As we start the transition from WFH to the hybrid office, lots of things that we liked about working from home are coming to the surface. A short article from HBR’s Management Tip of the Day column highlights one of them — being able to chat with others in a meeting without disrupting the meeting.

Most of us have learned that remote management is challenging. “When you’re not in the same physical space as your employees, you may jump to conclusions that you wouldn’t have if you were all in the office together. It’s important to watch out for common biases that can creep in. For example, people are more likely to rely on their judgment and forgo asking others for feedback when working remotely. As a result, the danger for confirmation bias — the self-rewarding ways we search for and interpret information that confirms our beliefs and values — increases. So encourage your employees to gather more points of view when working on a project, even if this prolongs the decision-making process.” (See 5 Behavioral Biases that Trip Up Remote Managers)

The most considerable value of Zoom is the opportunity to purposefully create a “breakout group” to talk about a topic in real-time before deciding in a group setting. I think this has benefited more of us than we realize, and we will miss that back in the office. We can undoubtedly keep texting each other during meetings, but that’s pretty noticeable. Using Slack, text, private chats, or breakout rooms useful in the virtual meeting environment has contributed to more collaboration than we realize. “In virtual meetings, employees are often less willing to speak up, voice criticism, or question opinions, which can distort decision-making,” according to Torben Emmerling et al. at HBR. With Zoom, that has become natural behavior. Now, the question is what can replace those tools for face-to-face meetings back in the office? We need to keep in mind that some people dislike being put on the spot to speak up, and we’ll have to make some adjustments when we move into the hybrid model over the next few months—just a thought.