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I am hoping remote work will “nerf” in person charisma. It’s not that charisma is bad, but in person it often seems to overcome any other concern. I have seen s
by api 6y ago
I am hoping remote work will “nerf” in person charisma. It’s not that charisma is bad, but in person it often seems to overcome any other concern. I have seen so many examples of total fools who nevertheless gain power and leadership on charisma alone. It has the power to overcome reason and speak directly to the brain stem.
- extremeMath 6y agoMeh, I have that in person charisma. I get a bit panicky online because you can't see someone's face. I don't know if I'm talking too much or if they are bored. Online I'm quick/short. That said, I enjoy being a tech guy over a leader. I tried leadership in done personal business and I don't like playing politics or psychology tricks.
- mwcampbell 6y agoSince I'm visually impaired (legally blind), I always have that uncertainty you described, even in person. I'm often conscious that I might be talking too much. At some point you just learn to live with it.
- jacknews 6y agoExactly this. Remote working does remove some of the rapport and chemistry from relationships, which is regrettable, but on the other hand it also reduces the ability for people to 'dominate the room', intimidate, etc. These kinds of people are sometimes intellectual giants, but very often simply bullies.
- vsareto 6y agoI think it's the other way, the rapport and chemistry allow you to resist someone when they're (consciously or not) dominating the room. You're more easily divided if you don't have that with your coworkers.
- jacknews 6y agoI think you're in a bad place if things have devolved to a herd-metality us-vs-them. But I find well-aimed questions can often derail attempts to railroad a situation from a position of power, and it can be very uncomfortable to field those questions in an in-person setting. Much less so remotely.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoIt's both.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoSomething else will replace it. The people who are effective on calls, emails and chat will get the brownie points instead.
- mwcampbell 6y agoSure, but being effective in calls, emails, and chat requires fewer advantages from factors that aren't under your control. Consider that on an audio-only call, a blind person can be just as effective as a sighted person, if not more so (edit: until sighted people learn to go without visual cues as if they were blind). And in email or text chat, a person with a thick accent, a person with a speech impediment, or a deaf person can be as effective as someone who speaks well in the team's common language.
- ZephyrBlu 6y agoI can't quite pinpoint it, but something feels off about this reasoning. No matter what, some group of people is going to be at a disadvantage. It doesn't really make sense to me that you want everyone to specifically cater for the minority, as opposed to the majority. Trying to somewhat accommodate everyone? Great. Forcing changes to accommodate minorities? Doesn't really make sense to me.
- raziel2p 6y ago"Everyone" kind of includes minorities. And how do you define "trying"? Is making social media posts on diversity enough to qualify as trying, even if your hiring process only hires white dudes?
- mwcampbell 6y agoHere are the best responses I can give to that: 1. Fully abled people are already, as John Scalzi put it (with regard to another category), playing on the lowest difficulty setting, across all of their lives. SO I think it's not so bad to take away some advantages, to level the playing field. 2. There are different kinds of disadvantages. There are disadvantages from skills you haven't yet learned, and there are disadvantages from abilities you can never have. What I propose is to replace the latter category for some people with the former category for others. Of course, if biotech someday allows us to give physical abilities to people who don't have them, that changes the equation. And perhaps my thick accent example was weak; my understanding is that it's possible, with great difficulty, to change one's accent.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoI've been remote for ~5 years, and in mostly-remote orgs during those times. You can ABSOLUTELY bully people remotely, dominate conversations, and play games. Leave someone off the invite, have side-bar convos via slack without people knowing, mute people in calls -- and being the loudest, pushiest person in the room absolutely works on skype if the meeting presenter won't mute you.