Speaker 1: Are you trying to work with colleagues remotely today? Maybe
Speaker 1: their office is even in another country. And my consultancy
Speaker 1: Inventium literally every day involves remote or virtual collaboration. So
Speaker 1: how can you create that same working chemistry and vibe
Speaker 1: that's usually generator through face to face contact. Is it
Speaker 1: even possible? Organizational psychologist and Wharton professor Adam Grant says
Speaker 1: that yes, it absolutely is. My name is doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, And this is how I work A show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. On
Speaker 1: today is my favorite Tip episode, we go back to
Speaker 1: an interview from the past and I pick out my
Speaker 1: favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I've selected
Speaker 1: an extract from my chat with Adam Grant where we
Speaker 1: chat about remote collaboration, which, even before COVID hit, a
Speaker 1: lot of Adam's work involved working with teams remotely. So
Speaker 1: let's find out some of the strategies that Adam uses
Speaker 1: to improve the success of virtual collaboration.
Speaker 2: So Burstinus is a place to start. This is researched
Speaker 2: by Chris Reedal and Anito Wooley where they studied remote
Speaker 2: software teams, and they found that there are two kinds
Speaker 2: of communication patterns in remote collaboration. One is high frequency,
Speaker 2: relatively low intensity, like we talk every day or we
Speaker 2: have emails kind of going every hour. The other is
Speaker 2: the opposite. It's low frequency, high intensity. We don't talk
Speaker 2: for a week and then we have a two hour
Speaker 2: jam session. And they wanted to know which model is
Speaker 2: more productive and more creative. And whenever I present this,
Speaker 2: this is something I've been telling a lot with founders
Speaker 2: and CEOs, whenever I present it, they say overwhelmingly, over
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the people I've asked have said, you
Speaker 2: want high frequency. You need to stay in touch, you
Speaker 2: need to be on the same page in order to
Speaker 2: work effectively with people. And the data showed the exact opposite,
Speaker 2: that the more productive and creative remote collaborations are low frequency,
Speaker 2: high intensity. And what seems to be going on there
Speaker 2: is a couple of things. One, when people are communicating
Speaker 2: only intermittently, they actually have time to get their own
Speaker 2: individual work done and to move ideas forward. And two,
Speaker 2: when they do then come together to collaborate, they're working
Speaker 2: with much better material and they're also more motivated. I
Speaker 2: thought that that meant, okay, they're going to be excited
Speaker 2: to build on each other's ideas. But the data tell
Speaker 2: a slightly different story, which is that it is energizing
Speaker 2: to know that other people are there waiting to respond
Speaker 2: to you. And the pattern of burstiness is the sense
Speaker 2: of the aberation is literally ursing with energy and ideas.
Speaker 2: And the way you get that you don't need to
Speaker 2: be in the same physical space to get that. What helps, though,
Speaker 2: is being in the same temporal space right having your
Speaker 2: calendar synced so that there at least some hours here
Speaker 2: and there where you're online at the same time and
Speaker 2: you can actually work together in real time. And that's
Speaker 2: the part of the reason this resonated with me is
Speaker 2: it's how I've collaborated since gosh, at least fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: when at a mentor Jane Dutton, who would work on
Speaker 2: papers with her former students. So Jane was at the
Speaker 2: University of Michigan where I was in grad school. Her
Speaker 2: former students would graduate and go across the country or
Speaker 2: to another continent, and they would stay in touch or
Speaker 2: they'd have occasional phone calls and occasional emails, and then
Speaker 2: they would fly in and they would do a three
Speaker 2: day blitz where they just deep dive on a project
Speaker 2: and they sit side by side writing and they basically
Speaker 2: spend every waking hour together and then they go off
Speaker 2: and they interact that much for a month or two
Speaker 2: and you're really getting the best of both worlds in
Speaker 2: that model of independent thinking and then collaborative contribution. And
Speaker 2: so that's a model for how I structure my remote collaboration.
Speaker 1: Do we really need face to face collaboration to optimize
Speaker 1: problem solving and creative thinking? I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: businesses here in Australia that are insisting that people go
Speaker 1: back to the office. We're not in lockdown here anymore.
Speaker 1: But do we need it? Like, is there something special
Speaker 1: that we get from face to face collaboration based on
Speaker 1: the research, that we just can't get from virtual collaboration.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's not the answer I was looking for, Adam.
Speaker 2: It's the only empirical answer I have right now. What
Speaker 2: I can tell you is this seems to be true
Speaker 2: in pairs and also in teams that trust builds faster
Speaker 2: and it also builds deeper when people are face to face.
Speaker 2: But what do we take away from that? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Does that mean we are evolutionarily wired to need to
Speaker 2: be in the same physical space as other people in
Speaker 2: order to trust them, that we need to be able
Speaker 2: to potentially touch them. Is that just how we've always
Speaker 2: done it and so we're most comfortable trusting under those circumstances.
Speaker 2: Or is it the case that up until now, and
Speaker 2: maybe not until three years from now, the technology just
Speaker 2: hasn't been there, and so virtual has been just an
Speaker 2: awful proxy for face to face. And when we get
Speaker 2: to the point where we're kind of lifelike holograms, maybe
Speaker 2: face to face becomes irrelevant. And maybe for some people
Speaker 2: touch is important and for others it's not. I don't know,
Speaker 2: But I don't think there's anything about human psychology that
Speaker 2: leaves me convinced that we have to be physically in
Speaker 2: the same room to trust each other and collaborate effectively.
Speaker 2: I think there are aspects of being physically co located
Speaker 2: that maybe grease the wheel of trust a little bit
Speaker 2: and make it easier. But I think that gap is
Speaker 2: going to shrink as technology gets better, and also as
Speaker 2: we get more comfortable but really trusting people that we've
Speaker 2: never met face to face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that Jane Dutton was one of your mentors,
Speaker 1: and she's obviously very well known for writing and researching
Speaker 1: about high quality connections. I'm curious as to how you
Speaker 1: use her work when you're collaborating with new people in
Speaker 1: terms of I guess fast tracking human connection.
Speaker 2: Well, Jane does a rapid high quality connection exercise where
Speaker 2: I've been using this in class for years, ever since
Speaker 2: she had me do it as a student. She says,
Speaker 2: just pair up with someone that you haven't met in
Speaker 2: class yet, or if you've met everyone, like somebody you
Speaker 2: don't know well, and then you each have a minute
Speaker 2: to try to build a high quality connection with the
Speaker 2: other person. And it's stunning to see how quick it happens.
Speaker 2: People are often amazed by their their intuitive social intelligence
Speaker 2: comes to finding strategies to do it, and I think
Speaker 2: the strategies that seem to work are backed up by
Speaker 2: decades of evidence in psychology. One is self disclosure, where
Speaker 2: you know where people make themselves vulnerable and what that
Speaker 2: actually That helps the person who's sharing as much or
Speaker 2: more than the person who's listening, Because when I tell
Speaker 2: you something personal about me, then I am signaling to myself, well,
Speaker 2: I must trust you otherwise, Why the hell did I
Speaker 2: just tell you that? What am I thinking? This is
Speaker 2: a dangerous decision here, I should probably rethink it. So
Speaker 2: that happens a lot. There's a lot of people searching
Speaker 2: for uncommon commonalities, you know, things they share that are rare,
Speaker 2: and people bond in those ways. I think though, for me,
Speaker 2: the key ingredient there is that the exercise is set
Speaker 2: up so that you just erase uncertainty that the other
Speaker 2: person wants to connect and knowing that I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk to you for a minute and we share a
Speaker 2: goal of having a high quality in ournd action, it
Speaker 2: dramatically lowers anxiety. And it also it leads people to
Speaker 2: do Oh. I guess the Gutmans would call them like
Speaker 2: their bids, right. I make an offer, a gesture to say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm seeking your friendship or your trust, and I know
Speaker 2: you're going to reciprocate, and you're eager to do that,
Speaker 2: and then it kind of spirals from there. It's like
Speaker 2: when the beginning of a first date goes really well
Speaker 2: and you stop questioning whether the other person likes you.
Speaker 2: So I guess this is all to say, I've tried
Speaker 2: to think about these principles in some of my new
Speaker 2: virtual collaborations to like, I've just tried to put it
Speaker 2: out there. Hey, we're going to be working together. It's
Speaker 2: important to me that we trust each other, and so
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you something that I don't normally share.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you are enjoying
Speaker 1: How I Work and this content, you might want to
Speaker 1: connect with me on the socials, where I share heaps
Speaker 1: more content. So find me on LinkedIn to search for
Speaker 1: Amantha Imba and just write me a note to say
Speaker 1: that you found me through the show, or find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Amantha or on Instagram where I'm starting
Speaker 1: to post a bit more content and you can find
Speaker 1: me there at Amantha. How I Work is produced by
Speaker 1: Inventing with production support from dead Set Studios, and thank
Speaker 1: you to Martin Nimba, who does the audio mix for
Speaker 1: every episode and makes everything sound a whole lot. Better
Speaker 1: see you next time