December 6, 2024
Read Time: ~7 minutes
<aside> 📌 At Empower, we seek individuals who challenge personal assumptions, value ownership and trust, and strive for excellence to inspire and empower their team. If this article connected with you, join our team!
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<aside> 📎 Drawing parallels between online gaming and modern work environments, this blog explores the challenges of fostering trust and collaboration in virtual teams. Discover actionable insights to accelerate team cohesion, improve communication, and harness the unquantified power of shared experiences—even from miles apart.
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https://open.spotify.com/episode/6g9gqJqybP4KzzCLkWkod6?si=lrzZPxg0SRGAjiGT-grokQ
The gaming setup circa last decade
Throughout the 2010’s, I was a typical geek. In between mining Bitcoin and working at a startup, I played a lot of computer games. For one particular game, Dota 2, I racked up 2500+ hours.
Each match, you would jump into a game with a team of 5 people, all strangers, sitting in their bedrooms, trying to work together to win. Each team member would have a role, some determined by the game mechanics, and some determined by discussion or unspoken convention.
Basically a small, remote, self-organizing, cross functional team, right?
During this era, Dota 2 had a reputation for being “toxic”. I’d often see abuse, both textual and verbal, flying around; even the odd death threat. Lots of racist remarks. Interestingly, this abuse was rarely directed at the opposing team, but instead directed between the teammates themselves. Teams would fall apart, to the point of actively trying to sabotage each other.
Dota 2 is an extreme example, but in some ways very similar to remote work. You are thrown into an environment requiring high trust without having established high trust. There is low visibility, muddy expectations, low accountability. And the biases are similar: