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Remote and Relationships

Remote and Relationships
Photo by Austin Ban on Unsplash

I've been pondering about remote/hybrid/legacy working and have caught myself falling into some lazy thinking around this ie repeating the mantra 'building the start of a relationship is easier face', without really interrogating my assumption underlying that statement. So, having thought about it, here are some things i believe to be true:

  • It can be really nice and useful to see people you work with in the flesh sometimes
  • The percentage of times when it is nice and useful and convenient for all parties VS when it isn't is I reckon (depending on the people and personality types) between 2-5% of the time.
  • So both of these two things can be true.
    • That i've had great post-pandemic face to face work experiences where i've thought 'i want to do that again'
    • and yet also had experiences where i've thought 'why the fuck did i travel in for this shite'
  • So, the majority of the time it is neither nice or useful or convenient. What a waste!
  • Relationships are important
  • Our ability to build a relationship (or not) is contained within a set of skills that you possess that are transferable across face to face and remote contexts
  • We actually build real relationships at work through the push and pull and the soft and hard edges of working together, not through randomly being in close proximity to each other
  • Remote working practices are far from perfect evolving rapidly and new approaches are being tried, tested and adopted across organisations
  • Emerging practice will quickly solidify into accepted practice within organisations and disseminate quickly outside of orgnisational boundaries. This is already happening, i've seen this as i've moved between organisations in my consulting role
  • Laggards gonna laggard, leave them at the shitty end of the adoption curve

I think its important, as leaders that we continue to assess the dynamic and evolving landscape around new ways of working and challenge our assumptions where we hold them, and hold them lightly, as the foundations on which we make our assumptions are changing daily.