Communicating with digital humans: how to make remote work more effective
Remote work transforms all of us into “digital humans”. Communication takes a whole different form when it takes place in front of a laptop screen: the rhythm at which information is exchanged, the different shapes it may take, and the more human nuances of it are aspects worth exploring.
At SuperAwesome we are used to having people work remotely all the time, either because they leverage our flexible working-from-home policy, they are based in a different office, or they’re fully remote.
Here are five ways I have become more effective when communicating with digital humans.
1. Define a framework for choosing the right communication channel
In person communication is simple: one person speaks, the other listens, and then replies. It’s immediate, synchronous, and widely adopted.
Digital humans have more options: communication can be synchronous or asynchronous, written, audio or even video. Choosing the right channel can be complicated, and having a framework to guide digital communication can align the whole team on what type of communication is the most appropriate, as well as when to use them, and which tools are fit for use.
Having these options already mapped out for us lowers our cognitive load, makes digital communication more immediate, and enables us to focus on the information we want to share or discuss rather than how to share it.
Here’s an example of how we structure digital communication at SuperAwesome based on urgency, need for discussion, and need for documentation.
2. Documentation is your liberation
We all have copy/pasted a message, forwarded an email, shared a URL on Slack, or mentioned somebody in a comment on Confluence and Google Docs at least once. We do this because asynchronous digital communication has the convenient characteristics of being replicable and linkable.
To maximise the benefits of these characteristics we want our documentation to be centralised and accessible; and to maximise the benefits of documentation, such information ought to be useful.
We want to document what we decided and why we made that decision.
The what gives us the context we need to execute on our plans. This type of documentation has a tactical purpose, and is very useful in getting people quickly up to speed. It’s this type of information we want to share with new joiners in their first days or when we form a new pair programming duo.
Good examples of what are user stories acceptance criteria, service runbooks, FAQ documents and the diagram I shared here (linkable documentation FTW!)
The why gives us the context we need to define the what. This type of documentation has a strategic purpose, it crystallises the thought process behind any decision, and it helps us to refine our work over time. Information like this acts as a beacon: it provides the team with a strong alignment and it nurtures a culture of autonomy.
Good examples of this type of documentation are team mission statements, OKRs, and architectural choices.
Documenting can be a time-consuming task, so we have to be strategic about it. In my experience I have found these two rules effective:
- Write the documentation you wish you had found when you first approached a task
- Document anything people ask you for a second time
Good documentation liberates our time and multiplies our effectiveness.
3. Read assuming the best intentions
Text will never be read in the same way it was written, and what might possibly be misinterpreted most certainly will. To prove Murphy wrong we need to tap into our reserves of empathy.
We should always assume that what we’re reading was written with the best possible intentions. That is the case the vast majority of the time.
If something strikes a chord with us, we should identify what we’re reacting emotionally to (it might be the wording, the timing, the context, or the channel). This degree of self-awareness will help us to give some actionable feedback to the writer, and make our digital communication better.
Written communication is read many times more than it’s written. We should therefore pay extra attention to our wording and punctuation to make our messaging consistent across multiple reads and multiple readers.
Conveying the message is on us, not on the readers, so it’s our responsibility to:
- Be specific: use descriptive verbs that leave no room for (mis)interpretation.
- Be concise: use short sentences, and don’t be afraid to use TL;DR.
Luckily we can review our sentences multiple times before pressing enter, and one extra review can save us time (and headaches) in the long run;
so ✍️it, 👀it, 🚢it!
In-person communication is rich in “metadata”, including visual and auditory cues like our voice intonation, body language, and facial expressions. As we write, all that useful extra information is lost, but digital humans have other options to enrich their communication.
Emojis, memes, animated GIFs, and ascii art will make our message more relatable and friendly, and give the right tone to our sentences. You can even provide a chirpy disclaimer, e.g. “this email might sound brisk, but please assume a chirpy tone throughout! 😉”
4. Nothing is as good as face-to-face
Written communication is good, but it can be alienating over an extensive period of time. When working remotely we should always allocate some time to face-to-face communication.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be a meeting: it can be a background chat in our team Zoom room while we’re hammering some code, or a casual banter with a cup of coffee in a virtual hangout.
Remote work can be lonely, and a good chat can warm our hearts, lower our stress levels, and fuel us with a sense of togetherness. Facetime is important even for digital humans, make sure it happens.
You should also consider showing more than just your face. Our facial expressions are definitely important, but by taking just a few steps back from the camera we can add plenty of visual cues to the exchange, taking our video calls to the next level:
- We can show our team that we actually stand up at our daily stand-ups
- We can enrich our one-to-ones with hand gestures and expressive postures
- We can celebrate our successes with a Carlton dance
As an aside, if your team doesn’t already use them, consider adding a daily stand-up to your team’s routine, so that you always start the day by connecting face-to-face.
5. Be inclusive
Co-located people tend to interact with each other more than they interact with remote folks, and this can lead to remotes feeling excluded. This behaviour is not driven by meanness, but rather by the habits we have formed. We always interact with our friends and family in person first and over the phone later.
It requires some self-awareness to catch ourselves in this behaviour and some empathy to remove the location bias from our habits.
- When presenting to a partially remote audience, we can be more inclusive by running the presentation from our laptop using a high-quality headset and mic. This will improve the overall sound quality, and will give equal access to the speaker to everybody in the video call, regardless of where they are.
- When we chat with a colleague at the coffee machine and the conversation becomes work-related, we can be more inclusive by quickly sharing those ideas over Slack and inviting everybody to discuss. Note that this doesn’t mean we should stop chatting when we stumble upon each other — that’s actually a healthy behaviour in a workplace and is highly encouraged.
Simple acts of empathy like these go a long way, and help us to build a remote-first culture, making remote work not only more effective, but more humane.
As SuperAwesome grows we will iterate further on how we do remote work, and I’m looking forward to hearing your experience and how you want to contribute to making it better.
We’re always looking for bright minds to add to our great team of kidtech engineers. Have a look at our careers page and come join us!
Piergiorgio Niero is Head of Engineering at SuperAwesome.
