Читать книгу Suddenly Virtual - Karin M. Reed - Страница 27

One of the more intriguing aspects of video meetings for suddenly remote teams was the opportunity to see our coworkers in a whole new light due to our ability to see them in a whole new environment. Admit it. You spent way too much time obsessing over someone's cool kitchen or what appeared to be a world‐class collection of bobbleheads lined up on a bookshelf in the background.

At the workplace, we tend to define our teammates mainly by their roles in the organization, and we view them through that prism. After all, our interactions with them are mainly professional, with perhaps a handful of relationships that go below the surface.

That curated veneer was stripped away to some degree by the video portal created by the reliance upon virtual communication. Not only did it afford the opportunity to check out everyone's space outside of the office, but it also allowed us to see our coworkers as whole people rather than just their roles. Who knew that Brenda has a green thumb with a penchant for orchids or that Chris collects beer cans from all over the world and displays them in alphabetical order on built‐in shelves crafted for that purpose?

We also met their children, their pets, their significant others, and their roommates in a way that felt simultaneously refreshing and invasive. What made it okay was the fact that everyone was in the same situation. One of the early suggestions to newly remote workers was to give context to your work‐from‐home space – let everyone know the unique challenges you face to create understanding. Knowing what each person was dealing with in this new virtual environment led to less eye‐rolling and more empathy. If someone suddenly muted their audio during a video meeting, perhaps it was because their elderly dog who refused to sit more than two feet from his master started to snore at a decibel that was untenable. Technical challenges might be attributed to bandwidth creaking under the weight of two adults simultaneously conducting virtual meetings, while their two little ones tried to navigate online school.

Psychological science backs the interesting benefits and occasional drawbacks of this new level of familiarity. The research is pretty clear that familiarity with others breeds liking, empathy, compassion, attraction, but also occasional contempt (e.g. a Red Sox fan disheartened to realize his coworker is a diehard Yankees fan) (Curtis, Rhoades, and Waguespack Jr 2012; Zagefka, Noor, and Brown 2013; Rindfleisch and Inman 1998). In one study, researchers found that knowledge of disaster areas increased willingness to donate, suggesting that familiarity bred compassion behavior. While the adage states that to know a person, one must walk a mile in their shoes, perhaps getting a glimpse of their book collection will suffice in helping us understand them a bit more.

In so many ways, we were all in this together, and the impacts on relationships with our coworkers are still being evaluated and analyzed today.