New technology can be an enabler but if you want to truly engage to build a relationship there has to be physical conversation. If you do want to draw on research as a basis, research has proven that physical conversations effects people’s lifespans! Can you believe that… and yet, we encourage less direct interaction and more online or indirect communication because life is faster and has new challenges and we have less time.

I have had more valuable conversations, received more work, learnt more and appreciated more from direct, face to face conversations.

Relational proximity, which is a fairly new term, measures how close relationships are in teams as an effective measure of success. It has various elements that it measures. One of these elements is “story”, which means how resilient are you in maintaining your relationship. You cannot choose to step in and out of relationships when it suits you and expect value, engagement as well as a good relationship.  It is also about momentum – how do I build momentum in proximity with my relationships? How do I maintain that? So how do we sustain our stories? And what does your relational story look like?