Recently I spent the day supporting a proposal team in person after working with several of them only through Teams calls, emails, shared documents, comments, and deadlines. We already knew how to work together. We knew who handled which parts of the project, who tended to ask certain questions, and how the work moved from one person to another. But I’d never actually been in the same room.
When I learned that the team was traveling into Cincinnati, which is basically my own backyard, it felt like too good an opportunity to pass up. And, honestly, I thought it would be useful for them too.
There was something especially nice about finally being able to put real people together instead of little boxes on a screen. And I was reminded how much virtual work allows us to accomplish while also realizing how much information gets flattened when nearly every interaction happens through a camera, a chat window, or somebody’s initials floating beside a comment in a document.
I’ve worked remotely for more than a decade. Long before Teams calls became an ordinary part of professional life. And while I’m not remotely interested in arguing that everyone needs to start showing up in an office five days a week again, shaking someone’s hand and sitting across a table from them has value.
Virtual work makes enormous sense for the kind of consulting and writing I do. It allows teams to come together across states, companies, and time zones without anyone getting on an airplane every time we need to answer a question. But every now and then, being in the room reminds me that efficiency isn’t the only thing that matters.
There Are Things You Simply Notice in Person
People reveal their working styles differently when you’re sitting beside them instead of watching their faces in a row of boxes. You notice who likes to think something through out loud, who needs a minute before responding, who immediately starts taking notes, and who can glance at a document and spot the thing everyone else has been circling for twenty minutes.
The conversations change too. A question that might have become six emails can be answered by leaning over and saying, “What did you mean here?” Someone remembers a detail because another conversation triggered it. A person mentions something while everyone is getting coffee that turns out to be useful later. There’s more room for the little exchanges that don’t deserve their own meeting invitation but still help people understand one another and the work.
Humor matters here too, probably more than we give it credit for. You learn something about people by seeing what makes them laugh, how they respond when a plan changes, what happens when someone disagrees, and how the group reacts when everyone has been staring at the same slide for too long and can no longer see what’s right in front of them. None of that means you can’t build strong working relationships virtually. Of course you can. But in-person time adds another layer of context, and context has a way of making future virtual work easier.
The Work Gets Better When You Know the People Doing It
Complicated work is rarely improved by pretending the people involved are interchangeable pieces on an organizational chart. Expertise matters. Clear roles matter. Good processes matter. So does understanding how the people inside those roles actually work together.
Once you’ve spent time with someone in person, a short email can read differently because you know the voice behind it. You have a better sense of what someone means when she says, “I’m thinking about this,” or when he asks a question that might have sounded more pointed on a screen. You begin to understand who wants more detail, who is trying to get to the decision quickly, who is thinking three steps ahead, and who needs to talk something through before moving on.
That kind of understanding doesn’t eliminate disagreement or make every project run perfectly. What it does is give people more information about one another, which is useful when the work gets complicated. It also builds respect in a way that can be difficult to manufacture through scheduled calls alone. You see the preparation someone has done, notice how much another person is carrying, watch people solve problems in real time, and let them see the same things about you.
That matters later, when the deadline gets tight or something changes late in the process. You’re no longer working only with a name in an email thread or a face in a little box. You have a better sense of the person on the other side of the work, and that changes the way you communicate, interpret, and collaborate.
I Still Believe in the Value of Virtual Work
It has opened up access to people, opportunities, and projects that geography once would have made far more difficult. Most of the time, there’s no reason everyone involved in a project needs to occupy the same building. The flexibility is real, and so is the efficiency. But that doesn’t mean in-person time has become irrelevant.
But if the opportunity comes along to meet the people you usually work with virtually, I think it’s worth taking. You may not accomplish anything that couldn’t technically have been done online, and that’s not necessarily the point. The value may be in coming away with a better understanding of how the people around you think, communicate, and work.
Then everyone goes back to their separate offices, their Teams calls, their documents, and their little boxes on the screen. The work is still virtual, but the relationships underneath it feel a little less so.