Not-So-Remote Teams
6 Tips for Effective Communication
Two remote workers walk into a bar. The server asks “What would you guys like to drink?”
Remote Worker One replies — “I’m looking for something fruity, alcoholic, but not too alcoholic, using a dark spirit. I’m fine with a short or long drink”
Remote Work Two replies — “I’m looking for a beer”
Which one of them still had a job a year later?
If this ‘joke’ isn’t the worst you’ve ever heard, you need to get out more. But it does aptly describe a common internal communication problem we see with remote work: Effective communication is the number one most important factor in the success of your remote team.
Our remote team consists of 50 people across 20 countries, and whilst we’ve enjoyed major benefits and encourage other founders to consider this path, communication is undoubtedly one of the bigger challenges.
Communication problems in a remote environment become amplified and can cause rot from within which becomes very hard to shake. Whilst this is also true of any business, with a remote team, it’s even harder to see the problem as it is happening. It’s more difficult to sense someone’s emotions if you don’t hear their voice every day or see their body language. And without those watercooler conversations, you risk not getting to know your colleagues in the same way.
Repairing those problems can also be more difficult. Bad communication compounds, and has an ever-growing detrimental effect on your business.
So let’s dive into some of the reasons this happens, and what, in my experience, is the best way to operate for success.
Tip #1: If you don’t have trust, you won’t have a team
When you start any job, it requires a huge amount of trust. Trust in the company, trust in the team, trust in the business, trust in the working conditions, trust that you’ll get paid and, ultimately, trust in the leadership.
This need for trust is amplified in a remote team, where maybe you haven’t met someone face-to-face, you have less legal protection across borders, and you’re further removed from day-to-day interactions.
I’d like to think that all of my team trusts me and that they know I have their back. This is much easier for team members who have been with us for one year than one month. Trust is built over time.
But it works both ways; you also have to trust that someone you employ is capable of doing the job, will work the amount required, and will execute the job to the standard you require.
In my opinion, building trust requires openness and honesty. If the leadership communicates this way with their team, they are more likely to receive the same treatment in return. If you build a culture of fear and stymie honest communication then you may discourage your team’s willingness to come to you with problems.
Open and honest communication is essential because it enables you to address problems as they arise, your team is much more likely to tell you about mistakes, and you can better understand the day-to-day situation your team members face.
To build trust, we strive to be approachable and reliable. We create opportunities for conversations with every team member and make those 1:1s as impactful as possible. When someone has an issue, we listen actively and quickly take steps to help. Small problems can quickly become big problems if unaddressed.
Once there is mutual trust, you can focus on growing the business and executing your strategy, removing the unknowns that eat away at people.
Tip #2: Commit to your core tools
As a remote team, you have to be smart about the communication tools you use. Using email as your primary communication method is likely to be too slow and lacks many functionalities, like call features or live chat. Whatsapp is another communication method that many people use in their personal lives, but messages can quickly get lost if they are more than a few days old and if a group is too big it can get overwhelming.
You must use tools that boost your ability to have efficient communication, will grow with you as your team grows, and have the functionality to suit your business.
For us, we must be able to communicate in real-time and easily separate conversations about different topics. Our tools are accessible in almost any country and they work 99.9% of the time.
We use Slack as our primary platform for communication. We use it for live chat and have separate channels for topics, projects, and non-work chat. Our other main communication tools are Whereby for conference calls, Basecamp for project management and, due to the Great Firewall, WeChat to communicate with our Chinese team. We tried and tested at least ten of the other major options. You can read more about tools in this article by Vyshnavi Basuthkar.
Everyone will have their preferences, so eventually, you have to commit to some core tools. Whatever you choose, what is essential is that it improves your ability to communicate, the majority of people see its benefits (and actively use it), and that it is affordable.
That being said, the costs of these tools are worth having. We couldn’t operate effectively without most of them.
Once you get your toolkit right, it’s a huge barrier you have removed from your quest for effective communication.
Tip #3: Don’t get tripped up by timezones
Depending on just how remote and distributed your team becomes, you quickly start to run into the communication issues that arise when you have people working in different timezones, all on the same project. This is one of the only things we’ve found that you can’t find a software to magically fix!
The solution to this is rather more manual and mundane. Essentially it comes down to ensuring that everyone is aware of the timezones of the other people they work with. This allows everyone to structure their day, and know when it’s time to get the answers they need, work on a specific task or set up that important call. I know that if I want to speak to our Australian or East Asian teams, this has to be the first thing I do when I wake up. The same applies to our teams in North or South America, I can’t expect an answer until much later in my day, so ideally I preempt this by asking the questions just before I go to bed, to allow someone to find out the answer, which I read the next morning.
The main skill you need to communicate across the whole globe is foresight (where possible).
- What answers or tasks do you need for tomorrow?
- Which tool is the best way to share this with your team?
- Can you give precise instructions, so that there’s a high chance you get what you need the next day?
- Does the person/team need to communicate with anyone else before they can answer this and what is that extra person’s timezone?
It seems simple, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got it wrong. You are then playing timezone pinball, as a task bounces from one timezone to another around the globe, over sometimes a couple of days. Something which probably should, and could, have taken a couple of hours.
Effective communication across time zones is about knowing where people are when they work and giving clear instructions; and ideally, clearly enough that they don’t require any follow-up questions.
Tip #4: Variety is the spice of life…and the bane of communications
Within any team, there are different styles of working and different ways of thinking. That’s what makes a great team.
But in a remote environment, you need to set the tone around communication.
Someone may be utterly brilliant at what they do, but if they are indecisive with their responses or struggle to give direct answers, you may have a problem. When you are all in the same timezone or office, it is often easier to go back and forth until you reach the answer you require. When it comes to a remote team, you ideally want the answer the first time because it might take 24-hours before you can get a second reply. 24-hours can be a long time for serious issues or client problems.
Similarly, you can’t presume that everything you say has been understood exactly the way you meant. Even if it seems so at the time. Of course, this applies to every workplace, but not seeing someone face-to-face, and without the chance to bump into them throughout the day and check-in, there are fewer opportunities to pick up on misunderstandings.
Be direct about outcomes, and what you expect. If you leave everything too open or sounding like a question, it causes misalignment.
Varied working styles can be incredibly valuable to your business, but with remote work, too varied communication styles can spiral out of control and hinder execution. It’s up to you to set the tone and set your team up for success. You can do this with company communication guidelines and backing up verbal instructions with written text.
Tip #5: Don’t get lost in translation
One of the very best parts of having our remote team is that our members span across twenty countries. This brings different approaches, perspectives, and life experiences.
We speak English as our main work communication language and my team speaks impeccable English. It’s incredible just how good people can be at a second, third or even fourth language!
But that makes it easy to take it for granted that everything has been understood.
The fastest way to confuse someone is by using idioms, which frankly make no sense as a literal translation. An example from British English is, “That’s put a cat amongst the pigeons” — this is not something I would likely use in a meeting because it can easily get lost in translation.
Always confirm with others around you whether or not things are clear, because sometimes people can be too nervous to ask you to repeat things. Don’t overcomplicate what you are saying, speak slowly and enunciate, explaining things in the most straightforward manner, not the most poetic. This can take some practice, but it enables you to communicate efficiently with your team.
Tip #6: Foster organisational decisiveness
An important factor for any person leading a team is decisiveness, being able to just pick the best option and to run with it. Again, this is amplified with a remote team environment. Waiting to decide on something or not being direct with what you are looking for will likely lead to sloppy execution and unwanted outcomes.
This should be fundamental to your communication style as a remote team leader, but also something to foster in the rest of the team because ultimately you need everyone communicating efficiently for the best results.
To Summarise
As the leader of a team with remote workers, it’s your responsibility to set the precedent for efficient, effective communication. Dedicate yourself to fostering a sense of trust, through openness, approachability, and reliability. And when it comes to how you communicate, I’d focus on these six main approaches:
- Be Clear — with what answer or outcome you expect
- Be Succinct — try to summarise everything in as fewer sentences as possible
- Be Direct — don’t ask if somebody would like to do something, tell them what needs doing for speed
- Be Decisive — try to choose one path to make sure your idea is executed
- Be Straightforward — don’t twist what you are saying. Simply outline what you need and why
- Be Focused — make sure that the main point you are making stands out and that the other person will understand that
