TikTok found a way to measure love. Turns out, it works in the office too.
TikTok isn’t just for dances or cleaning hacks. Sometimes, it accidentally stumbles into psychology. The latest example? Bird Theory.
If you haven’t seen it, the trend started with couples on TikTok talking about something seemingly insignificant: one partner mentions seeing a bird, and the other either engages or shrugs it off.
It sounds goofy (and slightly manipulative), but relationship researcher Dr. John Gottman built decades of work on this exact behavior. He called them bids for connection—the little moments when one person looks for attention, validation, or just acknowledgment.
Successful relationships, he found, are built not on grand gestures straight out of rom-coms, but on how often partners “turn toward” these bids instead of ignoring them.
Now TikTokers are putting it to the test in their own relationships. Some couples turn every bird sighting into a sweet conversation. Others… not so much. The funny part is how quickly people realized this simple test says a lot about emotional connection.
So what does any of this have to do with your boss? Think back to 2020, when the word “empathy” suddenly became the trendiest word in business. Companies were faced with how much people wanted to feel seen and supported while working through chaos, isolation, and being scared out of our collective minds. Leaders everywhere Googled how to “show empathy.”
Consulting firm Edelman even published The CEO’s New Role: Chief Empathy Officer, writing that great leaders needed to care as much about feelings as they did about financials.
Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, summed it up: “The future is going to require empathy at scale.”
And Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, added, “We’ve been reminded what is truly important—love, compassion, empathy, and taking care of one another.”
It was the gilded age of empathetic leadership. For a moment, every Zoom call felt like therapy mixed with KPIs.
Fast forward a few years, and the tune has changed. Salesforce laid off over 4,000 customer support employees this year as part of a push toward automation and AI. Maybe the robot overlords are better at empathy too.
That’s not a dig at Salesforce—it’s a reminder that corporate empathy often fades once the crisis does. When the lights come back on and the budgets tighten, leaders tend to go back to performance reviews, not emotional check-ins.
So if you’re wondering whether your boss still cares, don’t wait for the next Slack message about “company culture.” Try the Bird Theory. Bring up something small and see what happens.
Mention a new restaurant you liked. Talk about the weird bird that’s been nesting outside your office window. Or say something harmless like, “I saw the best TikTok today.” Do they engage with curiosity? Or do they nod vaguely and look down at their phone?
Their response will tell you everything you need to know about how they see you. Because engagement isn’t about the bird—it’s about presence. It’s about whether the people who lead you even notice when you’re trying to connect.
The truth is, most of us don’t expect our managers to care about every little thing. We just want to know they’re paying attention. A “That’s cool” or “Tell me more” can make a bigger impact than any recognition program ever will.
So the next time you’re in a meeting, try a little experiment. Drop a bird—don’t give me one. Watch who looks up.
Because whether it’s a partner at home or a boss at work, real connection always starts the same way—with someone saying, “Hey, did you see that bird?” and someone else caring enough to say, “Yeah, tell me about it.”
