TL;DR:

• Discover why social skills are critical to team success in today’s fast-paced, collaborative work environment.

• Remote work challenges? Learn two essential skills that will transform your digital communication.

• Are you unintentionally sabotaging your team’s trust and productivity? Find out how to fix it.

• Boost team morale and performance with these simple yet powerful social skills tips.

The Importance of Employee Social Skills

The ability to communicate effectively is critical in today’s business world, which requires far more collaboration to achieve business goals than in decades past. The more easily a team can understand each other, the faster they can innovate and produce results. Understanding fosters trust, which helps teams perform well in disruptive and uncertain times.

How Do Employee Social Skills Help with Performance Overall?

When teams have strong social skills, they build trust, accountability, and maximize business results. Even in challenging times, numerous studies show that supportive environments produce better outcomes. They also have healthier and more engaged employees. Additionally, absenteeism, healthcare costs, and turnover are lower.

Why Are Employee Social Skills Still Important for Remote Workers?

When working remotely, it’s easy for communication to become transactional. This leaves many team members feeling isolated and even lonely. Since most communication is text-based, it often lacks tone and body language.

Additionally, we all interpret digital conversations differently. For instance, some people feel that using punctuation in a text message is passive-aggressive, while others see it as just good grammar.

Two Social Skills Remote Employees Should Continue to Sharpen

1. Be Aware of Your Digital Body Language

Often in our haste to reply to a message, we are too brief to convey our true intentions. This can create confusion and follow-up messages that steal time and productivity. Give context to help the listener understand your intentions so you get the best quality response the first time.

Erica Dhawan’s book, “Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance”, is an excellent resource. 

Example: A leader sends a meeting request for an "Update" meeting with no agenda to a direct report on Friday, scheduling it for Monday at 8 am. The employee spends the weekend worried about a layoff due to recent budget cuts. He enters the meeting stressed, only to find out the leader simply wants a standard project update for the upcoming quarterly meeting.

2. Keep the Small Talk in Virtual Meetings

It’s critical to be intentional when working remotely. Take time for quick check-ins before diving into the work in meetings. In one-on-one meetings, ask what’s new. For team meetings, add a quick icebreaker to the agenda. While it may seem trivial, these moments build personal connections that go beyond the screen.

Example: In a recent team call, we did the "before 18" icebreaker, where everyone shared fun accomplishments from their life before turning 18. I learned I work with amazing people, including a celebrity’s childhood friend and an award-winning classical musician.

In the SHRM blog, “4 Essential Soft Skills for Successful Remote Work,” Darren Murph suggests managers ask direct reports what their preferred communication platform is and how often they want to be contacted. He emphasizes that empathy is key in remote work, where "messages hit differently" when people are sitting at home, away from colleagues and the usual office environment.

Want to Dive Deeper?

For more strategies on improving communication, preventing burnout, and excelling in remote work, check out these insightful resources:

• "Pressure Makes Diamonds: Simple Habits to Break the Burnout Cycle" by Victoria Hepburn: Practical tips to reduce burnout and increase performance.

• "Unlock Productivity and Wellbeing at Work: Strategies to Maximize Business Success and Prevent Burnout in the 21st Century" by Victoria Hepburn: Enhance productivity while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

• "Remote Work Secrets: How to Avoid 10 Costly Remote Work Mistakes to Grow Your Leadership Skills and Advance Your Career Working From Anywhere" by Victoria Hepburn: Insights into avoiding common pitfalls and advancing your career in a remote setting.

Build Employee Social Skills Checklist:

Here is a quick checklist to get you and your team build up your social skills to collaborate more effectively. Remember imperfect action beats inaction, get started and keep practicing.

• Be mindful of your digital body language—provide context and clarity in all communications. Send a purpose for every meeting request especially if you are in a higher position to those you are meeting with. These days, a blank meeting request means they are getting laid off.

• Include small talk in virtual meetings to foster team connection and humanize each other. The secret to not being weird: Share what's going in your life - upcoming vacation,

• Stop the negativity. Avoid being short tempered or letting people pick on anyone during team meetings or calls. If you're not the boss of the group, "Circling back to the point of this meeting...." is a great way to interrupt toxic side conversations.

• Regularly check in with remote employees to prevent isolation and miscommunication. Your regular 1:1s and team meetings should be 2-way conversation, not a reportout that could be an email.

• Be a Role Model. Show other employees behavior you want to see more, like letting others finish speaking, sharing a bit of detail as to why work needs to be done, ask for help and ask how you can help your team.

• Set the tone for open communication by encouraging empathy and trust among team members. Start small with asking people how they are and caring about what they say. Evolve to asking how you can help them, listening to them with full attention, then following up on the conversation at the agreed upon time with a thoughtful response. Sounds like a lot, but when done well this is the superglue for work relationships.

• Use intentional icebreakers in meetings to build rapport and reduce tension. Some of my favorites "2 truths and a Lie" - each person shares 3 facts and one has to be a lie and the group picks the lie