Before 2020, the default professional environment was a masterclass in what anthropologist Edward T. Hall called a “high-context culture”. In these environments, much of the meaning in an interaction is not found in the words spoken but in the shared context, non-verbal cues, and established relationships. The office is the quintessential high-context workplace.
Think about the sheer volume of information you absorb passively in an office. This is communication that happens to you, not just from you. It’s a language of subtleties, composed of several “dialects”:
In this environment, meaning is layered and often unstated. A manager can perform a “drive-by”, glancing at your screen and asking, “Everything going okay”? This is rarely a simple question. It’s a complex, multi-layered utterance that could mean “You look stuck, do you need help”? or “I haven’t seen an update from you, what’s your status”? or even “Are you working on the right thing”? The employee is expected to decode this message based on the manager’s tone, expression, and the current project pressure. The system works because everyone is immersed in the same context, speaking the same implicit language.
Now, take all of that away. Remote work, by its very nature, is a low-context environment. The rich, multi-sensory data stream of the office is gone, replaced by the narrow, filtered portals of Slack, email, and video calls. The background context is no longer shared, so it must be built, word by painstaking word.
In the remote world, if it isn’t written down or explicitly stated, it might as well not exist. This shift demands a completely different linguistic skill set:
The push for RTO is, in many ways, a result of this linguistic mismatch. Many managers, particularly those who rose through the ranks in a high-context world, feel like they’ve gone blind. Their entire management style was predicated on “management by walking around”—absorbing the office’s ambient data stream to gauge morale, progress, and problems. They could *feel* the energy of the sales floor or *see* the late-night lights of the engineering team. Without these implicit signals, they experience “productivity paranoia”, mistaking a lack of visible activity for a lack of actual work.
On the other side, many employees who have adapted and thrived in a low-context environment now see the office’s implicit nature as inefficient and chaotic. They have come to value the clarity of a well-defined task, the focus of deep work without interruption, and the transparency of documented decisions. To them, the “drive-by” question isn’t a useful exchange; it’s a disruptive context-switch that could have been a clear, asynchronous message.
This isn’t to say one “language” is inherently superior. Both have strengths and weaknesses. The challenge for today’s organizations, especially those navigating a hybrid model, is to become bilingual.
A poorly managed hybrid setup is the worst of both worlds. It creates a linguistic caste system. The in-office employees continue to operate on high-context, implicit cues. Decisions are made in hallways, context is shared over lunch, and impromptu whiteboard sessions solve problems. The remote employees, left off the CC list of these real-world interactions, are perpetually out of the loop. They are missing the context they need to be effective.
The solution is to adopt a “remote-first” or “explicit-first” mindset. This means defaulting to low-context communication practices, even for those in the office:
The future of work isn’t about choosing a location. It’s about understanding the linguistic and cultural shift that has occurred. Companies that recognize this will thrive by deliberately designing their communication culture. They will teach their teams to be fluent in both the nuanced language of in-person interaction and the clear, deliberate language of remote work, ensuring that no matter where an employee sits, their voice can be clearly heard.
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