Rahul joined us as a management trainee in 2005. He was one of our most bright and most cheerful youngsters in the team. He always had a smile on his face, made sure to greet each one of us in the morning, during coffee breaks, and during lunch meetings, was very participative during team meetings, and fun activities and he makes us feel his presence. But for a few days, I haven’t noticed him. I so much thought he is on leave. But, when I was passing by, I saw him at his desk, deeply engrossed in his machine. Though little surprised, I thought not to bother but have been noticing him since then. Two days later, I decided to have a personal chat with him. And that proved to be a good idea! I realized, that he recently received feedback from one of his peers at work and seemed to be worried too much about that. We had a quick conversation, and that helped him realign his priorities, and was back in charge, full of energy and enthusiasm very soon!
Fast forward to 2021. We had 5 management trainees who were onboarded virtually. It being a pandemic, we hardly met each other but tried to interact virtually on different collaboration platforms. However, it had its limitations. Rahul, who is my Project Lead now, asked me to have a one-on-one call with one of our MTs as he has been noticing some disengagement. I was curious to learn more about what made him think that. And this is what he shared – “I observed that Riya is generally very active on our internal collaboration tool – “E-ngage’ and on WhatsApp / MS Teams work for groups. She used to share recommendations, and ideas and also participates in different virtual contests. She always proactively reaches out if facing any challenge at work. Not only that she is active on LinkedIn, and Facebook, where she actively posts her opinions and views both on our corporate page as well as on our colleagues’ posts. I have been noticing that she is not active on any of these platforms for a while now. I tried having a personal chat with her where she mentioned, that she has recently posted a few updates on our internal communication and also on her FB page about some personal accomplishments, that didn’t receive the necessary traction from her colleagues and friends! I found it very difficult to relate, I mean “What big deal??’ But felt you could help her better, the same way you did for me long back”.
Do you relate to this? Did you notice the changing behavioral patterns towards the need to affiliate? How should we modify our lenses to read these changing needs and priorities? How should we deal with such situations? What can we do about it?
Digital collaboration once aspirational is now a reality and a need! Many organizations started adapting themselves to virtual collaboration platforms. Today, we have a plethora of virtual tools to market will hit $45 billion by 2025. This transformation is influencing the way we communicate, express, engage, collaborate, and relate to ourselves.
Internet psychology focuses on the changing psychological phenomena as a result of increased human interaction with digital technology, particularly the Internet. On the other hand, Self- Determination Theory (SDT), provides a unique perspective to understanding the relationship between psychological needs and network behavior (Zhu et al., 2011; Shen et al., 2013). Viewing SDT through the lenses of Internet psychology may give us a few insights and directions.
SDT suggests that people can become selfdetermined when their needs for competence, connection, and autonomy are fulfilled. In the digital world, people have the autonomy of self-disclosure by publishing opinions, posting photos or videos, and communicating with others through social media. They engage more on such topics, or forums, where they can likely exhibit their competence and find themselves relatable. The higher the need to be satisfied, the stronger the motivation and vice-versa.
Internet psychology, on the other hand, is an amalgamation of both positive and negative impacts. While, the positive impacts include quicker collaboration, increased engagement levels, autonomy, and an overabundance of opportunities to build once competence and choice of networking. Negative impacts include aggression, anxiety, reduced attention span, risk of overexposing themselves, and need for acknowledgment, etc., Besides, it can also affect personal and professional terms, if not managed well.
In this Digital collaboration era, people are seeking autonomy and trying to create belongingness through their choices of who, what, when, where, and how. But ‘How Much’ probably is the missing link here. However, this can either foster or thwart our well-being and growth. Organizations hence have to focus on strategies to positively leverage these platforms, along with focusing on creating awareness of the negative impacts:
- Identifying situations and opportunities to create extrinsic motivation
- Creating awareness of the positive and negative results of the usage of digital collaboration tools
- Boost self-determination by providing opportunities for positive feedback and restraining public criticism 4. Organizing mental well-being sessions to address the negative results 5. Educating managers about the changing psychological needs of their employees and helping them identify triggers that could lead to a negative impact 6. Encouraging employees to temporarily disconnect from digital media at regular intervals
- Encouraging physical and mental fitness activities 8. Opening Channels to increase personal cognition and face-to-face collaboration.
- Encourage constant break-outs and create opportunities for informal one-to-one connections.
- Creating “Psychological Incident Handling” Cells
Cyber Security or Internet Security should no longer just be looked at as data/information protection, but also as Psychological Protection also.
Work Cited:
- Self-Determination Theory and Motivation by Kendra Cherry: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-isself-determination-theory-2795387
- Cyberpsychology by Bianaca Soare. https:/learn.g2.com/cyberpsychology
- What is ‘Cyberpsychology’ and its importance in 2022? By Afshan Mukhtar. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-cyberpsychology-its-importance-2022-afshan-writes/
- Need for Affiliation from Wikipedia
- How Online Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction Influences Self-Disclosure Online among Chinese Adolescents: Moderated Mediation Effect of Exhibitionism and Narcissism – Frontiers in Psychology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5000554/
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