This is the third in a series of articles about what many are calling The Great Reopening. To see the others, keep scrolling!

A fully virtual workplace both inflames conflict and also makes it easier to avoid. When you’re in physical proximity with your team on a daily basis, you send and receive a lot of nonverbal cues to your colleagues that communicate a sense of safety and trust. When you go to a perfunctory birthday celebration for a colleague that you don’t even know or like that much, this ritual performance still communicates to you and others that you are all on the same team. These everyday ritual signals that communicate trust and belonging are much more scarce in a virtual work environment. As a result, you may have noticed that your thoughts and feelings about your colleagues are not as kind, charitable, or trusting as they once were. That’s a natural consequence of remote work.

At the same time, it’s easier to avoid dealing with these conflicts when working remotely. Avoiding conflict is a common human tendency under the best of circumstances. When you rarely are in circumstances where you have to look the other person in the eye, and where it's much easier to just send an email, conflict avoidance is that much more convenient and available as a strategy.

So, as people return to the office, I predict that many of these buried conflicts will come to the surface. It’s not a bad time to develop your conflict management skills, such as empathic listening, assertive communication, and negotiation towards win/win solutions. If you need help, I’m just a phone call away!