Is There a Virtual Worker Personality?

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Extroverted curiosity seekers who are quick decision makers and super Type A personalities tend to thrive. "It almost requires a super person," says Duff.

Shy, disorganized types are better kept in-house. Turns out the office environment is more forgiving of the disorganized. Its structures help provide external reinforcement. There's also much to be said for social vibrations that naturally abound in an office. It doesn't require much work to keep up basic relationships when you're all in the same place.

Now, with the benefit of Duff's research, execs such as Cisco's Stone are rethinking managerial best practices. Stone's direct reports are scattered across the globe. Recently he became concerned about one particular employee who either worked from home or in an office with Cisco workers who were in different departments. Stone didn't have much sense of how he was doing and felt telephone conversations weren't allowing them to connect properly. He deliberately started to buddy up this lone-ranger exec with other Cisco execs in the same geographic area.

Cisco's Telepresence, a hyper-realistic video-conferencing system, has also helped Stone stay in face-to-face contact with this more introverted type, who is headquartered in France. "Before, my interaction with him was over the phone every couple of weeks," says Stone.

Any form of video conferencing can help. When managers rely on voice and e-mail communication to reach workers off-site, research has shown that only 7% of communication goes through. Systems such as Telepresence convey the tone, body language, and facial expressions that are so crucial to trust and understanding. Researchers studying bodily reactions found that co-workers on different continents experienced the same chemical responses as they would in face-to-face meetings. Workplace researchers also report that using video conferencing to huddle in short but frequent bursts is far more productive than flying off to some long, drawn-out confab. For some virtual workers, the key to being productive may be to create an office-like environment in cyberspace.

Conlin is the editor of the Working Life Dept. at BusinessWeek.

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