This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
One of the things that complicates the way we interact with our coworkers is that so many of us are working remotely these days. Now, when we’re tiny boxes on a screen, we feel less human. We have less empathy for others, and we’re missing a ton of context, which of course, makes these tricky interactions much more difficult to understand, but also difficult to resolve. And in essence, this remote work has made a lot of us much more conflict averse, and it’s led to a lot of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of one another’s behavior.
Seek clarity
When we’re communicating with another person, there are, of course, the words coming out of our mouth, and the tone of voice, and you can pick that up in any context. But what we’re missing in a remote environment is the larger context. Not only our colleagues’ body language, we’re often just seeing their shoulders and their head. Sometimes we’re not seeing them at all if they have their screen off. But we also mean the way they hold themselves, whether they’re fidgeting underneath a table, but also what’s going on in the room behind them or outside the building that they’re in. And all of that influences, how they behave, and how they feel. So you might pick up on some tension in their voice and assume it’s about you, when in reality you just don’t know what’s causing some of those moments of tension between you and another person. And so you are left to sort of make up the story. And we often make up stories that are focused on us and less focused on the other person, and what they might be going through.
Someone I interviewed for my book told me really a sad story about how she had been on a meeting with a colleague, and she really felt like he was rolling his eyes at her. Every time she spoke. She was offended, she was hurt, she felt demeaned and for a week she stewed about that experience. Why was he being rude to her? What had she said and done? What was wrong with their relationship? When she finally spoke to him about the situation, he explained that he had a clock right above his monitor in his home office, and he was worried about being late to pick up his kids from camp. And so his quick looking up, which she interpreted as an eye roll, was simply him trying to be polite and stay present while also manage this family situation of his. It’s a good example of how easy it is to misinterpret one another’s behavior in these remote environments. And how if we don’t address things in the moment, we can damage our relationships, not to mention damage our own mental wellbeing.
Be more intentional
When we’re interacting with someone who we may not be in the same room with, or the same city, or maybe even the same country, it’s important that we are more intentional about the way we interact with them. And we give them more verbal cues rather than relying on nonverbal ones. If you are meeting with a colleague, and you’re under stress because your kid is home sick in the other room, or because you just got a really stressful message from your boss, it can be helpful to share that context. And say, you know, before we get started, I just want you to know you might see me a little distracted because my kid is sick in the other room.
It’s also helpful to state your intention. We can’t rely on others to correctly interpret what our motivation is in that moment. So you might start a meeting by saying, my intention here is to make sure that everyone has a chance to weigh in on how we’re going to move forward. But ultimately the call will be up to me and my peer. Whatever it is that you need to do to lay the groundwork so that people understand your behavior, your words, your reactions correctly.