Inspiring trust & creativity in a digital workplace

With the end of the Corona crisis in sight in many countries, and with vaccinations well underway, talk is turning to a " return to normalcy”. Discussions about the future of work, and about how these past two years will directly impact how we will work going forward, are everywhere. 

Three things triggered me specifically and got me thinking about the way forward. About what that "new normal" everyone is talking about would look like at work. More specifically they got me thinking about how we could build trust and work creatively in a (partially) digital work environment:

• Working in an AV (Audiovisual Technology) company (Werkgelukkig @Wuestman)
• Running an online gaming community - Tryggr First!
• This video by Optimist Simon Sinek: The FUTURE of Remote Work | Simon Sinek - YouTube

Like Sinek, I’m an optimist. I usually find myself in accord with a lot of what Simon says. About leadership, about communication, but this specific video surprised me. For once I disagree. Not with all of this message, but with some of it.

I can agree with Sinek that building a rapport and inspiring trust, is easier for us by several orders of magnitude, in person than it is online. I also agree that some companies will readily step into the pitfall of assuming all will be well, just because pre-existing teams have coped fairly well with working in and through a digital environment. Forgetting in the process that the experience won’t be the same for new people joining a team.

However, building trust, brainstorming, or getting into a creative flow in the digital domain is not impossible, or even as difficult as some would have you believe. It does however require us to start using communication tools and skills in a different way than most of us are currently used to in the workplace. The basics however stay the same, on or offline, because it starts and ends with people

Making a connection

To work together effectively as humans we need to build a rapport with each other. Especially for complex tasks. Without trust and communication, cooperation fails.

Building any kind of rapport with someone, regardless of the medium used, starts with the following, in any combination:

Acceptance - Of the person as a human being, with quirks, wants, and needs of their own.

Listening - Showing interest, and making sure the other person knows they are being heard. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Small acts of service. - The little things you do for each other unasked, and without expecting reciprocation or remuneration. 

Accountability - Communicating your intent clearly and following through. 

Owning up to mistakes - Not just when you make them, but being willing to accept blame, even if not all of it is yours (or it might not be yours at all). Because it would benefit the team.

Accepting honest feedback equably - And returning it, without rancour. 

Giving someone a moment of your time -Even when you’re actually "too busy'. Just to show them they matter.

Reciprocity

Kindness - Or if you prefer, empathy.

There is more, of course, but to most of us, the things above are universal. They are applicable on and offline, and irrespective of the form communication takes.

While no one can practise the above for 100% of the people in their team, 100% of the time, they are things we can strive towards practising, repeatedly

Because I think Sinek is right when he says that trust is built in between meetings. Unless meetings are scheduled with teambuilding as a purpose, and even then repetition is key. Doing it once does nothing much at all. Making a connection requires repeated communication, by any means.

Divergence

Our paths diverge when Sinek says that it’s incredibly hard, if not impossible, to build trust online. That making a connection digitally has to be "scheduled" in. Sinek also states that it’s absolutely impossible to do anything creative or even brainstorm online. Because he posits, you cannot achieve the flow needed for creative endeavours working online. That is a fallacy.

You can! You can build a rapport, without scheduling time for it. You can achieve flow! You can work creatively together online. You can brainstorm, inspire and build your team online! And that’s not an opinion, I’ve done it, and I'm certainly not the only one. In fact, seeing the impact Sinek has made, so has he. Why am I so sure?

I am certain because I am part of a community that exists almost exclusively online. More specifically on discord. For those of you that don’t know what discord is; Discord is a chat server application for gamers. I have been a part of this online community for the better part of 5 years, and I have been leading it for the better part of 3 years. My online community is called Tryggr.

Tryggr consists of about 200 gamers from across the globe between the ages 16 to 65. We have college students, Bank CFO’s, military personnel, nurses, teachers, and people who stock shelves at their local supermarket among our number. 

If being a part of, and leading, this community has taught me anything it is that: Yes it is possible to build trust, and a rapport online. Yes, it is possible to be creative together digitally. Even across multiple cultures, language barriers, and backgrounds.

If we can do it, so can you!

The people of Tryggr, most of whom have never met in person, because they live all over the world, have only three things in common to start.

• A love for games
• The discord application on their device
• The fact they speak English. 

Which, arguably is not a lot, and potentially a lot less than most of us have in common with the teams we work in.

Yet this online community is a community in the true sense of the word. They share a sense of values and have each other's backs. People don’t just game together. They help each other out with schoolwork (university and college) With raising children, with work problems, and even sometimes in dealing with anxiety, depression, anger management issues. Or working through issues with biases they meet for being “different”. They also share joy, victory, or just life, as it happens to each of them. 

This group of people, having never met in person clusters together around common goals and moves mountains, for and with each other. All without any physical interaction. They create, they write, they draw, and imagine online. Working together on the development of a game, and organizing events to name a few activities.

Simon said brainstorming and creating cannot be done online because you cannot achieve flow. That’s patently untrue. Tryggr proves it, time and again.

How do we do it? We do it together, and we do it by using the right tools.

The right tools

There are so many tools, software and hardware, that can help us connect. Discord, Teams, Zoom, Google Hangouts, all offer ways for us to hear each other's voices and see each other's faces, as well as allowing us to communicate long-distance over text.

For any creative writing exercises in Tryggr that means we hop on to Discord voice together and open a Google Document. We share the editing rights and we all work in the same text file together. Can you imagine writing on someone else's paper in person? Or finishing a four-page marketing document with images, layout, and colours, all sorted, with four people in half an hour?

Because we can, and we have, online. And yes we argued, pushed and pulled, interrupted each other, threw out ideas left-right, and centre. Some were discarded and some were picked up and readily integrated. Just like in person, and just like in person a sense of flow was achieved. With the right tools at hand, the desired end product was reached in less time, not more. As was a consensus, because we could show as well as tell. All without meeting in person.

The same tools we used are available to everyone reading this article, for free in some cases. I am too much of an optimist to believe that Tryggr as a community is unique. That we are somehow different or better compared to your team, or any other group of individuals with common goals that need to be met. As much as I love my community, we are not special or different. We are just people, like you, working together over distance.

Through time and space

Some of you might, on reading the above, go: Ah! But a community of gamers is likely already more inclined to accepting digital formats of communication. Then say a group of executives in your average boardroom. That is why they are more successful at doing it. And then there is this generational difference that we must account for.

And you’d be... partially right. It’s good to note however that some of the people in Tryggr are people that work in boardrooms as executives. Some of them are even, at least generationally considered “boomers” 

Saying that the older generation will have more trouble adjusting assumes two things. That everyone in a certain generation encounters the same challenges and that this method of communication is something "newfangled" we need to adapt to suddenly.

That's just it though. Communication, just through text, over distances, is not new. It's not something of "this digital era" It has been around arguably as long as the written word. And has been used to exchange knowledge, ideas, have arguments, share philosophies, and even build relationships, for centuries.

Examples of these well pre-date the internet and can be found through the ages from Galileo Galilei's Letter to Benedetto Castelli about the authority of scripture and the Catholic Church in matters of scientific inquiry, to the relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. 

Was the relationship, the trust, the connection between Madame de Beauvoir and Sartre any less real for the physical distance between them? And their communication having taken the form of letters? Was there no connection between them when she wrote to him?;

"Goodbye, your self, my life—I love you. The weather’s filthy—my whole room’s shaken by the wind, you’d think it was going to turn upside down. My tenderest kisses, beloved little being—I dreamt about you."

Decide for yourself, but I do not believe people need to be in each other's presence to learn to trust, to connect, to be creative, and to exchange more than dry facts.

Age is not the limiting factor. It's a mindset, an obstinacy, rather than any inherent divide between different generations, that is the obstacle.

Because while the forms of communication may have changed through the ages, our ability as human beings to connect, irrespective of the medium used, clearly has not.

Digital connection and creativity in the office

So why do so many people, Sinek included, think it cannot be done?

Probably because most people are not used to using a text or voice chat at work for those casual conversations that you would normally have with a cup of coffee, during a break, or when passing each other in the hall.

We do not commonly seem to accept these alternate methods of communication as a viable alternative to stopping by a colleague's desk. Even Sinek seems to be under the impression, casual interactions should be scheduled when using digital tools. This isn't the case. So why do we think that way?

Likely because for entire generations we have been taught that “at work”, we work and shouldn’t waste time on frivolous things. Especially in writing, and most especially in a place where someone (read a manager) might be able to notice we are “wasting the company's precious time”. 

However to build trust, to build rapport, to achieve flow, and be creative in a digital or hybrid work environment, what we need to do is just that. Use digital tools for those "casual" interactions. We need to change that mindset in companies as well as the people that work for them, because investing, in each other, is never a waste of time.

Just like with adopting anything new, learning to integrate technology in building up teams, and remotely creating together will require:

• Leaders that are willing to trust and invest first. 
• It requires an open mind. 
• It requires flexibility, a willingness to try, and try again.
• It requires investment in each other. (just as it does in person).

Unless we relearn the way we use digital communication, and digital tools, Sinek’s right. It won’t work. Especially for creative endeavours, and integrating new people into a group.

What about the future?