It’s been 5 months since I, Anna Maistrenko joined WIPS and started working with Heidi Breitenmoser and the WIPS team. Before that, I had her in my linkedin network since 2016. The day when I received her connection request I couldn’t imagine where it would bring us to.
The interesting, but funny fact I want to share with you is that I have never met Heidi in real life. Yes, you heard right, I am working distantly with my team and met them only virtually – via phone, email, Whatsapp, Zoom, etc. If someone told me this 5 years ago I probably wouldn’t believe it. However, now I am confident that a virtual team is a huge and essential part of the “workplace of the future” (a future that is already happening).
Now I am curious to look back at what were my self-made myths 5 years ago and how I changed my point of view.
How can you trust people who you never saw in real life?
This concern sounds really funny to me now 
since 2020 it has not been a concern anymore.
The virtual work is not as efficient as the work from the office.
This myth turned out to be just a question of personal working ethic: a good employee will work equally well both from home and office.
Communications in person are more effective than virtual ones.
This doubt is basically built on the belief that it will be difficult to master the new technologies which I never used before. The criteria of efficient communications are the same for virtual and in-person meetings.
I dispelled all my myths about distant/virtual/work from home teams. For the last couple of years, I learnt that trust, efficiency, and communications of a team do not depend much on the place where you work from, but on people who build up your team. Recruit sustainably. Hire intentionally. You are in the power of creating your corporate wellness whether you are – employer or employee.