I don’t do networking coffees with my colleagues at work.

But even though I’ve hung up my networking boots, I’ll sometimes grab a cup of tea with a team-mate or an ex-team-mate who’s moved onto pastures new.

The reason I do this?

Because I genuinely want to have a cup of tea with that person.

There’s no ulterior motive, no sneaky schmoozing, no trying to pick and choose the right people to impress over a chocolate muffin in the hopes that when it comes to the next pay round or job opportunity, I might be at the top of the list.

I simply meet up with a colleague if I want to meet up with that colleague.

This is in stark contrast to v1 of my banking career where I played the corporate game and did all the networking I thought I was supposed to do to get ahead.

But ten years of playing this game and doing the “done thing” left me yearning for a life where the scales were tipped away from what I “should” do and towards what I wanted to do instead.

Hence, no more networking. 

Another similar example:

Google is famous for its “20% time”.

This is where Google employees take a day each week to work on whatever they want, separate to their day job.

A great idea in theory.

In fact, I do something similar when I squeeze time out of my 9 to 5 to run my Mindset & Clarity workshops side of desk.

But I do wonder if the Googlerati who take their 20% are REALLY following their interests? Or if they’re ticking the boxes they think they should be ticking and choosing their projects based on what looks impressive, what their colleagues can understand or what their boss will approve of.

You see the difference right?

One last example for the road:

You might’ve heard of “radical candour”. It’s a way to describe how to give punchy feedback to a colleague and one of these corporate buzzwords that seems to have exploded in popularity in the last few years. 

But it’s almost become its own cottage industry.

It’s so baked into corporate culture that if you’re NOT giving “radical” feedback to a colleague, it might raise an eyebrow or two. And when you tell your boss that you’ve dished out some radical candour to Daisy from Accounts, you get a gold star and a pat on the back.

Truth be told, the moment someone tells me I should be giving someone else feedback or I must give feedback in a certain way is the moment I zone out.

What happened to a simple, honest conversation without an agenda because you actually CARE about your colleague’s work and their personal growth?

Somewhere along the way, the genuine spirit behind networking, 20% time and giving feedback turned into just more boxes to tick.

This is a real shame.

Ticking boxes might keep the machine running, but it sucks the aliveness out of work. When you're always performing, it’s also easy to forget what it feels like to just be yourself. At work, and everywhere else.

This drift is the spark behind my new program, The Music Inside You.

For over a decade, I put work at the centre of my life and drifted further & further away from what mattered to me.

I know how draining and disconnecting this can feel.

But I also know the way home.

The Music Inside You is all about tuning back into yourself and that bubbling source of joy, energy and aliveness that makes life sing.

I’ll be writing more about these topics when I start the promo next week for The Music Inside You. I’m busy putting the final touches on the program as we speak.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a question:

What’s one thing you do at work because you genuinely want to, not because you think you should? 

Something to mull over with your next cuppa.

To fulfilment, 

Tom