Effective Communication Strategies for Remote Teams: Setting Expectations and Consistency (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I want to start by talking about communication, and I want to talk about this in two ways, the first of which is all tactical. So this is pretty straightforward stuff that you guys can take away and really work on right away if you're not already, right? Some of the stuff you're already doing. If you take nothing else away from our conversation around communication, please take away expectations and agreements. The team is working differently now, right? So it's important to, with that in mind, have a really clear set of expectations and agreements, and based on things like, okay, well, if we have these 17 different channels through which we can communicate, that's great, but when are we going to use what channel and for what purpose? So if here's when it's appropriate to use IM, here's when we need to do a teleconference, here's when email is appropriate, and this sounds really straightforward, but it really helps get everyone on the same page. It's also important to come to, to set expectations as a team and come to agreements as it relates to how are we going to collaborate? What platform are we going to use? When do we have, when are we going to make time to do those collaboration activities? And then also, what, you know, what can we expect in terms of internal responses? So if, you know, is it going to be the case that, all right, well, if someone on the team sends you an email, the expectation is four-hour turn time to get a response email, or is it going to be different? All of this is very straightforward. These are important conversations that we take for granted when we're sitting across from one another, we're sitting in the cube next door, but now that we're not, now that we're dispersed, it's important to revisit these expectations and keep revisiting them and make sure that everyone understands what these agreements are. Now as far as those of you who are supervising or leading or managing, this is not something new. Regular ongoing method of delivering team-related information, right? So when the pandemic first started, some really great leaders and supervisors were like, you know what, I'm going to send out a daily email or a weekly email, and because everything was changing so quickly, there was such a heightened sense of uncertainty. More communication helps us feel more comfortable, and consistency is key. So these leaders are like, okay, we're going to put these emails together, we're going to post them in our intranet or on our shared team folder, and even if these posts or these emails are just like, hey, we don't know the answer to this yet, we're still working on it, here's our goals, here's what we talked about in our team meeting, it doesn't have to be rocket science stuff, but it's consistent, it's ongoing, and it's something that the team can refer back to. It doesn't need to be done on a daily basis, I highly encourage you to do it on a weekly basis, and just kind of recap the things that are going on with the team in that week and keep, and what's coming up.