If you've started your career in the last five years working remotely, I'd urge you to get out at least once or twice a week to mix with colleagues. More importantly, you need to meet your customers face-to-face. Video conferences don't build the same trust and understanding. I still get nervous visiting customers globally, but those in-person experiences deliver insights you simply can't get virtually.

Why In-Person Interaction Matters for Career Growth

So if you started your career in the last five years remote working or working mostly from home, maybe all that you know, and at risk of just sounding like a old middle-aged guy, I don't think this is wise for your career development. Personally, I would emphasize at least once, twice a week being out and mixing amongst your colleagues, but also wider colleagues from other teams in an office environment. You need to build your network and I don't think you do that going on Zoom and Teams calls. In addition, and really most importantly, you need to get out into the world and meet your customers. Meeting your customer just on a video conference is not getting to know them. There is only one way to do that and that is to go out there physically and it can be a bit scary. I still get butterflies when I turn up to a location on the other side of the world in an industry I know nothing about and I'm going to spend the whole day with those customers. I feel that tension and that anxiety, but at the end of it I know that customer, their business and then probably other members of the team I would never have got to meet during that day way better than I could ever have done virtually. So I think at the moment the world is leaning too much on the tools of communication saying, oh everything can be done from home. In theory it can, but that's not the way the world works and I don't think that's ever going to change. We're not going to undo millennia of the ways humans interact and build trust with each other just because technology improved and we had a pandemic.

Why In-Person Interaction Matters for Career Growth

Key Takeaways