Due to today’s crisis a major part of our everyday life is happening remotely. For many of us the spontaneous conversations around the coffee machine, lunches and after-works with colleagues have vanished. In this month’s newsletter we share concrete tips from professor Thedal Neeley, Harvard Business School, on how to preserve your relationships, from a distance.
The relationship with your employees
- Schedule regular meetings with your employees! Start and finish the week with individual meetings. Either 1-2-1 or in small groups so that everyone feels acknowledged.
- Start your meetings with a check-in!Start the first meeting of the day with asking how everybody is doing. Let the employees have a small chat before moving onto the agenda.
- Encourage virtual hangouts! Help your employees to create ways of spending time together online, e.g. coffee breaks over video. That way you can continue having the relationship building conversations with your employees that you used to have around the coffee machine.
The relationship with your colleagues:
- Keep everyday contact! Use a chat room to greet each other every morning and make small talk throughout the day, just like you used to do in the office!
- Keep up with the social activities! Organize lunches, coffee brakes and after-works through digital channels. These meetings are very important to preserve and develop your relationship.
- Work out together! Take a walk or exercise together, either over video or outdoors where you can keep the physical distance but still spend quality time with each other.
The relationship with your near and dear ones
- Talk over video! Talk to your loved ones often, and preferably over video so that you can see one another. Seeing a friendly face will make you feel calm and closer to each other.
- Do activities together! There are many digital platforms where you and your near ones can do the same things that you used to do. For example watch movies together with Netflix Party, cook together over video or play games with each other in one of the applications in your smartphone.
- Hangout outdoors! Take a walk in the forest or have a picnic in a park together, but keep the distance even when out in nature!
