The Hidden Value of Fleeting Encounters in a Transactional World

In this article6 min read

Tap in. Order ahead. Join the call. Leave the call. Much of modern life is designed to remove friction from exchange.

That efficiency is useful. It also creates an easy mistake: treating every brief encounter as administratively necessary but socially irrelevant.

The Japanese concept of ichigo ichie offers a different way to see these moments. Usually translated as “one time, one meeting”, it asks us to recognise that a particular gathering cannot be repeated. The same people may meet again, but not with precisely the same mood, circumstances or attention.

That idea becomes more interesting when placed beside research on weak social ties and perceived scarcity. Fleeting encounters are not substitutes for close relationships. They do, however, perform a different kind of social work: they remind us that we belong to a world wider than our closest circle.

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A meeting does not need repetition to matter

Urasenke Konnichian, one of the principal traditions of the Japanese tea ceremony, describes ichigo ichie as the attitude that a particular set of circumstances is a singular occurrence in a lifetime. Importantly, it does not restrict the principle to formal ceremony. The same quality of attention can become part of an ordinary day.

This is not an argument that every conversation must become profound. It is a reminder that significance and duration are not the same thing. A short exchange can matter without becoming a friendship, a contact or an opportunity.

A conversation does not need a future to matter.

That is what makes fleeting encounters easy to miss. They do not create an obvious obligation. There is no relationship to maintain and often no practical outcome to record. Their value sits in the moment itself: recognition, attention and the small confirmation that another person has been seen.

Weak ties do different work

Close relationships remain central to wellbeing. Partners, family and trusted friends provide intimacy, history and support that an acquaintance cannot reproduce. The useful distinction is not between important and unimportant people. It is between different forms of connection.

Psychologists Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn studied interactions with “weak ties”: classmates, acquaintances and other people known without being close friends. Across their studies, people reported greater happiness and a stronger sense of belonging on days when they interacted with more weak ties than usual.

“Weak” describes the intensity of the relationship, not its usefulness. A close friend can make us feel deeply known. A familiar face at the station, a colleague from another team or the person who serves our morning coffee can make us feel visible within a broader social world.

This helps explain why loneliness cannot be understood only by counting intimate relationships. Belonging also has a public dimension. It is reinforced by the repeated, low-stakes evidence that we occupy a place among other people.

Efficiency is not socially neutral

Sandstrom and Dunn tested this in a coffee shop. One group of customers was asked to make the transaction as efficient as possible. Another was encouraged to create a small social interaction by smiling, making eye contact and briefly speaking with the barista. The social group later reported greater positive affect, satisfaction and belonging.

It was a small field experiment, and the researchers were careful about context. A service worker who is busy, unwilling or required to perform warmth is not raw material for somebody else’s wellbeing. The point is not to impose conversation. It is that removing every human signal from a transaction may remove something valuable along with the delay.

Organisations often miss this trade-off because they measure only the visible side: waiting time, handling time and throughput. Recognition rarely appears on the dashboard. Yet a process can become operationally faster while leaving the experience socially thinner.

Scarcity changes what we notice

There is another mechanism at work. Psychologist Jaime Kurtz studied what happened when university students were prompted to think of graduation as close rather than distant. Over the following two weeks, those students increased their college-related activity and reported greater subjective wellbeing.

The study concerned the end of university life, not everyday conversation. Applying it to fleeting encounters is an interpretation. The useful principle is perceived temporal scarcity: when we recognise that an experience is finite, we often pay more attention to what remains.

Ichigo ichie brings that finite quality into the present. It does not ask for anxiety about endings. It asks for attention without a promise of repetition.

What this changes at work

Workplace culture is usually described through values, incentives and leadership behaviour. It is also produced at a smaller scale: who is acknowledged, who receives undivided attention and which conversations are treated as interruptions.

Hybrid work has made this more visible. Scheduled meetings preserve formal coordination, but incidental contact is easier to lose. The five-minute conversation before a meeting, the quick exchange with somebody outside the immediate team and the moment of recognition in a shared space can all disappear without a line appearing on a risk register.

The answer is not compulsory small talk or another networking initiative. Forced connection quickly becomes performance. A lighter practice is enough:

• Acknowledge the person before beginning the transaction.
• Ask one real question when the situation allows it.
• Attend to the answer instead of preparing the next sentence.
• Allow the exchange to end without converting it into an opportunity.

This is close to the distinction explored in Supercommunicators: better communication begins with recognising what kind of conversation is actually taking place. Not every moment needs solving. Some need only presence.

Do not turn connection into a target

Once a human benefit becomes visible, management instinct often tries to operationalise it. Count the conversations. Set a target. Add a prompt to the employee survey.

That would miss the point. Fleeting encounters are valuable partly because they are voluntary and lightly held. The practical move is not to seek a larger number of people. It is to notice the people already woven into the day.

Learn a neighbour’s name. Speak to the colleague who normally receives only a status update. Say hello to the familiar face at the gym. Ask the barista how they are doing when there is time to hear the answer. Let the interaction be complete without demanding that it lead anywhere else.

The same meeting never happens twice

The principle also applies to people we know well. Familiarity creates an assumption of abundance: another dinner, another call, another chance to listen properly. Usually there will be another meeting. There will not be this one again.

That does not require solemnity. It requires enough attention to notice what is different: a change in mood, a question that has not been asked before or the meaning hidden inside an ordinary answer. As the wider science of happiness suggests, wellbeing is not built only through major interventions. It also accumulates through the quality of daily life.

Even if you meet the same person tomorrow, tomorrow will be a different meeting. When someone is in front of you, be there too.

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Sources used

• Anne-Laure Le Cunff, “The Value of Fleeting Encounters”, newsletter, 27 August 2026. The original prompt for this article’s exploration of ichigo ichie and weak ties.
• Urasenke Konnichian, “New Year’s Greeting 2023”. Explanation of ichigo ichie as “one time, one meeting” and a principle for daily practice.
• Gillian M. Sandstrom and Elizabeth W. Dunn, “Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2014.
• Gillian M. Sandstrom and Elizabeth W. Dunn, “Is Efficiency Overrated? Minimal Social Interactions Lead to Belonging and Positive Affect”, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2014.
• Jaime L. Kurtz, “Looking to the Future to Appreciate the Present: The Benefits of Perceived Temporal Scarcity”, Psychological Science, 2008.

Related reading

• The Science of Happiness
• Supercommunicators: What Makes Conversations Work
• Human-Centred Change: Technology Moves Faster Than People