RWL022 How to Master Communication and Thrive in Remote Work

Importance of Communication in Remote Work

Speaker 1

0:00

Hey, it's Alex from Remote Work Life. I hope you are well. Remote Work Life is a well. It's a podcast for remote professionals from around the world where you can come to grow and learn from those who know the world of remote work best. I'll share with you what I've learned from a number of CEOs, leaders and entrepreneurs who work in the remote space, and I'll talk to you about the benefits of remote work so you know what to expect and how to build your own remote work life.

Speaker 1

0:31

And, if you join me, in a previous episode I'd started to talk about the pillars of remote work, the pillars that build, I believe, successful or success within the world of remote work, and these pillars are items, are important items that I believe make up some of the best remote teams and the best remote businesses in the world. I've interviewed a number of remote professionals, remote CEOs, remote leaders, and the origins of the pillars are based around my conversations with these CEOs, with these leaders, with these entrepreneurs. It's also based on my own experience in working remotely. I've worked remotely myself for the best part of 10 years and these are things which I perhaps took for granted myself and having these conversations, or having conversations with a number of remote professionals has led me to really begin to define what these pillars are, has led me to really begin to define what these pillars are. I've also obviously interacted with a number of remote workers, remote professionals, remote entrepreneurs myself in networking events I was at a networking event, just recently, in fact and again, when I listen to the conversations and the different ideas, the different suggestions, these pillars crop up a number of times in a number of conversations. Write them down so that I you know, in the hopes that they can be a starting point for you if you're building your own business, to help you to build a really cohesive team and a really strong remote business, or if you're an individual who's looking to really get into a remote business, I want to use, I want you to use, these pillars as a guide on the sorts of questions that you should ask about a particular organization, about the way it works, if you're going for an interview or if you're having a meeting.

Speaker 1

2:56

So that's really my, I suppose my motivation behind putting these seven pillars together, and I won't talk about all seven In this particular episode. I'm just going to talk about one of the seven, and that one is communication. I previously talked about trust and if you would like to just look at the archives of this podcast, you will be able to pick that one out and listen to that one. They're not in any particular order, so you don't necessarily need to listen to that one first, but trust is one of those pillars. The others include or are technology, because remote workers, I believe, are real technology experts, and another one is strong connection to culture. Another pillar is they have an obvious mission, an obvious focus. And the sixth pillar is they're highly skilled and entrepreneurial. And the seventh is they have a defined, they have defined shared values.

Speaker 1

4:08

But today, as I said, I'm not going to talk about all seven of these pillars. I'm just going to focus today on communication because, as I said, it's very important and it's perhaps more important in a remote business than, you know, a co-located business. And that communication I've noticed in my conversations and also in my own interactions that communication tends to be very succinct, very precise, very clear and you know, depending on the sort of environment that you work in, depending on the sort of culture you work in, it tends to be very, sometimes very, quick fire. So that's really, when I say, what you know in terms of the efficiency of communication. It all revolves around those things I just mentioned, so succinct, precise, often very quick and efficient and very, very clear. And it's obviously, as I said, very important that remote businesses, when they're operating, have this, this communication, have this really thriving communication between workers, not least because we tend not to see each other face to face, as would be the case with, you know, co-located workers, because obviously in that sort of environment you're perhaps sitting next to each other, you're perhaps seeing each other's body language, each other's eye contact. Um, certainly, communication that can be not necessarily verbal communication, so that all of those things, that succinct nature, that clarity, that precision is all the more important because of the lack of physical contact, the lack of visual contact in many cases.

Speaker 1

6:00

And I mean, I've highlighted here a number of reasons as well why it is important that communication is so important, because it helps. It helps us as remote workers to build relationships and friendships and we have to suppose, work that little bit harder to have unplanned conversations Because, as I said, sitting next to somebody on a desk is so much different to sitting at your own desk, on your own often, and your team members are, you know, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles away or, you know, it's a completely different location to you. So those communication channels are so important, because, especially the unplanned conversations they're so important, because it helps to build that relationship. It helps you to build friendships. It also helps you to reduce isolation, as as a remote worker and that's such an important thing, it's such an important topic I think the isolation it just brings about so many. You know other factors which I won't go into in this particular podcast, but if you're a remote worker you may understand what I mean. And I myself I've got and this was quite lucky on my part, I've got friends who work remotely who I can just really indulge in conversation with via Skype. I can literally call them. I don't necessarily need to schedule a call, but often I'll schedule a call with them just to talk to somebody, have somebody to talk to during the day, somebody on the same wavelength as me, somebody who has similar values to my own, somebody who has similar interests to me as well, so I could just really spark up a conversation to avoid feeling isolated.

Speaker 1

7:51

Another reason communication is so important and and why remote workers are so talented in their communication is that it really helps with the productivity of a remote team, of a remote business, of a remote worker. You know it really helps the productivity and you can get things done, you can work on. You know applications like base camp or trello. You can have conversations even via um applications, cloud applications like google docs as well google um docs for business or whatever it may be so you can have conversations via those channels and get stuff done. It's so important to get stuff done. I know it's obviously important as well for co-located businesses. But you know these are the sorts of um, these are the sorts of reasons why it's so important for remote workers as well.

Speaker 1

8:47

Another reason communication is so important and you know another reason that remote workers are so good at communication it really helps to really build a team spirit. You know, when you're, when you're in a, an office environment, you've got lots of people around you. You've got a kitchen that people spark up, spark conversations in. You've got the water cooler, maybe You've got the, maybe you've even got a pool table or a table tennis Table to spark off your conversations and that helps to build that team spirit. It just helps to spark off these spontaneous conversations that I referred to before. You don't have that sort of thing in a remote environment and more often than not you have to find ways to actually replicate that water cooler chat that I mentioned. But again, remote workers are so good at creative ways of creating these conversations, creating these communication channels to keep that team spirit going.

Speaker 1

9:52

So another reason it's important and it's just simply because you don't want to lose contact, you don't want to lose track of work in progress on projects that you might be working on. So you're working maybe across different time zones, it may be in a asynchronous sort of environment. So you know communication is important for that reason as well, and all the more important because you know you won't just bump into your colleague in the office and chat about the project that you're working on, bump into your colleague in the office and chat about the project that you're working on. You'll just have to do it, or you do do it in a remote scenario. You do it from a basis of understanding that whatever you write in that google doc or whatever you write in trello has to be in a written in such a way that is understood, is clear and precise, so that whoever's following up from what you're doing understands exactly what you've done and where you've got to and can just pick up the baton from there on in.

Speaker 1

10:52

And I've noticed, as I said this, this is a massive and important pillar for me, this, this whole idea of communication in remote teams, and I've noticed that, um, not least myself, but other remote teams, other remote businesses, they, they really they have certain ways in which they, I guess, go about making sure that communication is as efficient as possible, and one way in which they do that is by using technology. Technology is at the heart of what remote workers do in order to collaborate and communicate with one another. So, you know, you've probably come across some of these things yourself, some of these text apps, some of these instant messaging apps like WhatsApp you can do instant messaging via Slack, for example to make sure those channels of communication are flowing consistently. Another, I suppose, important piece of tech is these video messaging or video applications like Skype, audio applications as well, skype, zoom, google Hangouts. These are so important, and remote workers, remote teams, have really put these particular channels, these particular applications, to work and mastered them to keep those communication channels flowing, to keep those communication channels flowing. And then I mean, how else are remote workers efficient in their communication. Well, they're very deliberate about how they communicate. They will.

Speaker 1

12:40

Often and I know I do I am quite deliberate about how I communicate with not just my co-workers or people I'm working with on projects, but also sometimes I'm quite deliberate about my personal interactions as well. So, for example, I know that my friend, terry he might be on his lunch, even though he doesn't work in the same part of the world as I do I know he's on his lunch at around about doesn't work in the same part of the uh the world as I do. I know he's on his lunch at around about 12 o'clock. So I'll shoot him a quick message via skype and say terry, do you want a quick chat? Or it may not be as specific as that, it may just be you know how's things going today. Just just something really sort of random, just to get the conversation going, and then after that it might sort of gravitate, it might, it might uh, turn into a, an audio conversation or a video conversation from there. So but that's quite deliberate, even though it's uh, it's quite a spontaneous conversation. I'm quite deliberate about how I approach making that conversation so that I can get as much of my work done as possible.

Speaker 1

13:44

What you'll find is, in many remote teams it's quite deliberate and quite planned this, this conversation, because you'll find that a number of remote workers will have quite precise ways and precise timetables, daily timetables that they want to adhere to to get the work done. So that's one reason why. And then you know how remote work is efficient about their communication Well, they're very versatile. So, whereas you know you might be sitting in an office next to your colleague, you just to them and say you know, whatever it may be, you want to go to lunch, or how you know how do you do this or what's that, or did you watch the latest episode of this?

Speaker 1

14:32

Remote workers have to be quite versatile about how they communicate, because one remote worker who's in america, for example, may have a different way of communicating with another one who is in Europe or Asia. So you have to be versatile and you know, understand that different people will want to communicate in different ways and therefore use different technologies, different applications. You may what at one moment you may want to use. You may be using video with one person, another you may be using audio, another you may be using text. So you have to just adapt your communication and that's why, as I said this, this pillar of communication and you could go as far as saying collaboration is so, so important, and remote workers is brilliant at sparking conversations and essentially having those conversations but also, at the same time, getting things done. So that's it really.

Speaker 1

15:34

As I said, I don't want to make these episodes, these episodes about the pillars of remote work, too long, because I want you to just to really think about them and think about, as I said, how they may apply to you if you're looking for your next remote, remote role, or if you, if you run a team or run a business, indeed, that is looking to really get the best out of your team, to get the best out of your business, how you can apply these to your team.

Speaker 1

16:04

So I hope that has helped you. Feel free to reach out to me, join me in the Facebook group, look out for or just search for the Remote Work Life Accelerator group on Facebook or just search for me, alex Wilson Campbell. You can also look me up on LinkedInin and instagram and um. Let's just have a a conversation there. Let's start the conversation from there. Hope you've enjoyed today's episode. Look out for the next episode where I'll talk about the next pillar, which, indeed, is focused on technology, although it's not. As I said, these are pillars, not not in necessarily any particular order, and I'll speak to you again soon.