Communication Tips for Remote Work
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When working remotely, there’s an important dynamic at play:
When we communicate face-to-face, we collect data that helps us to accurately interpret what others mean — but we miss a lot of that data when we’re remote.
When we communicate face to face we register the other person’s tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, inflections, and the words they choose to more accurately interpret what they are saying to us and how they feel/their emotions. But when we’re communicating remotely, depending on the platform that we’re using, many of that data isn’t available to us.
In other words, when we communicate via email, text, slack, phone, etc., we miss some critical pieces of communication that we’d get in a face-to-face setting.
That means we are more likely to miscommunicate.
Especially when you factor in people’s different communication styles.
For just one simple, common example, some people add exclamation points and smiley faces in emails to convey positive emotion or excitement. Some people do not use these things at all. So two people communicating over email may interpret the other’s message in a wildly different way.
Someone who more commonly uses extra punctuation to convey tone may read an email from someone who doesn’t and read into it that that person is unhappy or being short with them, when that isn’t actually the case at all.
It’s important for teams and individuals to be extra conscious about dynamics like this around having remote conversations with folks at work. This is also why it’s good practice to employ the ethos of always assuming positive intent on behalf of others.
A tip for navigating this:
“Communicating remotely increases the chances for misunderstanding and miscommunications across the board.”
Communicating remotely increases the chances for misunderstanding and miscommunications across the board. To avoid miscommunication, give as much information as possible when talking over phone/text/slack/email/chat/etc.
If you are having any kind of conversation that has the potential to not be emotional neutral, like you have to give an important piece of feedback or have a courageous conversation, do everything you can to have that conversation take place face to face. If you can’t be face to face, have a video call, and if you can’t do that, have a phone call. Whatever platform gives you the most amount of communication ‘data’ from each person is your best bet. On a scale of worst to best, text would be the worst, face to face is most ideal.
If you have to communicate over Slack or text, be hyper aware to give as much information as you can in order to clarify what you mean, how you mean it, and how you intend to come across.
And a great general rule to adopt is to never talk about something serious over text — that goes for communication across any relationship. It’s simply too easy to miscommunicate intent.
A final tip
If for any reason you start to feel static in any conversation or begin to assume to that the other person is upset, frustrated, angry, etc. address it immediately. Take the conversation to face to face or to a video call or phone call if possible to clear things up and avoid creating or escalating any unnecessary static.
Being aware of this and applying this as a rule for yourself will help keep things positive, productive, and go a long way to avoiding remote communication mishaps.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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