Dating and corporate America have more to do with each other than we think, and companies may be able to take lessons from the dating world to improve relationships in the workplace, one expert says.
Lakshmi Rengarajan has had experience in both dating and the corporate world. She is a former director of brand strategy for Match.com, one of the oldest dating websites and the owner of Tinder and Hinge. She was also a “workplace connection advisor” at WeWork, where she worked to improve the bonds between employees.
Now, she is embarking on a project called How to Date Humans in which she is hosting a series of talks and workshops over the course of a year to examine modern dating, why it’s broken, and how it can be fixed.
Speaking at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit Wednesday, Rengarajan argued dating and corporate relationships are intertwined.
One of the most obvious comparisons may be the similarities between “ghosting” and “quiet quitting” in the workplace. Both behaviors, which involve not responding or dropping out, don’t mean a person doesn’t care. It means they don’t have the language or skills to meet the moment, she said.
