What can we learn from social psychology about establishing connection?
These concepts can be instrumental to driving team cohesion.
The #WFH experiment of 2020 is new for lots of us. To make matters worse, we had to jump head-first into it without the requisite tools.
Lucky for most teams, productivity has largely stabilized, thanks to services like Zoom, Slack, Figma, et al. But a big problem remains: the remote office feels transactional and isolating.
This is largely what we’re tackling at Commons, and we’re taking cues from concepts social psychology to do so.
What is necessary to build bonds?
While it may seem obvious, there are a few underlying factors needed to connect with others — at work and in social life. Specifically, what’s required is proximity and similarity.
- Proximity: people need to be near each other, over a long period of time, to enable frequent communication, especially unplanned, serendipitous interactions.
- Similarly: A shared experience or background, such as being on the same team, or even same company, increases the sense of shared understanding among two individuals. In other words, if two people have something in common and frequent interaction, they’re more likely to develop a bond.
Of the two above factors, what’s missing most in today’s remote office is, obviously, proximity.
The tools that remote teams are using to replicate that feeling of being together simply don’t suffice. For example, Slack is a text-based application, which is hardly a substitute for the way we view the world (in 3D, with spatial orientation and tons of context awareness via non-verbal and other clues).
We believe that technologies can approximate the feeling of being closer to your teammates. For example, when you see and hear your team as if you’re in the same room, you’re more like to walk over and talk to them. And the easier it is to initiate that communication, the more likely you are to feel connected to them.
At Commons, we’re using these foundational concepts from social psychology to help teams of all sizes communicate and collaborate more effectively. We can’t wait for you to try our beta!
