The Decisive Cultural Element of Remote Teams

Company culture, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an organization. This culture is not so much about who we are as individuals, but rather about how we behave as a group. Culture shapes our working environment — how decisions are made, how problems are solved, and how innovation happens. It consists of countless small details, but the single most important cultural aspect in remote teams (most likely in all other teams, too) is communication.

Out of all the countless discussions about company culture we have had in Toggl, not a single one has gone by without reminding ourselves about the importance of always communicating more and better. And then some more and even better. Good communication avoids conflicts and mistakes, it helps solve them faster and teaches us how to improve the way we work. Listening to people will uncover valuable knowledge in the team. We have learned over and over again that there is no such thing as overcommunication.

But who is this mythical creature of communication? How does it talk, what does it eat and how do you nurture it? Communication means the process of exchanging information between individuals, but to really understand how it works in your team, it is important to define the systems, symbols and behaviors that shape it.

Here are some elements that I find critical to efficient communication in remote teams:

Discuss everything openly and honestly

Everyone on the team should feel free and safe to ask questions and give feedback, share their plans and ideas for innovation. If you want your team to feel secure, then respect and kindness must be encouraged at all times. Every leader is the biggest role model for their team, so check your own attitude first.

It is OK to argue and disagree, but debates should be based on constructive arguments rather that emotions or in-house competition for attention. When mistakes are made, focus on finding solutions not playing blame games.

Write things down

In remote teams, people do not have the opportunity to overhear discussions in the elevator or chitchat about project changes in the office kitchen. Therefore, if it is not written down publicly, the knowledge essentially does not exist for people in a remote company. Not to mention that when your team grows, the tribal knowledge of how things are done often stays in the old-timers’ heads without an easy way out for other people to use. What a waste of resources it is to re-explain such information to all the new-comers if they could just read it and go back to it later if they forget something!

Information that is good to write down and share with the whole team includes company policies (vacations, benefits, travel etc.), your business logic and product/service documentation, customer support principles, long-and short term goals for the company and each team, and the basic working principles and tools.

Make information clear and concise. Avoid having a million documents in a shared cloud space, instead try to gather things to your intranet or use simple tools like Google Sites or Notion. You can also check out the public GitLab Team Handbook for inspiration. Transparency FTW!

Verbal communication trumps written

Despite all your best efforts, miscommunication will happen. In fact, if you think about the smaller and bigger mishaps in your company, I am quite sure that most of them can be traced back to a communication issue between individuals, teams or even with customers. Maybe an important piece of information was left unsaid, maybe people understood information differently and made false conclusions, or maybe something was lost in translation.

Toggl group now has people from around 30 different countries. Our working language is English, which is not the native language for most people on the team. Additionally, most of our communication happens in an online chat and sometimes people type faster than they think. Misunderstandings easily present themselves.

We always encourage reverting to a video call when debates get too heated. It is easier to talk face-to-face (even if only virtually) as seeing facial expressions and hearing the other person’s tone of voice gives the human touch we need for interpreting the message being delivered.

Learn to listen

An old proverb says that speech is silver, but silence is golden. This absolutely holds true in remote teams, too. Most of our jobs require us to be problem-solvers and to offer solutions to every situation life throws at us. Having a clear vision in mind for a successful way forward often distracts us from listening to our partner’s point of view.

More often than not shutting our own mouths to listen to other people will bring bright new ideas to the table. Listen to understand not to reply. Try it out at your next meeting and you might just be surprised of the outcome. Listening is a skill and you can get better at it if you practice.

Have regular one-on-ones

As a leader, the best and most crucial place you should practice listening is when you do one-on-one chats with your team members. This should not be confused with weekly status updates, where the employee shares their done and to-do lists for ongoing projects. Real one-on-ones should be the time to discuss everything outside the daily hustle —how is life, what are the dreams and aspirations of the team member, how is their working environment, what would help them improve productivity or communication within the company. The goal here is to keep people happy and motivated. It is the perfect time to give and receive feedback.

There is no fixed frequency for the one-on-ones, but I would recommend starting with once per month and seeing from there. There is ample guidance out there about how to plan and execute these talks. For example Claire Lew has listed 8 best questions to put on your next one-on-one meeting agenda. My all time favourite advice for meaningful one-on-ones comes from Mark Rabkin of Facebook in this blog post The Art of the Awkward 1:1 (see also part 2 about The Art of Getting Honest Feedback). Embrace the awkward!

To sum it up, I learn about the importance of good communicating on a daily basis. I know it is highly important, but life keeps throwing at me more and more examples to confirm its powerfulness. In a remote team where people do not see each other face-to-face on most days, the quality of written and virtual communication is what can make of break the company culture. Paraphrasing the legendary Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell song, ain’t no mountain high enough if there is transparency and frequent meaningful communication within the team.

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts about communication in teams in the comments below.