There’s been a common theme running through my recent coaching sessions. My clients have:

• started new jobs that are 100% remote

• gained new direct reports that are based in different locations (and even wildly different time zones!)

• been promoted to new roles and teams that now operate from different offices

Regardless of the situation, they’re all asking the same question…

“How the heck am I supposed to build strong working relationships virtually?”

And my clients are not alone. A new study released by Gallup indicates that pre-pandemic 60% of all full-time employees in the US worked on-site. As of February 2022, this dropped to 19%(!) and is expected to level off somewhere around 23% as offices return to some sort of post-pandemic normal. Whether your office is going back to a hybrid work environment or fully remote, the reality is that many people will continue operating in this virtual world for many of their work interactions.

But this creates a problem. Namely, we’re not very good at replicating the types of relationship-building conversations that we have in-person virtually. Think about it. In-office, how often did you have casual small talk with a colleague when you arrived a few minutes early for a meeting? How was your weekend? Can you believe the weather yesterday? (I’m in Chicago - the conversation is always about the weather.) These small moments may have felt inconsequential or even completely awkward in the moment, but they are very important when building trust and feelings of goodwill toward someone.

If you’re a new employee, you tend to rely on these interactions to help you learn about the culture of your new office and the “norms” for interacting. These informal interactions can also spark creativity or innovation - What did you think of that last meeting? Oh, it was okay. I was actually thinking afterward we could handle the situation like this… Not to mention, these interactions help us feel more connected to each other as people and not just as the roles or titles we hold.

So what are we to do? Is this the proof that we all need to go back to in-person offices? No, I don’t believe so. There are too many other positives we’ve gained through this more flexible approach to work - especially for working parents and caregivers! Rather, I believe this is a call for everyone to be more intentional with replicating these interactions in a virtual setting.

Here are a few suggestions for building strong work relationships remotely:

1) See small talk as productive work. It used to be we would all saunter into meetings chatting away or run into folks in the kitchen and build relationships “between” work moments. Now, we all just hop into a Zoom meeting the minute the meeting is supposed to start and get straight to business. We need to create space at the beginning of each meeting for these small talk moments to occur. Start a Monday meeting with time to talk about your weekends. Have different team members kick off the meeting with a casual get-to-know-you question. According to this HBR article, small talk is “polite, surface level, and focused on neutral topics.” These interactions are safe ways for everyone to build rapport and trust.

2) Find “drop-in” moments. Scheduled conversations almost always feel more formal. They’re time-bound and have a defined subject. It’s hard to break out of the mold of these conversations to just be able to talk freely and meander a bit more casually. Have a quick question? Or want to mull over an idea you have? Ping someone you’re looking to build connections with and see if they have a minute to chat (non-video and non-Slack! The horror!) If you’re a manager, offer drop-in times where you just hang out on a Zoom and let your team jump in if they have questions or just want to toss some ideas around or even just have a coffee. The important part of this is no formal agenda. Just connect.

3) Just be a person. You may laugh at how obvious it sounds, but when I ask my clients how they’ve built work relationships prior to this virtual world, it typically sounds something like this… Well, I get to know the person and find things we have in common. Or We worked together on a project so we got to know each other through the work and then just continued the relationship even when that project ended. These things still apply! Be curious about people. Ask questions. Offer support. Share what you’re going through. Check-in when you know someone is having a bad day. These very-human things don’t change because we’re remote. We just have to be a little more intentional about creating space in our days, because this work is important too.

Building relationships is about building trust and Brene Brown says it best, “Trust is not built in big, sweeping moments. It’s built in tiny moments every day.” In-person, hybrid, or remote - you can find tiny moments every day to build meaningful relationships all around you and we all benefit from feeling more connected.