“Having an office was symbolic of normality. I loved just being at my desk and hearing the buzz and all the conversations.” This quote from Flick Adkins in the Guardian echoes those who are ready to return to working at work.

Many miss work so much that more than half a million people have tuned into The Sound of Colleagues, a web page and Spotify playlist of workplace sounds, including keyboards, printers, chatter and coffee machines. A Swedish music and sound studio created it as a joke. The data shows for many it is no joke but a necessity.

These examples suggest there are many longing to go back to working in the office rather than working from their spare room futon. Yet even for ready individuals, the change of returning has the potential of producing fear.

Change often produces the fear of losing control. The change of going back to the office if you are set up working from home could feel like you are losing some control about how you work. Not to mention the work from home schedule during the pandemic may have fit your lifestyle and personal needs.

Humans are creatures of habit, and changes in routines can make us confused and uncomfortable. Just the thought of this change can provoke fear. Why?

Science about the brain helps us better understand why. Forbes contributor Karl Moore says when we are fearful of change, we’re reacting that way because its how our brains are wired.

When a change occurs, the brain receives information that conflicts with what currently exists in reality. This causes parts of the brain connected to the amygdala, or emotional center, to activate. And these parts of the brain drain resources from the prefrontal cortex, the area of our brain associated with rational thought. Because of this, we’re more likely to act emotionally than rationally.

Our brains also have five times the number of negative neural networks than they do positive ones. This can cause us to pay more attention to the negative rather than the positive.

We have had enough time through the pandemic to get used to our remote circumstances. Now that it is time to hear actual office sounds rather than a studio created replication, the challenge will be how to make the change without triggering negative emotions and thoughts. Our working “normal” will essentially be a “new normal”.

Understanding the brain during change might help our reactions demonstrate a “new normal” as well.

You’ve probably heard the saying “To eat an elephant do it one bite at a time”. The origin of this saying isn’t clear. It has been attributed to Desmond Tutu, The American General Abrams from the Vietnam war era and K’ung Fu-Tze, a Chinese philosopher to name a few. Regardless of who originated it, the meaning and use is the same. To handle something big, break it down in to manageable pieces.

The question is: Will it work to help us manage one of the biggest and most challenging things we encounter? Will it help us manage conflict?

Conflict is an interaction gone wrong. We know we are in conflict when we or the other party we are working with has unproductive emotions. Those could be emotions like anger or frustration. Those emotions can result in behaviors like defensiveness and deflection. Conflict is not easy to work through, but the strategy of breaking the interaction down into smaller pieces can produce positive results.

How does it work? To break conflict down, many conflict specialists turn to a paradigm called the Wheel of Conflict. At the center of the Wheel are needs. Everyone has different needs. For your clients, colleagues, customers or family members you are in conflict with, those needs might be to be heard, understood, or respected.

Coming out of the center of the Wheel are the spokes through which we all experience conflict. These include five different spokes.

1. The first is communication, either orally, in writing or with body language. How we communicate can start or aggravate a conflict.
2. Second is emotions. Events trigger different emotions in all of us, and we all might react to situations differently.
3. Third: Values. Different value systems can create conflicts. What’s appropriate to you may not be for the person you are interacting with.
4. The fourth spoke to consider is history. Do you have a long history between you? That may make for a more complex conflict. It could also make reconciliation simpler.
5. Finally, our fifth spoke is structure. Elements like time or unequal access to resources can cause conflicts. It’s important to be able to work within structural systems, or to change them when you have the chance.

We challenge you to consider the Wheel of Conflict when you find yourself in conflict. It might give you a new outlook on the situation, and therefore give you new ideas for understanding and resolution.

Before the pandemic, one research study on working from home involved 250 members of a call center. Half of the group worked from home for nine months. The other half continued to work in the office. Productivity in the home group went up by 13% without the distractions of the office.

But, the experiment also measured happiness. When they polled staff, half of the home-based group wanted to go back to the office. Loneliness was the single biggest reason.

Before the pandemic 40% of adults in America reported feeling lonely. At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. Recent studies show the subjective feeling of loneliness (internal experience of rejection or disconnection) is at the heart of the loneliness epidemic.

It is an epidemic that is not just challenging emotionally. It is deadly. Loneliness takes a greater toll on our well-being than obesity or smoking. Yet according to a recent article in Psychology Today, it hides in plain sight.

Imagine what these statistics are now. After a year of quarantine and isolation, how do we reconnect in ways that support people as we return to work or begin hybrid models of work?

Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy shared three steps to create productive relationships. We adapted these for our "new normal".

1. Build understanding of high-quality relationships. Strong social connections are characterized by meaningful shared experiences and mutually beneficial two-way relationships. Make strengthening social connections a strategic priority.
2. Encourage coworkers to reach out and help others in person or virtually. Accept help when it is offered. Murthy related this story. “Late one night during my residency training, I was managing a busy intensive care unit when one of my colleagues stopped and offered to help with a sudden influx of critically ill patients. Because of his generosity, we were able to rapidly place specialized catheters in patients with bloodstream infections and get them life-saving antibiotics quickly. We worked together for only an hour that night, but the connection we built lasted years.”
3. Create opportunities to learn about your colleagues’ personal lives. We have zoomed into people’s homes this past year, yet have we learned to acknowledge things about them that will help us connect? Covid gave us the rare opportunity to understand and appreciate colleagues as individuals with full lives.