See Your Audience

A Distributed Work Tool

Being Ignored Can Feel Like Being Hated

If someone gets on a meeting and no one acknowledges them or their needs, they may feel ignored. And in that moment they may feel something closer to being hated than being liked. 

A provocative series of studies by Duke professor Mark Leary and his colleagues found that being ignored by others feels quite similar to feeling hated by others. As part of their larger sociometer theory work, they found that when others ignore you, it can seem as if they don’t care for your needs or welfare.

Feeling ignored is even more likely to occur when one has true needs that are seemingly being left unacknowledged. So when your audience is struggling or in need, “seeing your audience” is even more important.

In distributed work it is easy to feel unseen. Unlike in a face-to-face meeting, we have less of a shared reality and therefore less in common. As we are personally connecting less, it’s easy to start feeling less acknowledged. 

To fight the “ignoring is the same as hating” outcome, make sure to use the concept of “see your audience,” a general approach that pulls from many different techniques all with one goal: to make sure people feel that they matter to you and that you see their reality.

Basic Meeting Techniques

The Philosophy and Practice

One Word Check In

Additional Techniques from the Toolkit

For more on “See Your Audience” and other tools, see OYF’s Distributed Work Toolkit.