
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson giving Senator Richard Russell the "treatment" in the White House Cabinet Room on December 17, 1963, 25 days after Johnson became President following the assassination of President Kennedy. As Senate Majority Leader form January 3, 1955, until January 3, 1961 (shortly before he entered into office as Kennedy's Vice President), Johnson became known for using the "treatment" to coerce powerful politicians into supporting his legislative priorities, a practice which he evidently continued to employ as President. At 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) Johnson was about 9 inches (23 cm) taller than the average male of his generation, and he knew how to use his height. Photo by White House Photographic Office, courtesy Wikimedia.
Many teams of people accustomed to working together face-to-face are now compelled to work from home because of the pandemic. Because they're working from home, these teams are now virtual teams. As described last time, this new virtual configuration affects workplace politics, and in particular, it affects the politics of meetings. But it has other political effect as well. Here are three more ways the new virtuality affects workplace politics.
- Where you live matters much less
- Because work-from-home is so much more common in a pandemic, choosing where to live is a little more complicated. If you're commuting less often to an office, then for the time being, your choices of where to live might expand — in some cases, dramatically. If you have flexibility, use it. Even if you elect not to change where you live, some of your colleagues might. Because that choice can affect you, be alert to these possibilities.
- Similar calculations apply when searching for employment. In non-pandemic times, some employers valued on-site work much more highly than they value it now. You might be able now to find an employer who's very comfortable with your working remotely, even if you had difficulties finding such employers in the past. If you're willing and able to work remotely, the number of employment opportunities can be vastly greater than they otherwise would be.
- In time, we can expect this phenomenon to affect compensation. People who live in high-compensation areas will be more likely to be working alongside those living in low-compensation areas. Because employers usually try to keep compensation equitable across work teams, a leveling process might occur if the effects of the pandemic are long lasting.
- Appearance matters, but in new ways
- Personal appearance does matter, as much as it mattered before the pandemic. But when work-from-home is in effect, what matters most is your video appearance in exchanges mediated by Zoom, MS Teams, or whatever software your employer uses. If you're engaged in interviewing for a new position, similar considerations apply to prospective employers.
- For most, dress is a notch less formal — not less than that — for work-from-home than it was for work-at-work. In all other respects, for dress, there is little change.
- But there are other changes. For example, relative stature — your height compared to others — can affect your ability to influence others, especially those who don't know you well. [Stulp 2015] [Stulp 2013] But in the virtual environment, height isn't evident. People who are taller than most others are likely to experience a loss of advantage; people who are shorter than most others are likely to experience a loss of disadvantage.
- Attend Your height compared to others can
affect your ability to influence
others, especially those
who don't know you wellto the background of your video image. Bedrooms are unprofessional. Choose a space at home that looks as close to businesslike as you can make it. - The online disinhibition effect is more important
- According to psychologist John Suler, a contributing cause of destructive conflict in the virtual environment is the online disinhibition effect (ODE). [Suler 2004] [Brenner 2015] Briefly, virtual environments inherently weaken inhibitions that limit socially offensive behavior.
- One factor contributing to the ODE is what psychologists call dissociative anonymity. In the virtual environment, compared to real life, the connection between our personhood and our social actions is weaker. This weakened connection — dissociation — creates a sense of psychological freedom that enables us to say or do (or not say or not do) things that we wouldn't (or would) otherwise.
- The implications of the ODE for person-to-person interactions include elevated probability of toxic conflict. If you expect difficulty in interactions between yourself and others, be aware that those difficulties are more likely in the virtual environment. Prepare yourself. Consciously choose not to engage or respond unless the issue at hand truly merits such action. Choose instead to wait if you can. Others might step in, or the issue might otherwise resolve itself.
Perhaps one can derive the most significant political advantage from recognizing that teams of people who work from home are in every sense virtual teams, even if all members worked face-to-face, in the same suite of offices, before the pandemic. For example, someone who relies on daily or nearly daily face-to-face confidential chats with political allies could expect to encounter some difficulty in the virtual environment. To continue to interact with each other as if face-to-face interactions were available when they are not is to risk miscommunication and confusion from which recovery can be most difficult. First in this series Top
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Are your virtual meetings plagued by inattentiveness, interruptions, absenteeism, and a seemingly endless need to repeat what somebody just said? Do you have trouble finding a time when everyone can meet? Do people seem disengaged and apathetic? Or do you have violent clashes and a plague of virtual bullying? Read Leading Virtual Meetings for Real Results to learn how to make virtual meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot shorter. Order Now!
Footnotes
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Related articles
More articles on Virtual and Global Teams:
Problem-Solving Ambassadors
- In dispersed teams, we often hold meetings to which we send delegations to work out issues of mutual
interest. These working sessions are a mix of problem solving and negotiation. People who are masters
of both are problem-solving ambassadors, and they're especially valuable to dispersed or global teams.
Virtual Presentations
- Modern team efforts almost certainly involve teleconferences, and many teleconferences include presentations,
often augmented with video or graphics. Delivering these virtual presentations effectively requires
an approach tailored to the medium.
On Virtual Relationships
- Whether or not you work as part of a virtual team, you probably work with some people you rarely meet
face-to-face. And there are some people you've never met, and probably never will. What does it take
to maintain good working relationships with people you rarely meet?
Toxic Conflict in Virtual Teams: Dissociative Anonymity
- Toxic conflict in teams disrupts relationships and interferes with (or prevents) accomplishment of the
team's goals. It's difficult enough to manage toxic conflict in co-located teams, but in virtual teams,
dissociative anonymity causes toxic conflict to be both more easily triggered and more difficult to resolve.
Disjoint Awareness: Bias
- Some cognitive biases can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate understandings of what each
other is doing. Confirmation bias and self-serving bias are two examples of cognitive biases that can
contribute to disjoint awareness in some situations.
See also Virtual and Global Teams and Conflict Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming April 21: Choice-Supportive Bias
- Choice-supportive bias is a cognitive bias that causes us to evaluate our past choices as more fitting than they actually were. The erroneous judgments it produces can be especially costly to organizations interested in improving decision processes. Available here and by RSS on April 21.
And on April 28: The Self-Explanation Effect
- In the learning context, self-explanation is the act of explaining to oneself what one is learning. Self-explanation has been shown to increase the rate of acquiring mastery. The mystery is why we don't structure knowledge work to exploit this phenomenon. Available here and by RSS on April 28.
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people who possess real organizational power have a characteristic demeanor. It's the way they project their presence. I call this the power affect. Some people — call them power pretenders — adopt the power affect well before they attain significant organizational power. Unfortunately for their colleagues, and for their organizations, power pretenders can attain organizational power out of proportion to their merit or abilities. Understanding the power affect is therefore important for anyone who aims to attain power, or anyone who works with power pretenders. Read more about this program.
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Decis
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- A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly
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Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
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