"We believe that you do need to get together to build social bonds. Our belief, though, is that you don’t need to get together every single day to sit next to each other on a Zoom call in an office and commute back and forth to get that benefit.
We believe that you can get together for what we call “intentional togetherness,” deliberately to build social bonds, to break bread, to build that human connection that we think is so crucial to teamwork." Scott Farquhar, CEO of Atlassian
A couple of weeks ago I started working remotely with multiple teams, who are all remote as well. This is new for me as all of my roles have been in an office. I was concerned about how the nature of my interactions and how I would build trust and connections.
So I am taking this experience as an experiment since many of you work remote as well. Here some stats from a LinkedIN report.
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By 2025, about 22% of the US workforce is expected to work remote
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98% of workers want to work remotely some of the time
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Remote workers are 30% more productive!
This is the key moment to let our "soft" skills shine! How to resolve conflict, communicate, and collaborate creatively are critical to be successful as a remote worker.
Last week i asked you to share some advice. My former colleague and friend Lara Coutinho gave me some greta advice and I needed to share it here.
1) Connect as much as possible, as often as possible, and in as many ways as possible. Every group meeting is an opportunity to connect, so don't jump at the chance to cancel a meeting. Use the camera on video calls. Engage in every venue of communication available to your team: email, phone, video calls, Teams/Slack, and every platform your team is on. Have a presence in each one because all teammates will have their own preferred platform, and you don't want to miss someone because you have different personal preferences.
Over time, you can discover where your time is best invested, and skip some platforms if there's little reason to be there.
2) Make time for in-person visits. I cannot stress this enough. There is no replacement for in-person time for learning to understand each other as teammates... Somehow, make it possible for your in-person reality to connect with other in-person realities.
3) Learn as much as you can about your other teammates' communication styles and adjust to them in balance with using your own communication style. A balance between showing up as your true, complete self and meeting the other person where they are is critical.
4) Reach out more than you think you need to.
Good stuff, right?
By the way, in a couple of weeks I am launching the new season! We'll be talking AI in the next episode. If you have guest recommendations, please let me know.
