BY WES ADAMS AND TAMARA MYLES

Suzanne Simard grew up in the lush rainforests of British Columbia, where her family’s roots were deeply embedded in the world of logging.

Generations of her family, including her great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, were dedicated horse loggers.

They crafted their own tools and boats to transport logs and built houseboats for their community to serve as their homes during their logging expeditions.

When Suzanne was just six years old, the entire family was jolted awake by the sound of howling echoing from the dense forest nearby. They soon discovered that their spirited beagle, Jigs, had fallen into the outhouse pit.

The family swiftly rallied to the scene—wielding shovels and pickaxes to free their trapped four-legged friend. As she watched the men start to dig through the dirt beside the pit, Suzanne was captivated.

She watched as they unearthed layers of soil—each with distinct colors, textures, and signs of life. First, a thick layer of moss, followed by a white layer, a red layer, a yellow layer, and an intricate white and brown root system emerged from the ground. The experience left Suzanne mesmerized by the masterpiece that was the soil beneath her feet.

After much digging, the family managed to extract Jigs. He was promptly treated to a cleansing dip in the lake, and while Jig’s ordeal was over, Suzanne’s fascination with the intricate world of soil and the hidden wonders of the forest floor was just beginning.

At the age of twenty, Suzanne started working for a clear-cutting logging company, as one of the first women to secure a summer job in the forest industry. Her job involved planting trees in areas that had been recently clear-cut—aiming to restore the forest.

While doing this work, Suzanne noticed a significant difference between the trees she planted and those that grew naturally from fallen seeds. The planted trees often struggled with yellowing leaves and poor growth while the naturally growing trees thrived.

Curious about this difference, she began investigating the root systems of these trees. What she discovered was a revelation: the trees that had taken root on their own had extensive root networks, while the planted ones were bare.

Suzanne’s curiosity led her to graduate school to study below-ground tree interaction and communication. Commercial loggers believed that replacing diverse forests with a single type of tree would help the newly planted trees thrive, since they would not have to compete with other species for nutrients.

However, these new plantings were increasingly susceptible to disease and stress. Suzanne believed the reason was hidden in the soil. Interested in how different species interact underground, Suzanne decided to investigate root and fungal links between the Douglas fir and paper birch species for her doctoral thesis.

Through her groundbreaking research, Suzanne revealed that fungal threads act as vital networks—facilitating the transfer of nutrients, warning signals, and hormones between trees, even across species—supporting the growth and resilience of forests.

Her paper was published in the top scientific journal Nature in 1997, with the title “The Wood-Wide Web”—a term that soon spread through the pages of science writing. Popular culture also readily embraced Suzanne’s discovery.

The Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s movie Avatar is based on her research, and she was the inspiration for the character Patricia Westford in Richard Powers’ 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory.

Suzanne is now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia and in 2021 published a memoir, Finding the Mother Tree, which describes her mission to prove that the “forest is more than just a collection of trees.”

Reflecting on why popular culture latched on to this idea, Suzanne told PBS: “We are social creatures; we understand how relationships work. We are affected by our community, and we affect our community. That a forest would have those qualities as well really resonates with us. That a forest is more than just a bunch of trees…that it’s a whole social community. We get that as people.”

Superorganisms & Superorganizations

Suzanne’s research demonstrated that, in healthy forests, trees operate less like individuals competing for resources and more like a community of beings, exchanging resources for collective resilience. These forests are so interconnected and codependent that scientists have referred to them as “superorganisms.”

The same is true in our organizations: success and resilience are less about standing alone and more about standing together. In the workplace, as in the forest, community is the foundation of growth, belonging, and meaning. Healthy work environments—our “superorganizations”—leverage the power of connection and cooperation to thrive.

In these superorganizations, positive relationships are the connective tissue that strengthens collaboration, fosters innovation, and weaves a vibrant network of mutual support. In short, they foster belonging.

Just how important is belonging and connection? Seventy percent of workers say friendship at work is the most important element to a happy work life, and fifty-eight percent say they would turn down a higher-paying job if it meant getting along with coworkers.

Research shows that for each friend you make at work; you are five percent less likely to quit. In contrast, those who don’t have a friend at work are 176 percent more likely to be looking for a new job.

Unfortunately, many of us are like the planted trees in the new-growth forests Suzanne studied—disconnected and languishing. More than half of today’s workforce is experiencing the opposite of belonging—a deep sense of loneliness.

One recent study found that more than half of US workers don’t look forward to working because of their coworkers, while forty-three percent don’t feel any sense of connection inside their organizations.

Loneliness is the gap we experience between the social interactions we have and the ones we wish for. We can be surrounded by people at work and still feel lonely.

Maybe you have felt like there was no one you could talk to when you ran into a problem. Or perhaps you find yourself eating lunch alone at your desk every day. This feeling of loneliness can have dangerous consequences for our lives.

In a landmark study, Brigham Young University researcher Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, and colleagues found that loneliness increases the risk for early mortality to the same degree as smoking fifteen cigarettes per day. Loneliness also increases blood pressure and cholesterol, activates physical and psychological stress responses, and suppresses the immune system.

The consequence of loneliness extends beyond our health—it also affects how we show up at the workplace. More than one in three working adults feel a general sense of emptiness or disconnection from others at work. The situation is even more grim for remote workers, who are less likely to report feeling that their relationships with others are meaningful.

A study by the Wharton School found that the lonelier people are at work, the worse they perform. Even a single incident where someone feels excluded can lead to an instant decline in their performance.

The cost of loneliness is significant for organizations—leading to lower productivity, lower quality of work, and higher turnover. Researchers asked nearly six thousand American workers to complete a survey to measure loneliness and its impact on work, and they discovered that lonely workers are more likely to miss work due to stress.

In the United States alone, missed workdays attributed to loneliness cost organizations an estimated $154 billion annually. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Power of Community in the Workplace

Supportive relationships at work are a source of growth, well being, and meaning. When managers, supervisors, and other leaders make the effort to facilitate frequent positive interactions, they help strengthen the connective tissue of their superorganizations.

Over time, this social connective tissue becomes a conduit—like the fungal network belowground, enabling greater collaboration, innovation, adaptability, and success across the community.

In fact, highly connected employees are ninety-two percent more likely to grow professionally and thirty-four percent more likely to reach goals. When researchers ask the question, “Do you have a best friend at work?” they find that those who answer yes are seven times more likely to be engaged in the work and more connected to their community.

Work relationships don’t have to be intense to be valuable. Jane Dutton, PhD, a positive organizational psychologist at the University of Michigan, found that brief moments of positive connection in the workplace can have a considerable positive effect on our experience at work.

Along with her colleague Emily Heaphy, PhD, Jane coined the phrase “high-quality connections” to describe moments of positive connection that make us feel seen and energized. That brief exchange you have with a colleague about your plans for the holidays. It matters more than you think.

Jane has found that these micro-moments of connection—as little as forty seconds—can enhance the capacity for cooperation and coordination across teams. They can increase resilience and authenticity, strengthen an individual’s attachment to their organization and community, support ongoing learning and development, and facilitate a shared sense of purpose.

Because most adults spend about one-third of their time at work, their highest-quality connections are often with colleagues. Research has determined the number of work friends you need to not feel lonely at work: one. All we need is a single individual whom we feel connected to and can share positive experiences with. That’s all it takes.

So how can organizations nurture deeper connection? Here are two strategies superorganizations have used to strengthen community, foster belonging, and create a greater sense of meaning at work:

Synchronize breaks: Casual connections are a great opportunity for colleagues to become better acquainted, build friendships, or simply share brief but meaningful moments of connection. Organizations are already taking measures to increase casual activities and sense of belonging.

They include experiences such as sharing meals after work and happy hours. While these types of experiences can be a great first step and important to the mix, they are not enough to forge deep bonds and are often designed as add-ons to employees’ already busy workdays.

This can exclude entire populations, such as parents of young children who need to leave right after the workday is over, or those who don’t drink alcohol.

One way to design more inclusive casual connections is to incorporate them into the workday, such as through synchronized breaks. In a typical workday, most of us take breaks to recharge, refill our coffee, or chat with colleagues.

To turn this existing practice into a more meaningful opportunity to connect, you can synchronize these daily breaks. MIT professor Alex Pentland, PhD, and his team conducted a study of communication patterns at a call center of a large US bank.

They were interested in looking at the impact of social connection on overall productivity levels and to test strategies to increase the strength of these connections. They studied employees from four teams of roughly twenty people each. Originally, each employee on a team had a separate fifteen-minute break during the day.

The breaks were separate so that call loads did not have to be shifted significantly to other teams. Unfortunately, this break structure made it diff icult for cohesive relationships to develop, since people had limited opportunities for shared interactions.

To create more shared interactions, the researchers changed the break structure of two of the four teams so that all the employees on a team were given a break at the same time. After giving this change three months to stabilize, they returned to the call center and measured the behavior of the employees again.

The results were astonishing. Employees on synchronized breaks not only experienced significantly greater satisfaction but yielded the company $15 million in productivity gains.

Synchronized breaks don’t have to be lengthy to be meaningful. Even a short ten- to twenty-five-minute break can be sufficient to promote connection and camaraderie. The key is to create a dedicated time for breaks, allowing team members to step away from their desks, recharge, and connect on a more personal level.

In Sweden, where employees experience some of the lowest levels of stress globally, they have embraced synchronized breaks as a key to building community. Fika, a Swedish word that means “coffee break” or “to have coffee” is deeply ingrained in Swedish culture and is practiced in both workplaces and social settings. Synchronized breaks can transform what might have been individual coffee breaks into shared moments of connection.

Volunteer opportunities: Offering colleagues the opportunity to volunteer together can significantly strengthen their connection. Many studies have shown that volunteer programs increase engagement, productivity, and retention.

Research has also shown that individuals who volunteer together often report higher levels of well being. Positive psychology founder Martin Seligman, PhD, said that “doing a kindness for others produces the single most reliable increase in well being of any exercise we’ve tested.”

When positive emotions are simultaneously experienced by two or more individuals—what researchers call positivity resonance—it builds social bonds of trust and commitment over time. These shared positive emotions, such as the joy of attending a concert or the fulfilment from volunteering together, are associated with higher levels of mental health and lower levels of loneliness.

These types of programs have been implemented in all shapes and sizes. Some organizations, like Patagonia, give employees paid time off to volunteer for the cause they choose. Others, like Zappos, have an in-house charity group charged with creating opportunities for employees to volunteer together.

Bombas, the apparel company best known for their high-quality socks and buy-one-donate-one model, has an internal Giving Team tasked with creating different monthly opportunities for “Hive Members” (as employees are known) to volunteer and connect.

Incorporating community-building opportunities into the workplace not only strengthens connections among colleagues but also enhances individual well being, nurtures a sense of belonging, and deepens the sense of meaning at work—and beyond.

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Wes Adams is founder and CEO of SV Consulting Group, where he works with high-performing companies to develop leadership excellence, build organizational resilience, and deepen employee engagement through a meaningful work lens. He has more than two decades of experience as a successful entrepreneur and strategic partner for clients including Microsoft, KPMG, Google, and the United Nations.

Wes has been featured at South by Southwest Interactive and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, and his work has been covered by the New York Times, BBC News, Forbes, and Business Insider. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and holds a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Applied Positive Psychology.

Tamara Myles is an accomplished consultant, author, and international speaker with over two decades of experience helping leaders improve business performance. She is the author of The Secret to Peak Productivity, which introduced her proprietary Peak Productivity Pyramid framework. Tamara’s insights have been featured in leading publications, such as Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, and Business Insider.

Tamara has a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also serves as an instructor in the master’s program and a trainer for the world-renowned Penn Resilience Program. She is a professor in the Master of Science in Leadership program at Boston College, where she integrates cutting-edge research into practical applications for leadership and organizational success.

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee. Copyright © 2025 by Wes Adams and Tamara Myles. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Reprinted with permission.