How to stay connected while working remotely: 7 tips for beginners
As a beginner to remote working, there were stark differences to a typical office day job. Instead of meeting my colleagues every working day in person, I now had to interact with them through virtual meetings and asynchronous messages. While this wasn’t my first rodeo of being employed, I still had difficulty connecting with my colleagues and had to re-learn how to communicate effectively.
It started with feelings of loneliness in my third week of work. We had regular meeting updates to discuss what was done and what we do next, but there wasn’t any human connection to my team or the client. After pondering about it, I realised the way I was interacting was very different. I couldn’t look over my cubicle to see whether my colleague was free for an impromptu idea generation session. If there’s a problem that I needed help with from my supervisor, I couldn’t pop into her office to ask the question. The next logical step was to ping them a message. But there was this strong inertia to send them a message because there wasn’t a rapport being built yet. Because there were no small talks or lunch breaks chats, the accumulative social interactions were near zero.
In a digitally-connected but physically-disconnected environment, these are the 7 lessons I have learned to stay socially connected with my team, our clients, and with myself.
Connecting with my team
- Intentional check-ins
“How are you?” has never felt more important. In a physical setting, when asking this question, there are many visual and verbal cues (e.g. facial expressions and body language) you can observe to get a hint of how a person is feeling. Virtual meetings, in contrast, let you only interact with a picture of the person’s head you are talking to, provided the video is turned on. I find it helpful when you turn your video on to show your presence and sincerity when checking-in.
Before starting a meeting, I would ask everyone what they did over the weekend (if it’s a Monday meeting). If it’s a meeting after lunch, I would ask what everyone had for lunch. Check-ins are important to build rapport with each other. By acknowledging the human-side of each other, I could see that the team had lesser reservations about asking each other for help. By being curious about each other’s life, we were able to build a psychological safe space and gained a better understanding of each other.
2. Bi-weekly retrospectives
In the past, whenever I’ve completed a workshop or event, the team would sit in a circle and conduct a retrospective. In a flexible remote work setting, there is no definitive conclusion for projects as sprints are constantly ongoing, one after another. Meeting times are curated for updates and to determine what’s next. After the first two sprints, I realised that the team morale was getting lower and the number of misunderstandings were rising. There were subtle signs of hostility like “I’m just going to do my tasks, and you do yours”.
We used the retrospective template on Figma. After every sprint, it’s important to take about an hour to conduct a retrospective. This has helped the team tremendously to understand each other’s perspectives and uncover the root of our misunderstandings. Setting the environment is very important for retrospectives because it can easily be turned into a finger-pointing blaming session. It is crucial to lay the ground rules from the start like how this session is to have open discussions about how to make work better. This is helpful as it aligns everyone’s understanding of what went through each other’s mind during the sprint.
3. Deliberate teaming exercises
With the absence of organic interaction times like lunch breaks, , it’s difficult to get to know each other. Small talks in these interactions are opportunities to understand each other better, like figuring out each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and life goals.
Using FigJam, we created a table to introduce ourselves formally. There were 4 questions for everyone to answer:
- Things I want to explore (I.e. In the professional setting, what skills or techniques are you interested in trying?)
- My strengths are (I.e. In relation to the collaboration, what strengths can you bring to the table?)
- Helpful behaviour for me(I.e. What could help me bring out the best in me?)
- Hindering behaviour for me (I.e. What could potentially prevent me from doing my best?)
This helped us to figure out each others’ role and career aspirations better. There is also a camaraderie of how we can help each other to fulfil their personal goals as well as align it with the company’s vision. It is important to take note that it is a sacred responsibility to honour your colleagues’ vulnerabilities, so don’t judge or belittle them. This exercise can also be done using any digital collaboration platform.
Connecting with our clients
4. Constant updates, over-communicate
One thing that I struggle with is updating my work-in-progress. In a physical office, there is visual confirmation that discussions were made and work is being done. However, remote settings have very little social proof that things were being discussed or done. No updates means that you are very sure about the brief and the client’s expectation of a finished task by the next meeting. I made the mistake of not updating when I’m done with a first draft and waited for the meeting to update and by then, the work wasn’t as expected.
So don’t be afraid to over-communicate because this helps to build trust towards both parties and to clarify any misunderstandings earlier.
5. Be EXTRA prepared and present for meetings
Being prepared and present for meetings sounds like a no-brainer. Typically, in a physical meeting, there would be some buffer time before the actual meeting to warm up with one another, and buffer time after to digest the contents of the meetings. In a virtual meeting, and especially as a consultancy, the client demands the utmost attention and has high expectations for delivery.
Best practice: Have 5 minutes to mentally prepare yourself before the meeting and turn on your camera. Grounding yourself before the meeting helps you to get into the right mindframe to be fully present.
Connecting with myself
6. Figure out your working style
My previous work life had routines that were indirectly in-place. The work day starts when you get ready to go to work, go through the daily commute and walk through your office doors. With remote work, it’s difficult to gauge working and rest because my bed is literally 2 steps away from my workstation. When I first started, I couldn’t tell the difference between work and rest. This confusion was affecting my productivity and performance.
I’ve learnt that creating a few routines can help me stay in the work zone. Mimicking going to work, I usually start my day by tidying my bed, taking a shower, wearing my “work-from-home office” clothes and having a quick cleanup of my workspace. This routine helps to prepare my mind for work. I know no one really sees what I’m wearing but it’s a mental perception to help me get into the headspace that it’s working time.
7. Engage in deliberate social connections
I wouldn’t consider myself a social butterfly but in a physical office there are constant social interactions. During the first 2 months of my remote work, I had difficulty interacting in a physical social situation. Somehow in the middle of the conversation, I lost my train of thoughts or certain vocabulary just escaped from my lips. Being around new people and engaging in small talk was awkward and uncomfortable.
Working in a remote collaborative environment, I needed to continuously hone my social skills. It helps by scheduling social interactions with either your friends or being involved in your interest groups to keep your mind fresh.
Building a remote connection in UXStudio.co
As an introvert, my instinct was to first observe the current remote work culture, and slowly assimilate myself. Both the productive meetings where we jumped straight to meeting agenda and the lack of colleagues’ presence in my makeshift office-bedroom bedroom, magnified the deafening silence of loneliness and the lack of connection with my team, our clients and myself.
Starting small, I checked-in with my team on our internal meetings and then implemented it with the clients. Internally, we did teaming exercises for our weekly team huddle. This boosts up morale in the team and creates stronger connections with one another. Trust was slowly formed and the team learnt to support one another. Forming connections with the client takes a lot of proactivity on our end as we’ve learnt to communicate openly and constantly update our progress so as to reduce any ambiguity. The retrospectives after each sprint were helpful to air out any grievances and to help each other work better and more effectively. Just as you cannot pour water from an empty cup, I have learnt to connect with myself to recharge my spirit of connection so that I can work my best and be connected with my team and our clients.
Just like learning any new skill, these lessons learnt need to be continuously implemented to be a habit. I must admit, there are some lessons that need more effort than others as I am a constant work-in-progress. I think at the end of the day, humans are social creatures. The need to feel connected is universal, whether you are working physically or remotely.
In a digitally-connected but physically-disconnected environment, these are the 7 lessons I have learned to stay socially connected with my team, our clients, and with myself.
