Tuesday 18 August 2020

Why We Must Focus On Our Remote Presence

It is this month - August 2020 - in which I will finally publish my third book. After four years research, countless interviews and more than 70,000 edited words later, the topic of ‘Remote Presence - A Practical Guide To Communicating Effectively In The Remote Environment’ comes to life and it is this month that I am focusing on the ‘why’.

Why is ‘remote presence’ so critical now? Why should all professionals focus on developing it? And why has it never been harder to achieve?

Let’s start with the first question. Why is remote presence so critical now? Harvard Business Review published fascinating research which showed that trust reduces remotely across teams, scepticism increases remotely and that it is more challenging to influence remotely. Quite simply we are harder to convince, we are less likely to believe and we are more likely to disagree when working together at a distance. Communicating remotely isn’t something we do periodically - it is now - and for the foreseeable future - our sole means by which to build relationships, increase our reach within customers, drive our priorities both internally and externally, change the view of others and get support for what is important to us all requires remote presence. It’s not easy and quite simply we all need to up our game.

Why should all professionals focus on developing it? Because everything has changed now that we need to persuade at a distance. We’re not in the same room, we’re two dimensional not three, we’re about 5% of our normal size and we are at the behest of our internet connection when it comes to how others experience us. All of this impacts our ability to reach, engage and influence colleagues and clients alike.

Why has it never been harder to achieve? Because our normal working environment now is what I call the ‘distraction’ environment. We’re often trying to convince an invisible audience and a silent audience who can readily be absorbed by something else entirely, and no-one will have any idea to the contrary. It has never been easier for our audience to think ‘I don’t care, I’m not listening and I’m not going to engage with this.’ In addition, it’s never been easier for them to get away with it.

If our role means selling, coaching, managing, leading, engaging, delivering, driving, serving, supporting, motivating, persuading and challenging colleagues or customers in order to be successful, then we need to show up remotely like never before and we need to get really, really good at it.

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