Knoop: In-person retreats build interpersonal empathy necessary for text-heavy remote teams
Mike Knoop · Mike Knoop on Product and Design Processes for Remote Teams with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator · Mar 6, 2019 · at 46:30
Zapier co-founder Mike Knoop explains why fully remote companies still require regular in-person retreats to maintain team cohesion on platforms like Slack.
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“Even though we're a hundred percent remote, there is still a lot of value for getting in person. and we don't like discount that. you get to build a lot of empathy. You get to build relationship with folks and it allows you to kind of be, assume best intent the rest of the year, right? When you're in Slack and you're in that, working on that tense project and someone leaves, you know, writes a message that might be a little more curt than it should have been. It's like, oh, I've heard, I can hear their voice in my head. Like, I know who that is. I understand who that is. Like, I'm not gonna jump off and, like, assume that they were trying to be mean to me or something like that, and that helps smooth over a lot of issues that I think can happen when you are primarily using text-based communication tools, where you do lose a lot of that tone.”
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