And How Leaders Must Repair It

When the pandemic struck in early 2020, businesses did what they had to do. We shut down offices. We sent people home. We improvised. It was the right call.

But it came at a cost most of us didn’t fully see until later.

In the rush to preserve safety and continuity, we unintentionally fractured one of the most powerful forces inside our organizations. Not alignment. Not productivity. Not even morale … at least not at first.

We broke our Connectedness.

And connectedness, it turns out, is not a soft metric. It is the glue that holds culture together.

The Problem Was Already There

Here’s something leaders don’t like to hear: the pandemic didn’t create the connectedness crisis. It exposed one that was already building.

According to Cigna’s Loneliness Index, three out of five employed adults reported feeling lonely before COVID arrived. Sixty-one percent of Americans said they sometimes or always felt lonely. Among Gen Z, that number climbed to 79 percent. Among Millennials, 71 percent.

We were already becoming, as I describe it in The Power of Being All In, a nation of outliers, that is, people who feel they stand apart from others, even when surrounded by them. The pandemic accelerated that trajectory dramatically.

Culture is a living ecosystem, fostered by shared identity, vision, direction, coordination, and connection. Notice that last word. When leaders relied on offices, hallways, and physical proximity to do the work of connectedness for them, and then suddenly those conditions disappeared overnight, what remained was the gap between alignment and belonging.

Alignment means people know what the culture is, believe in it, and can demonstrate elements of it. Connectedness means they identify with it, care about it, and feel they belong in it. We had made progress on alignment. We were losing connectedness. And they are not the same things.

Today, only one in four employees reports feeling connected to their organizational culture. Alignment without connection is fragile. People may understand the mission. But they no longer feel they belong to it.

That difference is profound. And the risk to being “All In” is extremely high.

Three Ways Remote Work Broke Connectedness

Remote work did not destroy culture; rather, it exposed the ways we had been taking connectedness for granted.

1. We confused proximity with belonging. Physical presence, such as passing conversation, shared frustration over a deadline, and laughter between meetings, created informal bonds. When we lost proximity, we lost what I’d call productive friction: the unscripted moments that build trust over time.
   In a Culture of Compliance, showing up was often enough. Leaders directed activity in time and space, and presence signaled participation. But in a Culture of Commitment, belonging must be felt, not enforced. Remote work stripped away the illusion that attendance equals engagement. It doesn’t. Belonging must now be engineered, deliberately and consistently.

2. We mistook information for communication. With distributed teams, communication defaulted to digital tools. Emails multiplied. Messages accelerated. Notifications became constant. But as I noted in the previous article in this series, sharing information is not the same as communicating.
   When tone, nuance, and presence disappear from our exchanges, misunderstanding increases. Research cited in The Power of Being All In shows that more than half of all emails and texts are misunderstood. Misunderstanding weakens trust, and trust is the backbone of connectedness. When trust wavers, commitment wavers.

3. We allowed trust to drift through overcorrection. This one is hard to admit, but it’s real. Remote work tempted many leaders, myself included in earlier years when leading distributed teams, to overcorrect.
   We monitored more. We checked in more. We inserted ourselves into more conversations. Insecurity often disguises itself as oversight. But micromanagement communicates something that no amount of good intentions can undo: I don’t believe you can succeed without me. That message fractures confidence. And confidence is the fuel of connection.

The diagnosis is clear. Three forces broke the connectedness in our organizations. Now comes the part that matters most: how to rebuild it.

How Leaders Must Repair Connectedness

The solution is not to eliminate remote work. That ship has sailed, and frankly, productivity data suggests it doesn’t need to come back to shore. The solution is to lead differently within the hybrid reality we now inhabit.

Repairing connectedness requires deliberate, persistent effort. Culture change takes time, often several years in even the most committed organizations. But it is absolutely possible. Here’s where to begin.

1. Reset the Azimuth, together. Connectedness grows when direction is clear and shared. Mission defines who we are, intent clarifies where we are going, values shape how we behave, and culture defines how we behave in the ecosystem in which we all operate.
   Don’t simply declare these from the top and expect buy-in. Build the Azimuth collectively. When people help shape the destination, they feel a sense of ownership in the journey. Ownership is the root of belonging. I’ve seen this work in organizations of forty and organizations of thirty thousand. The principle holds at every scale.

2. Prioritize one-on-one engagement and protect it. Digital town halls are useful, and all-hands meetings have their place. But neither can replace the power of a genuine one-on-one conversation. If you believe people are your first priority, your calendar should reflect it. Ask Power Questions that go deeper than “How’s it going?”
   Ask, “What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing this week?” or “What’s the one resource, if you had it, that would make you more effective?” Then practice tactical patience. Use the two-second rule before you respond. That pause signals respect. Belonging is built in conversations, not broadcasts.

3. Reinforce team covenants. High-performing individuals do not automatically become high-performing teams. I’ve seen this play out many times with talented people who collectively underperform because no one established the rules of engagement. Teams need a covenant: a clear, agreed-upon set of behaviors and mutual accountabilities.
   In remote and hybrid environments, the basics matter more than ever. Being on time. Being prepared. Being accountable. Supporting each other when the pressure spikes. These commitments create stability inside fluid environments, and stability is what allows trust, and therefore connectedness, to take root.

4. Lead with radical transparency. In the Information Age, there is very little room to hide. Leaders who try to manage through opacity pay for it in speculation and anxiety, and anxiety isolates people.
   Share the challenges. Acknowledge mistakes openly. Invite input before decisions are finalized. Jeni Bukolt, founder of HAVEN Creative, told me her fully remote team uses Google Chat throughout the day. They share ideas, anecdotes, and jokes because they recognize that camaraderie requires deliberate cultivation when you can’t generate it in hallways.
   That’s the spirit. Small acts of transparency, repeated consistently, rebuild what distance erodes.

Start Here

Connectedness begins with clarity about who you are as a leader and what you stand for. Before you can repair connectedness in your team, you must be grounded in your own values.

If you’re a premium subscriber, work through the Values-Based Leadership Workbook. It’s the foundation that makes everything above sustainable because teams connect most deeply with leaders who know exactly who they are.

Click here to download the Values-Based Leadership Workbook.

Click here to download the Values-Based Leadership Facilitator Guide.

The Deeper Challenge

Remote work did not cause the connectedness crisis. It revealed it.

If our culture depended solely on physical proximity to hold together, it was already fragile. The Level Five Culture of Commitment requires more than being in the same building. It requires buy-in, mutual accountability, trust, and shared purpose. That kind of culture can thrive in hybrid environments, but only when leaders lead it intentionally.

In The Power of Being All In, I wrote about how returning to the workplace after the pandemic would feel unsettling at first. But if we, as leaders, champion the value of coming back together and bring genuine enthusiasm to rebuilding connection, people will share in that enthusiasm.

The question was never really about where people work. It was always about whether they felt they belonged.

So let me ask you directly: Are your people merely logging in? Or are they truly All In?

I’d love to hear what connectedness looks like in your organization right now. Leave a comment below and let’s talk about it.

Enjoy the journey!