Page 247 - The Power to Change Anything

236 INFLUENCER

its effects for years on end, mostly unnoticed. When social psy-
chologist Leon Festinger and others first started examining the
effects of space (and its two-dimensional cousin, distance) on
relationships, they had no idea that they had stumbled onto one
of the most profound social-psychological phenomena of all
time—propinquity. Simply put, propinquity is physical proxim-
ity, and Festinger and others spent a good amount of time study-
ing how it affects our behaviors and relationships.
For instance, look at who marries whom and how they
meet. Look at who collaborates on spontaneous group efforts
at work. Examine who has the most friends and acquaintances
in an apartment complex. Explore which employees are satis-
fied with their relationship with their supervisor. Surely most
of these complicated interpersonal scenarios are largely a func-
tion of personal interests and interpersonal chemistry. Right?
Not really. Festinger discovered that the frequency and
quality of human interaction is largely a function of physical
distance. Apartment dwellers who are located near stairwells
are acquainted with more people than individuals who have
fewer people walking by their front doors. People who live
across from the mailboxes are acquainted with more of their
neighbors than anyone else in the building. At the corporate
level, bosses who interact the most frequently with their sub-
ordinates generally have the best relationships. And who inter-
acts most often? Bosses who are located closest to their direct
reports.
But the opposite isn’t necessarily true. That is, too much
distance doesn’t merely lead to inconvenience and loss of
friendship. At the corporate level, when employees don’t meet
and chat (getting to know one another and jointly working on
problems), bad things happen. Silos form and in-fighting
reigns. Employees start labeling others with ugly terms such as
“them” and “they”—meaning the bad people “out there”
whom they rarely see and who are surely the cause of most of
the problems they experience. If you want to predict who