Skip to main content

#WFH: Is Depersonalizing All About Control?

Depersonalization is feeling detached from your own thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviors. Depersonalization is divorcing or separating from the self. Any communication that is narrow and im-personal is even more so online. When we focus on projects and problems and forget that people are at the other end of the Gantt chart, it is all too easy to depersonalize. When we leave the everyday aspect of conversation out of the equation, it is easy to speak a monologue and not a dialogue. Chapter 5 is about M2Y (me to you) communication and FROG (family, recreation, occupation and goals), and explains the importance of establishing personal relationships. Collaboration online doesn’t come from talking at but from consulting with the other person.

Many of our biases, evaluations and judgments are made because we depersonalize. Without eye contact or body language and other three dimensional visual cues, it is much easier to depersonalize. These unconscious associations require less cognitive effort and become automatic and unconscious. These thought processes are difficult to recognize and override because they happen automatically and very quickly. Studies suggest that our brains process approximately 20,000,000 bits of information every second but our conscious minds handle only 40 or 50 of those bits.

There is a deep unconscious bias towards con-trolling the worker in the workplace. The perception that workers are there to work less and management must keep them in line has a lot of history. Most of us have some implicit ideas about management. These implicit ideas can be difficult to deactivate because they can be pervasive and robust. Management is supposed to tell workers what to do, but telling doesn’t sit well with the virtual environment. It goes against the ability of an individual to act with autonomy.

#WFH, #RemoteWorkplace, #RemoteWorker, #WorkFromHome, #BobbeGB, #BobbeBaggio, #ThePajamaEffect, #Touchpoints, #Virtual Workplace, #Virtual Worker, #PJEffect, #LinkedInNewsLive