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How to build social connection in a remote team
Personal Connection
A sense of connection and belonging are sentiments that are helpful for building “affective trust” – a form of trust based on emotional bond and interpersonal relatedness.
It varies from the “cognitive trust” – which springs from reliability and competence. Both are influential to performance, but affective trust tends to be more salient for a team at the beginning of a relationship, according to studies.
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Personal Connection
A sense of connection and belonging are sentiments that are helpful for building “affective trust” – a form of trust based on emotional bond and interpersonal relatedness.
It varies from the “cognitive trust” – which springs from reliability and competence. Both are influential to performance, but affective trust tends to be more salient for a team at the beginning of a relationship, according to studies.
Statistics On Remote Workers
- Loneliness was reported as the biggest downside for 21% of remote employees, and one of the reasons that makes them more likely to quit.
- Most remote managers say they’d be more inclined to stay if they had more friends at work.
- Individuals who have 15 minutes to socialize with colleagues have a 20% increase in performance over their peers who don't.
- Positive social relationships are correlated with better life expectancy.
Dynamic Icebreakers
If your icebreaker questions are intriguing, cheeky, humorous – the answers you receive will be, too.
Many remote teams will kick off their weekly meeting with an icebreaker question or insert it during their morning stand-up meeting. Even more popular is asking a series of icebreaker questions during the onboarding process when hiring someone.
Over-Emphasize Onboarding
With affective trust being so important to foster at the beginning of a relationship, onboarding new hires well becomes even more critical for virtual team building.
You can partner newcomers with experienced employees and have a formal onboarding process at the company, or at least a partially in-person one, with expenses covered by the company.
Build a Buddy System
Many remote companies offer buddy systems for onboarding. This is also a way for people to have fun and get closer, as well as to increase job satisfaction and commitment.
This can take the form of assigning an official “mentor” or a random employee, with whom they have periodic one-on-one meetings to get acclimated to the company.
Foster Connection
- Try regularly scheduling chats over video. Those work particularly well when paired with activities like coffee breaks, online gaming or topical discussion.
- Create a dedicated non-work chat channel. This re-creates the “watercooler chat” you would have in an in-person office and it often becomes the primary mode of communication for online workers.
- Invest in company retreats and make space for people to socialize on them.
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Key Ideas
Assembling the Team
... that's capable of executing in a remote setup:
- Hire doers: they will get stuff done even if they are working from a secluded island.
- Hire people you can trust....
Software/Tools
In a remote team, you'll need the right tools to make sure everyone stays on the same page and can continue to execute without a physical person standing next to them.
You likely will need a tool in certain categories like group chat and video conferencing to make remote successful.
Processes
Good processes let you get work done in the absence of all else. They provide structure and direction for getting things done.
A few examples from Zapier:
- Weekly Hangouts;
- Weekly One-on-Ones;
- Bring the team together 2 times/year somewhere cool;
- Automate anything that can be automated.
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Building Rapport Remotely
To better build rapport and counter isolation do the following:
- smile, tilt your chin lower so you're not looking down on them, and slow down your speech during your vid...
Relying On Text The Right Way
Voice and video calls can help you feel more in touch with your team and avoid the issues of asynchronous communication like time lags or misunderstandings.
However, you'll likely spend a lot of your day communicating via text as it’s a good way to interact without interrupting their work. So you need to be able to get your point across clearly and simply, show empathy and understanding, and be efficient to avoid wasted time.
Staying Up To Date
Remote workers can feel overwhelmed by the amount of text they have to process. So finding ways to keep on top of what's going on is imperative for communicating efficiently with others.
Create archive lists and CC irrelevant emails to them, so you can save and share them without flooding non-involved people.
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The shared context
For the whole idea of remote work to actually work, you have to develop a remote culture for your team.
And that means having a shared context: everyone plays by the same rules, you have to ...
Working from home misconceptions
Working from home does not mean you are a remote worker. For a lot of people “working from home” is synonymous with not really working, but instead sitting at home in comfy clothes and doing anything but working. Because no one is really watching you.
Rules for remote work
- Assume remote, even if you have only 1 person that is not coming to the office. So make sure to share all the information from meetings in a written format.
- Have a private, quiet, dedicated space for working in your home. Preferably with a door that closes.
- Have the right digital equipment.
- Over-communicate.
- Make sure you get to actual meet your colleagues face to face.
- Have a time overlap with your team.
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