Remote Teams are Struggling

As we approach the anniversary of beginning this quarantine, our teams have been remote for a year. I'm talking to a lot of your teammates and I have to tell you, people are really struggling. What is needed right now more than anything is clear and compassionate communication.

Many of you have been on-boarded virtually and have never met your teammates or you are dealing with so much behind the scenes that leadership is not seeing. Leaders, I see you: I know what you've been managing over this past year, both for work and at home. It's a lot.

(I’m also holding space for essential workers who cannot work remotely, who are managing their health and safety through layers of PPE and overwhelming demand. I see you too.)

This always amazes me: We have 60,000-80,000 thoughts a day. Most of them are negative (80%). Most of them are identical to thoughts we had yesterday (90%). If we think about this in terms of communication, there is real negativity bias and that is amplified by our distance from each other and a desire for validation and connection.

Also, 93% of communication is nonverbal, everything but the words. That means that 93% of how someone perceives you is dictated by tone of voice, body language, facial expression, and eye contact, all things that are obscured or inaccurate when working from home. On the phone this only goes down to 86%, meaning the words still don’t hold much weight.

So when we shift to written communication, there’s even more of a gap between the nonverbal cues that we're not receiving and the validation that we’re seeking. If you are in a position of power and privilege at work, you have a responsibility to direct which modes of communication are being used so that people feel more included and more connected.

As a rule, if you have challenging information to communicate, get face-to-face (that means on video these days) or on the phone. Slack messaging and other written forms of communication can show a lot of strength inherently, especially if you're in a position of leadership. When you're in a position of leadership, you have more inherent strength and authority so I recommend that you impose connection and compassion into those words and do it manually to override the limitations of the written format.

This is informed by the wonderful work of Amy Cuddy, John Neffinger and Matthew Kohut who talk about strength and warmth as a leadership communication framework.

I would love to hear feedback, how your team is feeling, and what you are doing to help them feel more connected and more positive in what feels like such a dark winter. Let me know!