Key Skills for Remote Work

Although most of us never imaged that remote work would suddenly become mandatory for millions of people, remote work has long been a topic of interest to organizational psychologists like myself. Importantly, research suggests that both the happiness and success of remote workers depends largely on activation of key skill sets, including communication, self-motivation, and the ability to manage boundaries[i],[ii]. Those who leverage these skills, for example, tend to enjoy the benefits of remote work (e.g., relief from long commutes, performance gains due to fewer distractions), while those who struggle to communicate, self-motivate, and manage boundaries often report feeling isolated, disconnected from key conversations, distrusted by their management, and overwhelmed by the convergence of “work-work” and “home-work.”[iii],[iv]

This article explores key aspects of communication, self-motivation, and boundary-setting that seem particularly relevant in this unprecedented time.

Communication Practices for Remote Work

As a cornerstone of teamwork, collaboration, influence, and leadership, communication has become imperative for success in most industries[v]. Here, we’ll focus on two aspects of communication that emerge as highly relevant in the context of remote work: Outreach and Clarification.

Outreach

A widely acknowledged complication of remote work is the tendency for some people to lose visibility, thus get left out of key conversations, decisions, and online gatherings. Invisibility contributes largely to the experience of isolation. While leaders can help ensure that everyone on their team is seen and heard, every worker can influence his or her own visibility and inclusion through outreach – the act of reaching out and getting involved in group activities. Like most practices, it’s how you do outreach that matters. Effective outreach results in visibility, connection, and acknowledgement for important contributions, while ineffective outreach may come across to others as an annoyance and become a waste of time. Here are a few tips on outreach, adapted from the marketing industry[vi]:

1. Start with a personal connection, e.g., "How are you and your family?", or "How is your team managing given the budget cut?"
2. Share the value that you can bring, e.g., "I have some time and am happy to help with your reviews.", "I’ve been doing some research and thought you’d be interested in the findings.", or "I thought you might appreciate an excuse to close your laptop and talk."
3. Make a specific offer or request, e.g., "I could review your draft presentation and offer any insights I have on how it will resonate with the leadership team. Is that something you’d like me to do this week?", or "Would you be able to set up a meeting with the entire team next week to review the team’s work plan together?"

Clarification

A second complication of remote work is the tendency for workers to operate with greater ambiguity. Unfortunately, it’s just not possible for leaders to anticipate all the questions that come up. The burden of gaining clarity falls largely on the remote worker. Unfortunately, probably due to our brain’s tendency to oversimplify, most of us settle for surface clarity vs deep clarity. Surface clarity usually gives you enough to get started - you know what to do, for example, but not why you’re doing it. Or you know what and why, but lack insight into other stakeholders’ agendas. When working remotely, it’s more important than ever to seek deep clarity. Gaining deeper clarity requires a moment of mindfulness and reflection - just enough of a pause to let your brain generate a good starter question. Here’s a list to get you started:

• What’s the impact if we are successful?
• Who is our biggest champion?
• Who is most important for us to influence?
• What other groups are, or will need to be, involved?

Self-Motivation Practices for Remote Work

One of the greatest advantages of working remotely is, for many, the ability to concentrate with fewer distractions - the promise of “deep work”[vii]. But the distractions in our own head - negativity, anxiety, etc. - are not so easy to avoid. Resilience enables us to combat distracting, unhelpful thoughts. Furthermore, deep work is not always productive work. In order for deep work to be productive, we need to leverage Goal Setting. The combination of resilience and goal setting helps us take all the “extra” time afforded when working from home and funnel it toward productive accomplishments.

Resilience

The ability to recover quickly from difficulties. Sometimes resilience is misunderstood to be the ability to wait it out until the situation gets better/improves, but that’s not quite it. Resilience is the ability to continue to thrive even when the situation continues to be difficult. In an office environment, it’s easier to lean on group resilience – to borrow from the resilience of others. When working remotely, it’s less likely that others resilience will extend into the reaches of our home, thus the burden of resilience rests more so on each individual. To practice and to strengthen resilience, consider the following:

• Choose one new habit that supports your well-being
• Keep a gratitude list
• Practice appreciative inquiry

 Goal-Setting

Why do we always talk about goals? Research is clear: you are more likely to accomplish a goal you set than one you don’t set. That said, people who are really good at goal setting don’t just follow a recipe...they have personally crafted a recipe that produces goals as irresistible as my grandmother’s German chocolate cake. To make goals that motivate you, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I more motivated by learning or by accomplishing something?
• What degree of challenge is most motivating to me?
• How will I gauge my progress and success in a way that energizes me?
• How will I reward myself?

Use your answers to these questions to guide the goals you set. For example, if you are more motivated by learning than by the accomplishment itself, set learning goals. If you’re more motivated by grand challenges than by the completion of daily tasks, set bigger and longer-term goals. Come up with simple yet meaningful ways to gauge your own progress and be sure to celebrate success by doing something that brings you joy.

Boundary-Setting Practices for Remote Work

When remote work equates to working from home, it requires employees to create boundaries. Boundaries are like fences and walls that keep us from going astray. To set boundaries for ourselves, we must practice both self-awareness and assertiveness.

Self-Awareness

In the context of boundaries, self-awareness is the practice of recognizing what keeps you safe from harm yet open to opportunities. How many people do you know who fool themselves into thinking that they have healthy boundaries only because they aren’t tuning in to what they need or deserve? You can’t establish truly healthy boundaries without self-awareness. In the context of remote work, healthy boundaries can help us focus, stay calm, and prioritize. Boost your self-awareness every day by asking yourself:

• What does success look like for me today?
• What shifts (e.g., in my environment, state of mind, health, etc.) would most support my success?
• How do my current boundaries support my success? What new boundaries might boost my success?

It’s likely that there are days when your boundaries are serving you well, and days when they don’t. Self-awareness allows you to adjust your boundaries as needed to adapt to changes in our needs and our environment. 

Assertiveness

Assertiveness is the ability to state what we need and what we want in a way that we’re heard. To be heard, we need to find the sweet spot between being too passive and too aggressive in our delivery. When we’re too passive in our delivery, our needs aren’t taken to heart. When we’re too aggressive in our delivery, we trigger anger and defensiveness instead of understanding and support.

When setting healthy boundaries, our assertiveness is often put to the test. Even assertive personalities can struggle to assert their needs, especially when their needs conflict with others’ needs. To assert your need to create a new boundary, consider the following:

• Start with an “I” statement, e.g., “I feel overwhelmed.”
• State the boundary that you need clearly, e.g., “I need at least an hour each day, outside of work, to do something for myself without the kids around.”
• Focus on the boundary itself, leaving room to co-create ways to build that boundary, e.g., “Can we talk about ways to make this happen?”
• When you get pushback, be prepared to share consequences of neglecting to establish the boundary you need. For example, “If we can’t find a way for me to get an hour of alone time, I’m going to get even grumpier.”

Remote workers who activate their communication, self-motivation, and boundary-setting skills are more likely to thrive than those who neglect to do so. Of the practices discussed here (outreach, clarification, resilience, goal-setting, self-awareness, and assertiveness), which do you most need to leverage?

[i] Grant, C.A., Wallace, L.M., & Spurgeon, P.C. (2013). An exploration of the psychological factors affecting remote e-worker’s job effectiveness, well-being and work-life balance. Employee Relations 35(5), pp. 527-546.

[ii] Greenbaum, Z. (2019, October). The future of remote work. Monitor on Psychology, 50(9). Online at https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/10/cover-remote-work

[iii] Russell, S. (2019, October). Remote working could harm your mental health, study says. World Economic Forum. Online at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/remote-working-from-home-increase-stress-anxiety-mental-health/

[iv] Greenbaum, Z. (2019, October). The future of remote work. Monitor on Psychology, 50(9). Online at https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/10/cover-remote-work

[v] Glaser, J. (2014). Conversational Intelligence. New York: Bibiomotion.

[vi] Miller, L. (2017). The 5 Most Essential Influencer Outreach Best Practices. Online at https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/the-5-most-essential-influencer-outreach-best-practices

[vii] Newport, Cal (2016). Deep Work. New York : Grand Central Publishing.