Chapter One

1. What Is Professional Closeness?

I vividly recall learning about a set of experiments from the 1950s—the Milgram Experiments—for which researchers recruited students for two tasks: being interrogated themselves and being the interrogators. The goal of the study was to determine how far people would go in applying physical pain. The Cliffs Notes? Ultimately, scientists discovered study participants found it shockingly easy to inflict pain upon others if there was physical distance between them. The experiment would be considered unethical by today’s standards, yes, but it still sheds a light relevant to the climate in many organizations today. This is it: if a board makes a decision that will have a substantial impact, board members may be unable to see the human implications of that decision because they’re professionally distant—a strategy often masked as objectivity. When we operate from that place of distance, though, we are actually not being objective; instead, we are preventing ourselves from connecting using our intuitive brains, making it more difficult to get a sense of what matters to those around us.

I’ve seen this in action. About five years ago, I’d just finished a four-month tour around the world working with leadership teams from companies in Asia, Australia, Africa, the United States, and more. The Monday after I returned home to Holland, a colleague and I were in a facilitation meeting with the board of a Dutch insurance company. It was preparing for a large reorganization within its business. After running the numbers, it discovered that it miscalculated and that the endeavor would entail the letting go of more employees than it had originally intended. When that topic came up, the leaders discussed it in a way that, to me, felt dehumanizing—but not intentionally so. The leaders had no bad intent. On the whole, they were going through the motions, managing their business in a way that was ultimately in an effort to make things better. However, the level of detachment I witnessed in that meeting sent me into a sort of reverse culture shock, especially having traveled so extensively the months prior. I was not able to keep quiet in that moment, so I assisted the leaders in remembering that these were people’s livelihoods at stake, not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. Their smirky laughs quieted, and we had a productive discussion that helped them remember the true picture. It was one they genuinely cared about, ultimately, but had lost sight of while trying to prioritize organizational efficiency over and above the human element, rather than as a means to enhance it.

The boards I mentioned, both the hypothetical and real, are examples that show that while the pain they may be inflicting through their company-wide decisions are not physical, it is present nonetheless. If Professional Closeness is not present, a level of detachment can permeate the perceptions of even the most well-intentioned leaders, and such decisions can simply be easier to make. In the end, however, choices made without careful consideration of the human impact don’t benefit the people or the overall organization, no matter what the numbers say.

In addition, this way of operation is not how we are hardwired. Individuals will follow their own paths, whether implicitly or explicitly, around the deeper parts of their personalities: core values, basic temperament, and so forth. Professional Closeness is about translating those values and making them real through our own convictions, beliefs, and subsequent actions—and the consideration of the same in others. If we can accomplish this, not only will we be more personally productive, but our work environments will become more conducive to growth, too. Why? Just like the Milgram Experiments sought to explore, it all comes back to our nature and how we’re designed to operate psychologically—topics I’ll explore in depth very soon.

As the world becomes increasingly tech-driven, boards like the one I mentioned have myriad factors to consider when making decisions that will widely impact their organizations. In these times, humans should become increasingly human again, not the other way around.

The Opposite of Professional Distance

I’ve introduced the concept of professional distance, but here’s a deeper analysis: the terminology actually stems from the medical field. In order to cope with the day-to-day and often emotionally heavy side effects of being a nurse or physician, the literature has historically argued (or at least implied) that detachment is necessary. By and large, caregivers are taught not to become too friendly with or emotionally attached to patients, as that may cloud judgment. As a result, many care providers take the role of “provider” more seriously than they do “care” in an emotional sense, relying more on expertise than connection.

In other words—and especially in the medical field—professionalism can often keep you from being close on a personal level, even though the level of connection we seek as humans can be similar. In these cases, we want the same level of trust and respect, but instead of saying, “be close,” we say, “keep your distance.”

However, 2008 empirical data published by Green and colleagues in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal has shown that when patients truly feel their medical providers care about them, that has a direct, positive effect on their ability to heal. You can imagine why this dynamic is even more of a dilemma in this particular profession than it is in business; in medicine, you’re quite literally dealing with life and death.

I believe, regardless of your profession, that expertise is important, but so is care. The two are not mutually exclusive, whether you’re in a hospital or a boardroom. You don’t have to exclude emotions entirely. In fact, it’s the opposite: you should include them entirely. Furthermore, leveraging emotional intelligence does not make you less objective; instead, it can help you see the whole of a person and the whole of a situation.

Furthermore, I believe objectivity—in the medical profession or otherwise—is not something we should necessarily strive for, as subjectivity is part of human nature. There will always be something inherent about what you’re interpreting, feeling, and assessing in any given scenario. Professional distance ignores it, and Professional Closeness leverages it. In fact, when it comes to leading your team, Professional Closeness is about creating the atmosphere within the group. This atmosphere allows you to start connecting people together and raising your collective intelligence—your inter-subjectivity—to ultimately become more rich and precise in your decision-making ability.

A Living Concept in Action

Professional Closeness, as a concept, is a living, breathing thing—much like the human beings who benefit from its implementation. The idea is still maturing as I write this book and use it in my practice; still, the empirical evidence of its effectiveness is clear.

Here’s a tangible example: a couple of years ago, my consulting firm was working with a large, acquisition-based enterprise organization that had branches all over the globe. One business...