Maintaining strong, productive relationships with clients and co-workers can be challenging when you never see the person you’re working with. Yet, it is common to have ongoing work relationships – sometimes lasting years — with people you’ve never met in person.
The Virtual Work Skills You Need — Even If You Never Work Remotely
We often think of “virtual work” as working with someone located outside an office, or in another city or country. But virtual work also encompasses how we are turning to technology to conduct business with nearby colleagues, sometimes within the same building or campus. Interview and survey research finds that people tend to significantly underestimate the proportion of their work that is virtual, largely because they believe virtual work occurs outside the office. But it’s important for us to recognize the true extent of virtual work, because successful virtual work demands a different set of social and interpersonal skills and behaviors than face-to-face work. Workers need “virtual intelligence,” a set of skills and behaviors that encompasses 1) establishing “rules of engagement” for virtual interactions, and 2) building and maintaining trust. These skill sets are relevant to all individuals who conduct virtual work, including coworkers in the same office who interact virtually.