 'working' time to talk to my colleagues about issues I am dealing with, even if this may not be directly work-related? Should and could my supervisor be okay when I tell him or her that I spent x hours talking to a colleague about 'how (s)he is doing'? Or does “how are you?” only belong to our spare time? Or to a session at the psychologist, with their never-ending waiting lists?
Nice food for thought perhaps, but how is this relevant to our current topic? Well, ambiguity around these issues may partly explain the oddness around the “how are you?” question. If we are experiencing a feeling of doubt or even guilt while having a sincere talk with our colleagues, that is not going to help. However, one of the three Radboudumc principles, as you may know, is “to be honestly concerned with your fellows, characterized by expertise and sincere attention”. A principle that is probably not limited to our organization. This I believe, solves the moral issue. We should care about our colleagues and friends. How else could an organization (or society) function sustainably?
And what about our inability to deal with answers other than ‘fine’? Do we know, for example, how to respond in such a case? Or how and what to ask in return? Moreover, can we show our interest in the problems of our colleagues, without unintentionally judging them or overwhelming them with our well-intentioned advice? Put differently, can we just be the sympathetic ear? All in all, dealing with unanticipated problems of our colleague can definitely feel like the last thing we want to be occupied with nowadays. However, won’t we benefit more from having healthy people around us, rather than a temporary neat mailbox? And who knows, maybe one day we may find ourselves in need for some collegial support…
Now, what else holds us back from an honest conversation? Is it certain non-verbal cues from the questioner which disrupts us feeling safe enough to answer sincerely? Or is it the responder, not wanting to expose their vulnerability too much? Both may have some truth, but instead of pointing at a the 'guilty' party, I prefer to look for 'system failures'. What causes us to behave like this around the question “how are you?”. More importantly, how can we overcome this, and break the habit of asking the question “how are you?”, as it seems to me that it has lost its value, while we still need its essence deeply.
Why? Well, one thing we have learned from the pandemic is the degree of our interdependency. We have realized now, if not earlier, that we need each other more than we could ever have imagined. For even the simplest things. We have realized now that we need each other to smile, to share our happiness, our excitements, our sadness and our grieves. Those of us who have kids, realized that we are not able to take care of our own children, while at the same time working towards our own ambitions, without help. Although we might have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are fully independent individuals, reality tells us another story. We need people to take care of our dearests, as we are utterly desperate otherwise. We need our colleagues to talk about our every-day frustrations, to get our work done, to make our day feel somewhat meaningful. We need them to drink coffee, to have lunch, to celebrate things, so that our weeks of hard labor become slightly bearable. We could go on reciting our dependencies endlessly, but you get the point.
Our societies are built and shaped by every one of us, with our weaknesses and our strengths, with our talents and our potentials. And our organization is like a society, where we need to complement each other in order for everything to run smoothly. Hence, every one of us is irreplaceable to maintain and further develop the organization we are part of, and the society we live in, no matter what we do and what we are able to do. In fact, the more diverse our societies, the more resilient they can become.
The effort behind this piece of writing, and perhaps the slightly emotional outburst at the end, is only to underline the importance of mindfully asking “how are you?”. If we take care of each other, we are at our very best. And this starts with asking the right question (at the right time and place). Surely, there is no need to make every conversation a loaded one, but we might choose to interchange our habitual question with other options more often. As such, we might try questions that signal our interest in our fellows, and that open the door for and enable an honest talk. Asking questions that focus on the feelings of our interlocutor rather than an abstract “how are you?” might be a good start, but I am confident you all have better alternatives to show that you care about the people around you. Otherwise, we might have some suggestions for you soon.
Let us not be afraid of asking the question, and honestly answering it, such that the next conversation may hopefully go well beyond just “I am fine!”
Blog by Hasan Erkan
Editing by Özlem Bulut, Estel Collado Camps, and Nina Wubben
Vector image by VectorStock / vectorstock
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