Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Management Café. It has been a while. My name is Pilar Orti, and I am the host of this show, which is part of Virtual Not Distant. So you can find out all about that company, virtualnotdistant.com, of which I'm founder and director, and about everything we do to support online collaboration.
And in particular, we like to work with managers of remote teams in whatever context. It has been a very interesting year. I am recording in March 2021, and the last year has also been challenging for those of us who are already working in the remote space, because the context was one we had never imagined. So apologies if you were subscribed to the show and were enjoying it and wanted more, but I am back.
I don't know when I'll be back again, but I thought it'd be interesting to share with you an article I wrote for HR Zone, which is an online publication. And it's a summary of what I learned back in between 2019 and 2020 through our other podcasts, a series on connection and disconnection of remote teams. So just to let you know, I co-host our main show, which is called 21st Century Work Life. And there now we talk about online collaboration, leading remote teams and distributed organizations, so people who've been in the online space for a while.
And we cover all sorts of stuff. I have guests there. Once a month, I have a What's Going On episode with my co-host Maya. And we go between a fortnightly, so between two episodes a month, and every now and then we have four episodes a month.
But we definitely have two episodes a month. So do feel free to check that out, 21st Century Work Life. We're on all podcast apps. Now, back at the beginning of 2020, we started a series on connection and disconnection in remote teams.
And this was before the pandemic, which I think is interesting, because this was already an issue that was at the front of many people's minds working in the online space. And this series in particular was created in collaboration with Shield Geo, who are a company who are distributed themselves. And what they do is they help people employ people in other countries. So basically, they're working in organizations which have remote employees.
So they were perfectly fitted to help us with that series. And in fact, they drove it, let's face it. So I'll stick a link in the show notes to those series. We have eight episodes.
The first and eighth are a roundtable kind of thing between those of us in virtual, not distant, and Shield Geo. But the other five are, the other five, or six, I think it's eight episodes in total, or seven. The bulk of the content basically comes from lots of different people. So Bricka Jati hosted the series.
She pulled so many people's advice, opinions, experiences through that I think it's really worth a listen. And what I thought I'd share with you today is what I took from it, because it wasn't a topic that I had looked at in depth, in any depth. We had dedicated one episode at some point at the 21st Century Work Life podcast, but it's not something that I've ever struggled with. So I'd never had that inclination to look at it in depth.
So I learned loads from that experience that I thought I'd share with you. So I'm going to read the article, and I might add stuff as we go along and see how it goes. So up until March 2020, most remote workers were remote by choice. It suited their lifestyle, their work, and their personality.
Within the current pandemic, most knowledge workers have become remote whether it suits their work or not. And at the time when emotional support and maintaining a sense of connection is a primary concern, managers and colleagues have gone out of their way to support each other. But what happens when the current work setups settle down? Well, loneliness in remote teams was already a hot topic in 2019.
And knowing that remote work will continue longer term in most workplaces in some shape or form, it's even more important to address this aspect of well-being in our workforce. So over seven episodes of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, we have explored the topic of connection and disconnection in remote teams with a range of guests, including remote workers and managers, consultants, and psychologists. And looking back at the series, it strikes me that its structure provides a step-by-step approach for organizations to address the danger of loneliness in remote teams. And these five steps are, one, understand what loneliness is, what is causing it, and how it manifests itself in individuals.
Two, unpick the effects it's having on team members and their work. Three, design communication practices and encourage behaviors in management that nurture a sense of belonging in different ways. Four, recognize that it is part of an organization's duty of care to mitigate the risk of loneliness and address it as part of the overall well-being strategy. And five, equip individuals with the tools and skills to help them understand what makes them feel connected to others and how to proactively find that connection.
And I think this point about proactively finding that connection is really important if we look back at all kinds of online collaboration practices, and it's that things do not happen by chance in the online space. So if you by any chance are also listening for the 21st Century Work Life podcast, you will have heard me talk about the principles of visible teamwork a lot. And it's that concept that when we are co-located, when we are seeing each other regularly in the same physical space, we pick up a lot of information from each other about ourselves as people, about our work. When we are online, when we are remote, we do not pick up that information unless we have planned for it, unless we do it deliberately.
It's the same about connection. We cannot leave connection between people and the feeling of being connected to others, that sense of belonging. It cannot happen by chance online. Well, it rarely does.
Of course it can. But it very rarely does. We need to plan for it. We need to devise practices for it.
We need to have processes for it. So I'll carry on with the article. The causes of isolation. Well, feeling isolated or disconnected is not always triggered by physical isolation.
So someone's personal and physical context heavily influences the risk of loneliness, but beware of making assumptions. For example, someone living in a busy city with a family can feel more isolated than someone living on the road in a rural community with which they're heavily involved and integrated. Personality and the degree of need for human contact also play a part, as well as the role in the team or organization. An individual's role and the nature of the interdependent nature of their tasks can play a part in how connected they feel to those they work with.
Sometimes, often, more than one factor contributes to this connection. Tim Burgess, co-founder of Shield GO, has experienced this. In one of the podcast discussions, he said, the feeling of loneliness creeps up over time, and soon, the things we were running away from in office life, like interruptions, constant chatter, noise, office politics, give way to a feeling of detachment once the novelty wears off. Spotting the signs of isolation.
Dropping productivity, lack of focus, and negativity can be signs that something is not right, and loneliness can be a causal factor. Taking time to reflect on how we're engaging with our work is the first step towards identifying whether we feel disconnected from others. On top of this, we need to remember that different people require different levels of social interaction. The answer to preventing isolation might not be to step up the social chat or frequency of communication, because as Dr.
Julian Holt-Lunstad explained in the podcast, loneliness can be seen as the gap between the actual level of social interaction and connectedness versus that which is desired or preferred. So actually, pushing for too much social conversation could trigger a sense of disconnection in those who prefer to limit their social contact. So going back to Management Café, this is a podcast which is aimed at managers. From a manager's point of view, this diversity highlights the importance of getting to know team members personally and watching out for changes in behavior.
It's not always easy to raise the fact that you're not okay. And furthermore, the type of support that individuals need once they have identified they feel lonely will also be diverse. So, mitigating the risks? Unfortunately, listeners, there is not one best practice that will help all workers feel connected.
But there are some principles that can guide a leadership practice. Encourage managers to become role models. Suppose this is speaking to the HR practitioner, but hey, become a role model manager. You can be self-aware and open about your own challenges and create the space for people to share those things they value most from those around them.
This can help to create a culture of openness where feelings of loneliness can be brought up. Establish practices online that help people connect to others in different ways. So, provide virtual coffees and also Slack or Microsoft Teams channels or a roundup of emails if you're not using collaboration platforms, but where people can talk about non-work-related stuff for those missing office banter. You can also have systems of visible teamwork where those seeking more of a work-related connection can engage.
So, don't always think that people only feel connected when they're having social conversations. Having conversations around the work and knowing what other people are doing can be a great source of connection. And to find out more about the principles of visible teamwork, we have a downloadable guide that you can just grab from virtualnotdistance.com. You will need to sign up to the newsletter to get the link for that.
You can always of leading visible teamwork, which is mainly about finding asynchronous ways of staying connected so that we don't feel like we always have to be meetings to feel like we are a team. So, I'm going to carry over the list of mitigating the risks. Offer a diverse mix of social communication options. This is part of what I was saying as well.
As social connection happens at different emotional levels, don't assume that social chat always has to be fun. For example, the distributed company Buffer created two different Slack channels during the COVID-19 pandemic. One for people who wanted to discuss their concerns, and one for those wanting some light relief, where they could share some lighter thoughts. Having different kinds of emotional connection in a company can help different people feel connected.
Provide resources. Let employees know about any resources they can access when they start recognizing that this connection is impacting their well-being, and equip managers to be ready to support their people in different ways. And a note on this is that remind people these resources are there, and remind them again, and again, and stay up to date, because it could well give you, in a large organization, that the bank of resources keeps growing, and things change. And just make yourself familiar with them, so you can point people to them, if that's what they need.
And finally, create pairing-up systems. So, one of my favorite organizations is Trello. Well, they're not part of Atlassian, but what I love about them is they share a lot of their practices as a remote team, and one of the things they have is they've created a pair-up system where people are randomly paired up from the organization, and so they can continue to grow their social network, even if they are online. So, having strong networks to support us is one of the ways in which we can feel connected, and also look for help outside our team.
We don't want our team members to only be able to connect with people in the team, because sometimes they might need something different. So, are you set up for connection? The most important thing to remember is that isolation will creep up on different people at different times due to different reasons. So, focusing only on productivity when you design your communication systems can mean that you miss out on the effect that working apart from each other can have on people's well-being.
Listen, that is the article. I will put a link to it in the show notes, but I just remind you of the five-step-by-step approach, which is really something that you can just take and make your own. Understand what loneliness is, what is causing it, and how it manifests itself in individuals. Unpick the effect it's having on team members and their work.
Design communication practices, and encourage behaviors that nurture a sense of belonging in different ways. Recognize that it is part of your duty to care to mitigate the risk of loneliness, and address that as part of your overall well-being strategy. And finally, equip individuals, and yourself, with the tools and skills to help them understand what makes them feel connected to others, and how to proactively find that connection. So, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope that I kept you company for a few minutes. I hope you took some of it away. If you have any questions or want to comment on any of it, I would love to hear from you. So, I'll give you my email address, pilar at virtualnotdistant.com.
And remember that 21st century work life is full of episodes that are quite long. They're much longer than the episodes on this feed. So, if you really do not connect with episodes that are 1 hour, 40 minutes long, then maybe stick to this feed, and I'll keep coming back and dropping stuff that we're creating that might be of use, just like I did with previous episodes. And the other thing is I'd like to tell you about our podcasting for connection service, which is something that I feel can really, really help in organizations.
And when I say I feel, it's because I'm at the very early stages of providing it. So, I can't tell you that it's working amazingly yet. But the idea is that as the workforces are going to be more dispersed, if what we are hearing is right, a lot of people and a lot of organizations want to continue working away from each other in some shape or form. Hopefully, it won't be just working from home.
There'll also be use of co-working spaces and other setups that we haven't yet dreamed of. But it does look like people really appreciate not having to go all the time to the same place, the office. So, if that's the case with you and you are concerned about people not losing a bit of their sense of belonging to the organization and, more specifically, missing out on conversations that help them to feel connected, then talk to me and I'll be very happy discussing whether creating a show, so a podcast, the podcast is the show made up of episodes, creating a podcast for your employees within your organization, which draws out voices from your employees. So, I'm not talking of the traditional top-down where we get senior management to explain what's going on, etc.
No, it's really about where are the people who would like to share something with people they don't see every day. Anyway, that's enough. If you are interested in it, email me, pilar, at virtualnotlisten.com and we can have a chat. For now, I'm not sure when I'll be back, but I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Management Cafe.