Actually it worked well when Dale and I worked together. Most comms are near-real time: e-mail to the mailing list. For 'now' real-time you have chat, and for 'actually now, really now' you get on the mobile phone. My working hours were typically 7am to about 4pm and then again 9pm til midnight so we got good overlap.

As his boss, addressing his loneliness and isolation was one of MY needs - people's performance isn't in isolation of the rest of their life. For Dale this never turned out to be a problem, for others not so...