Yesterday I made a case: the meaning gap at work is really a connection gap. And I promised a practice.

Here it is.

We feel the distance more than we used to. The polished Zoom background that hides the room. The email so smoothed over by AI that you can’t find the person inside it. We have never had more ways to reach each other and felt further apart doing it.

So here’s a simple practice for closing that gap with the people you work with. Your colleagues, your peers, your direct reports.

Let them catch a glimpse behind the facade.

Not a confession. Not your whole self. A crack.

I saw this work in my own department. We started a ritual at our faculty retreat called Fika, the Swedish practice of stopping for coffee and trading the small, vivid moments from our lives that shaped us. Not status updates. People. A more formal colleague was hesitant. That’s normal. @Juliana Schroeder and @Nick Epley have a beautifully titled paper on exactly this: Pleasant conversations are preceded by concerns about starting one. We dread the very thing that ends up connecting us. The dread comes first. The connection comes right after.

Here’s why the crack works. @Ashley Hardin found that when you learn something about a coworker that is vivid, unguarded, and about their life outside work, you see them as more authentic, more trustworthy, more human. The guitar in the background. The mention that you’re counting down to Coachella. The wedding photo a colleague once showed me, the two of them impossibly young, just before his first job. These aren’t distractions from the work. They’re windows into the person doing it.

Now, you might be thinking: doesn’t this only work if it’s accidental? Here’s the catch. The thing that kills it isn’t intention. It’s performance. We can smell a humble-brag from across the room, the curated vulnerability, the weakness that’s secretly a flex. That reads as strategy, and the brain quietly discounts it.

So this isn’t about broadcasting a win or polishing an achievement until it shines. It’s the opposite. It’s the hobby, the passion, the small true thing that has nothing to do with looking good. Share something genuine and a little unguarded, and let it be small.

Here’s the part that matters most. You don’t have to bare your soul, or “whole self.” You keep your agency and your privacy. The science doesn’t ask you to drop the facade. It asks you to crack it. A vivid, unguarded moment. A passion you don’t usually mention. That’s enough to be seen as human, trustworthy, and real.

So here’s the practice. This week, in one conversation that’s running purely on business, mention one true thing from your life outside it. Invite reciprocity. That’s the whole move.

The distance is the default now. So crack the facade. Just a little.

References: Hardin, Schinoff & Balven (2024), “A Window into Coworkers’ Worlds,” Academy of Management Journal. Schroeder, Lyons & Epley (2022), “Hello, Stranger?”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.