Learn More

Quick hits

Johnson, Whitney. “Collaboration Is Risky. Now, Get on with It.” HBR.org, June 7, 2011. https://hbr.org/2011/06/collaboration-is-risky-now-get.

Are you worried that your coworker is slacking off? Is someone exploiting your ignorance about one topic and stealing your ideas about another? It’s hard to build trust in a virtual collaboration when you can’t get an in-person read on the other person’s character. Johnson offers universal advice for overcoming these fears and embracing an open, generous partnership.

Torres, Nicole. “Just Hearing Your Phone Buzz Hurts Your Productivity.” HBR.org, July 10, 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/07/just-hearing-your-phone-buzz-hurts-your-productivity.

When you work remotely, your day is a constant stream of notifications: ringtones, chirps, buzzes, and pop-up boxes. Learn how these alerts damage your focus, slow down your work, and even introduce errors in your performance.

Watkins, Michael. “Remote Leadership: Meeting the Challenge of Working for a Virtual Boss.” HBR.org, July 20, 2007. https://hbr.org/2007/07/remote-leadership-meeting-the.

Of all the collaborators you need to stay aligned with, your boss is probably the most important one. But while you can’t ignore their e-mails, they might ignore yours. Watkins outlines four key strategies for staying connected with the person who matters most to your work life.

Books

Fried, Jason and David Heinemeier Hansson. Remote: Office Not Required. New York: Crown Business, 2013.

Learn from the real-life experiences of the creators of 37signals (now called Basecamp), among other web-based tools, where virtual collaboration is the order of the day. Having built a remote work environment at their own company, Fried and Hansson describe the challenges and benefits of this arrangement. The authors are zealous converts to virtual work and full of relatable stories that show how individual contributors and companies can make this work.

Harvard Business School Publishing. HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

The greater the number of remote collaborators your work pulls in, the more likely you are to work with peers and supervisors who don’t fit cleanly into an org chart. Even if you’re a full-time employee, your virtual coworkers probably come from different departments. This guide helps you learn how to build productive relationships with anyone and advance your agenda—and your career—in the bargain.

Harvard Business School Publishing. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2015.

As a remote worker, you’re operating in a low-information environment when it comes to reading your coworkers’ social and emotional cues. To navigate these relationships, you’ll need to hone your emotional intelligence (EI)—your ability to perceive and respond to other people’s emotional states and your own. Starting with Daniel Goleman’s seminal article about EI, “What Makes a Leader?,” you’ll learn how to evaluate your own EI and regulate the effect of your emotions on your decision making, your professional relationships, and your own well-being.

Articles

Bharadwaj, Sangeeta Shah. “Case Study: Can a Work-at-Home Policy Hurt Morale?” Harvard Business Review, April 2015 (product #R1504K).

If you’re an occasional, a regular, or a full-time remote employee of a company, this article on the trade-offs of telecommuting will give you a broader picture of what might be happening in your organization. Reflect on how your work arrangements affect your in-office colleagues, and look for ideas you could bring to your own employer to mitigate these problems.

Birkinshaw, Julian and Jordan Cohen. “Make Time for the Work That Matters.” Harvard Business Review, September 2013 (product #R1309K).

A London Business School professor and a productivity expert share their research-based self-assessment that helps you evaluate all your daily activities. You learn how to decide which ones are not that important to either you or your company and which are relatively easy to drop, delegate, or outsource. Your results will reveal small but significant changes you can make to your day-to-day work schedule to boost your productivity.

Gratton, Lynda and Tamara J. Erickson. “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams.” Harvard Business Review, November 2007 (product #R0711F).

Teams that work together closely need to overcome the social distance of virtual work more than any other kind of collaborators do, but without constant attention, any bonds formed will deteriorate. In a study of 55 large teams, Gratton and Erickson identified eight success factors, from relationship norms to assignment structures, for collaborative teams. Evaluate your own team’s strengths and weaknesses against Gratton and Erickson’s model, and brainstorm new practices you can pitch to the group.