Don't assume the worst

Silence usually isn't terrible

I love remote and hybrid work, but it can introduce some communication challenges.

For instance, let’s say you email your boss a new idea you had on a project. If you were working in an office, you might see that she was not at her desk and was in fact deeply involved in a long meeting with her supervisor in a nearby conference room. You’d know that she hadn’t responded for several hours because she was doing something else. Most likely, she hadn’t even read the note yet.

When you’re working from home, you don’t see this context. So when you don’t get an email back in the next hour saying “hey, great idea — let’s definitely explore this!” your brain might start working on other explanations. She hates my idea. She never likes any of my ideas. Why do I even bother trying around here. I knew this would never work out. I’m no good at this and…oh my goodness. To say this is unproductive is a massive understatement.

Or maybe you’re working with someone you haven’t worked with much before. You send a note explaining the schedule for the project. You get back a short “sounds good.” If your new colleague said this to you in person, you might get a smile and a nod and an indication that he’s really excited about the project and thought your schedule was flawless, so there’s really no point in him changing anything. In other words, yep, it sounds good. But since you don’t get any of those emotional cues, and since written words are automatically perceived as more negative than spoken words, well, you might assume he doesn’t care about the project. You start worrying about working together. What have you gotten yourself into? You start with a negative thesis about your colleague and you look for evidence to support it.

This is not going to bode well for your project. So, don’t do this. Don’t assume the worst. Wherever possible, assume the best, or at least an explanation that’s marginally positive. Yes, I guess it’s theoretically possible your boss may hate your ideas and be secretly plotting to fire you, but do you really think that’s the case? Better to assume that she’ll like your idea, she just hasn’t gotten the chance to focus on it yet. Better to assume that your colleague isn’t difficult and that “sounds good” means just that. It sounds good.

Assuming the worst burns all kinds of time and energy. Assuming a better explanation allows us to make allowances for all we don’t know. Yes, sometimes things go badly. But in general, most colleagues want to work together well. When we understand that working remotely sometimes keeps us from seeing the whole context we can take that into account. And that allows us to get a lot more done.