Are remote catch ups different to face-to-face?

After years of designing and embedding check-in cultures, I know what it takes to run awesome catch ups. But do remote ones differ from face-to-face? Yeah, they do but not as much as you think.

People can feel invisible at the best of times. In a remote or hybrid work environment, it’s more important than ever to make sure we are making the most of our check-ins so our people don’t check out. We want them to feel valued and purposeful.

The biggest reason people say they can’t have meaningful catch ups when they’re not face-to-face is that they cannot read body language. WelI, I propose we are really poor body language assessors anyway.?

When we ‘read’ someone’s body language what we are really doing is making an assumption about what it means. We are trying to make sense of the eye roll or the looking downwards or the arms crossed. And we make sense of it based on how we are wired – not them. If I didn’t like a person I would roll my eyes. If I disagreed with the content I would look away.

We are sense-making machines so we naturally do this. The problem with this is that we will then lead the conversation based on what we are telling ourselves. This is unhelpful.

You need to know what your people are thinking about, worried about, and working on. If you are not clear on these then maybe you are just not asking the right questions. If someone doesn’t speak, or has their video off, or doesn’t look at you; don’t assume. Ask them what’s going on. If they say nothing; then tell them you are seeing them do X but they are saying ‘nothing is wrong’. Ask them again. And wait. Wait for the answer. Ask more questions. This is one of the keys to amazing catch ups and connections with any humans.

So when people say I can’t properly connect with someone because I am not with them or can’t see them. That’s fine. Just have some great questions and create space to listen to the answers. It’s not as hard as you think.

Are you struggling to connect in remote catch-ups? Do you want to create meaningful connections with your team? Come along to my free online session ‘What gets in the way of kickarse catchups’. You can register here.