You can be meeting every expectation… and still be disconnecting from the people you work with. When you’re focused on deliverables, online meetings, and meeting targets, it’s easy to start believing that everything can be measured by results. But you can also lose sight of something essential: work happens through our relationships with others.
You’re connected. You share an online space. Yet, in the middle of that distance, you can also lose something emotional—something about the connection between you and others.
And that’s where it’s worth pausing to take a closer look:
- Meetings where you’re present, but not really engaged.
- Decisions you make without considering the other person.
- Short messages you use to avoid conflict.
- Keeping your camera off as a way of disconnecting.
Working remotely can make everything feel more functional, faster, and more “efficient.” But it can also make it easier to avoid, make assumptions, or disconnect emotionally.
So the question is no longer just what you are achieving, but how you are achieving it.
- How do you respond when something doesn’t go as expected?
- How do you interpret someone’s silence during a meeting?
- How do you handle disagreement when everything happens through a screen?
Your interactions at work may be mediated by technology, but the way you use that technology also reveals something about how you relate to others.
That’s where your humanity shows up.
You relate to others with a purpose, an intention: to achieve results. But a relationship is not simply a means of getting things done. It is also a process—a way of being with others.
And this raises an important question:
From what position do you relate to others? Are you trying to win over the other person? To win with the other person? Or to win against them?
Sometimes, without realizing it, you can fall into dynamics where you need to win while the other person loses: shutting down emotionally, assuming intentions, avoiding uncomfortable conversations, or competing from a distance.
And although this may seem functional in the short term, over time it can wear down the relationship. The difficult part is that, in virtual settings, these dynamics can go unnoticed for a long time.
On the other hand, a relationship focused on both people winning doesn’t mean agreeing on everything or being close to everyone. It means something more subtle: recognizing the other person even when you can’t see them, and caring for the relationship even when something more urgent seems to matter.
And perhaps that is one of the most important aspects of workplace relationships: they don’t just say something about your team or your organization.
They also say something about you.
About how you manage uncertainty. How you respond to differences. How emotionally available you are to connect with others, even when it feels uncomfortable.
Perhaps it’s worth asking yourself:
What are your workplace relationships revealing about you right now? Are you really connecting with others, or are you simply coordinating tasks?
Because sometimes you may believe that the problem lies entirely with the leader, the team, your clients, or the way someone else negotiates.
But some relationships activate insecurities, fears, or ways of protecting yourself that you’ve been carrying for a long time.
Maybe you try to control things because trusting others is difficult for you.
Maybe you avoid difficult conversations because conflict makes you more uncomfortable than you’d like to admit.
Or perhaps you constantly need to prove your worth through your performance.
Then the question is no longer just who you work with, but from what emotional place you are relating to others.
And perhaps, if you pay attention to that, you can begin to understand yourself better—and open the possibility of growing professionally through a more conscious and human way of relating to others.te.