To combat remote work isolation, Atlassian designates one team member per week as the "Chief Vibes Officer" (CVO). This person's job is to inject fun and connection through activities like posting prompts in Slack. This simple ritual builds social bridges, leading to higher trust and better problem-solving.

Remote work eliminates spontaneous "water cooler" moments crucial for building trust through non-verbal cues. To compensate, leaders should intentionally dedicate the first five minutes of virtual meetings to casual, personal conversation. This establishes a human connection before discussing work, rebuilding lost rapport.

During major internal changes (e.g., tech refactoring, price hikes), users can feel neglected. Bending Spoons found that monthly video updates for Evernote were crucial for reassuring the community, demonstrating progress, and putting a human face on the company to directly address concerns.

Remote and global teams suffer from a loss of context. An "AI Buddy" can solve this by delivering personalized, timely information about what relevant colleagues are doing. This automated, customized "newsletter" keeps everyone in the loop without them having to read everything, increasing social awareness.

Using tools that require recording yourself provides a consistent opportunity for self-review. Loom's CEO notes that users improve their communication simply by playing back their own recordings, treating async video as a skill to be developed, not just a tool to be used, because 'pain is gain.'

To empower junior employees in remote meetings, leaders should always ask a question after they present, even if the leader knows the answer. This tactic serves two purposes: it communicates that their work is important and gives them another opportunity to demonstrate their expertise, building their confidence.

Status update meetings are a major productivity drain. Replace them with asynchronous videos (e.g., Loom). This method is more efficient, allowing people to consume updates on their own time. It also conveys more signal—tone, emphasis, and personality—than a written update, fostering better connection on distributed teams.

Shifting to an async-first culture where meetings are preceded by required video "pre-watches" is a significant change management effort. Success requires leadership to model the behavior and set a clear standard that attending a meeting unprepared is unacceptable, forcing people to manage their calendars for async work.

Instead of using meetings for context-setting, Loom’s team sends a required 'pre-watch' video walkthrough of the strategy. This forces stakeholders to arrive with full context, allowing the live meeting to be shorter and entirely focused on critique, asking clarifying questions, and making decisions.