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Not the commenter you replied to, but I think my personality is such that I chat casually with my in-group and am a perfectionist with communication with outsid

Not the commenter you replied to, but I think my personality is such that I chat casually with my in-group and am a perfectionist with communication with outsiders. Back when I worked in-person, I had daily informal communication with lots of teammates as well as my boss. Since I got a new remote job during the pandemic, I tend to only reach out to those I work most closely with (just a couple of people). Certainly there's nothing actually stopping me from opening a new Teams message to my boss or other teammates and saying "hey, how's life?", but in practice, I don't. It's almost as if most of my team are now "outsiders" who I'm very deliberate messaging, rather than the in-group who I feel comfortable bantering with. It's something I'm aware of and am working on, but I definitely don't have the same level of intra-team communication now as I had pre-pandemic.

vidarh 5y ago
I've had the same from the manager point of view. As the manager I had the luxury of just forcing the issue by scheduling one on ones with everyone and flat out telling them I wanted to make sure I actually regularly spoke to everyone and I could just blame it on being "busy" and so wanting to block out time to make sure I had it set aside. As an introvert, I resorted to that in large part because it removed my ability to manufacture excuses for myself or just forgetting because I rarely get the impulse that I feel a strong need to talk to someone. But you can do the same yourself even if you're not in a position to demonstratively schedule actual meeting slots with people: Just put reminders in your calendar to talk to people without scheduling an actual meeting. If you want to make it seem more organic, just put in the right number of slots and keep a list to yourself that you randomise week by week. You can always tick people off if you have conversations outside of your schedule.
simion314 5y ago
My boss is not my friend, why should I chat with him about his or my private life, I am an introvert so I never start this kind of discussion, but from the OP I understood he was refering to work related chat
- lastofthemojito 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm not an "I need to be friends with my coworkers" person either, but I just mean the everyday stuff that is work-related or work-tangential. Who is meeting with who, how people feel about what's going on, etc. More than one might glean from a Confluence page with notes from a design meeting or whatever. "Oh, the real reason we chose technology X for this feature is just because Jim knows it well", "oh, the real reason we're adding this logic to the back-end is because the boss thinks the front-end devs are incompetent", etc. Things that get whispered in person, but don't get written in an email or wiki page. Maybe some teams are small enough or well-adjusted enough for this not to be an issue, but I've definitely felt I've lacked this sort of context since having fewer informal talks with my boss.

vidarh 5y ago

I've had the same from the manager point of view. As the manager I had the luxury of just forcing the issue by scheduling one on ones with everyone and flat out telling them I wanted to make sure I actually regularly spoke to everyone and I could just blame it on being "busy" and so wanting to block out time to make sure I had it set aside. As an introvert, I resorted to that in large part because it removed my ability to manufacture excuses for myself or just forgetting because I rarely get the impulse that I feel a strong need to talk to someone. But you can do the same yourself even if you're not in a position to demonstratively schedule actual meeting slots with people: Just put reminders in your calendar to talk to people without scheduling an actual meeting. If you want to make it seem more organic, just put in the right number of slots and keep a list to yourself that you randomise week by week. You can always tick people off if you have conversations outside of your schedule.

simion314 5y ago

My boss is not my friend, why should I chat with him about his or my private life, I am an introvert so I never start this kind of discussion, but from the OP I understood he was refering to work related chat

lastofthemojito 5y ago
Yeah, I'm not an "I need to be friends with my coworkers" person either, but I just mean the everyday stuff that is work-related or work-tangential. Who is meeting with who, how people feel about what's going on, etc. More than one might glean from a Confluence page with notes from a design meeting or whatever. "Oh, the real reason we chose technology X for this feature is just because Jim knows it well", "oh, the real reason we're adding this logic to the back-end is because the boss thinks the front-end devs are incompetent", etc. Things that get whispered in person, but don't get written in an email or wiki page. Maybe some teams are small enough or well-adjusted enough for this not to be an issue, but I've definitely felt I've lacked this sort of context since having fewer informal talks with my boss.