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related to their satisfaction with the experience. It turns out that social
presence is a very strong predictor of learner satisfaction.
She went on to explore the role social presence has in other venues.
She found, for example, that self-disclosure, expressing one’s identity,
building trust, dealing with conflict, knowing how to deal with si-
lence, and innovatively using language to adapt communication were
keys to developing social presence in different cultural contexts. Since
her initial work, social presence research has expanded to look at how
social presence affects such things as online product sales, online
trust, and the creation of successful e-learning environments.
But, come on, social presence may be important when teaching
students, but it can’t make any difference when managing a mobile
workforce. Can it?
It’s only important if you want to build loyalty, identity, and sup-
port for your organization. It’s important to leaders who are working
globally, Lani says, “if they want workers who are scattered all over
the world to feel that they are part of an organization.” Do you want
your workers to feel like they belong to your organization? To relate to
the organization? To be woven into the organizational culture? Then
it’s important to build social presence and a sense of community. If
people are self-contained, or if it doesn’t matter whom they work for,
then building social presence isn’t very important. But for most orga-
nizations that want to build and maintain high-performing teams, it
is crucial.
Social presence is a key for creating trust, motivation, and loyalty for
organizations with mobile workers. One of the biggest challenges for
leaders of a mobile workforce is to reduce the sense of isolation that
people working away from the office, in coffee shops or home offices,
feel day to day. Managers who really get it, who know that leading
workers at a distance is more than zipping out the latest company
update, will thrive because they will know how to create the loyal,
trusting, passionate, online communities that bring out the best in
workers of every age and profession.
How important is social presence for leaders trying to create a pas-
sionate mobile workforce? It’s indispensable. The sine qua non. Pick