See Part One here

“The biggest difference between managing a remote team versus an in-person team is what you could have guessed: communication. In our survey, 30% of managers said that ‘how people communicate with each other on the team’ was the biggest difference between managing a team remotely versus managing them in-person,” writes Claire Lew, CEO of Know Your Team, a software tool targeted at helping managers with their leadership skills.

Among other tools and documents her company provides for people who sign up to their software, they’ve put together a freely available 61-page guide for remote managers and their teams, titled Guide to Managing Remote Teams for Managers; the guide is based on a survey with 297 remote managers and employees about remote work, as well as “almost 1,000 managers” who are part of the company’s leadership community.

One of the most oft-quoted – and misinterpreted – texts on communication is Professor Albert Mehrabian’s “7-38-55 rule”, based on studies he conducted in 1967, and published in his 1971 book Silent Messages. However, the rule is often simplified and mistranslated, as demonstrated in an article published in the New York Times: “Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer researcher of body language in the 1950’s, found that the total impact of a message is about 7 percent verbal (words only) and 38 percent vocal (including tone of voice, inflection, and other sounds) and 55 percent nonverbal.”

Mehrabian has clarified that his study related specifically to feelings and attitudes about a message, not its overall impact: “Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.”

That is to say, how the receiver feels about communication is determined 55% by the expression they perceive on the speaker’s face and 38% by paralinguistic, which encapsulates tone, pitch and intensity. Whereas only 7% of how people feel about a message is based on the actual message.

Obviously, that theory cannot be simply applied to every form of communication, like, say, a telephone call, as there is no facial element to it. But it is worth keeping in mind when it comes to remote working, as most of the communication is likely to be done without the benefit of face-to-face communication.

“From our survey, remote managers said that the second hardest thing for remote managers was ‘communicating without in-person cues’,” says Lew.

“A request can seem insensitive if you don’t hear what the person’s tone of voice was when they asked it. A question can seem invasive if you’re not able to see the person’s facial expression while they ask it.”

It’s not just about managers talking to employees, it goes the other way as well.

“When you don’t see your boss face-to-face all the time, the room for miscommunication, misinterpretation, and misalignment expands. You can’t read body language. You can’t go tap your boss on the shoulder to ask a question. You can’t even show her with your physical presence that you are, yes indeed, working,”says Lew.

For employees, Lew suggests proactively sharing as much detailed progress as one can with one’s manager, as well as asking a lot of questions upfront in order to make sure that expectations are clearly defined and agreed upon. And for managers, to pay careful attention to their written communication to ensure that it is nuanced and not open to misinterpretation. She also recommends making regular use of video calls.

“If you don’t say or explicitly communicate something as a remote manager, your team has absolutely no idea what you’re thinking. Unlike co-located managers, who might rely on small talk or one-off conversations to gauge the pulse of an employee or relay an idea to, remote managers must be much more intentional about communicating,” explains Lew.

According to its website, Doist, the company behind the productivity app “todoist” and communication app “twist”, is made up of a team of 68, spread across 25 countries and 15 time zones. For them, remote working is a modus operandi, and to achieve successful communication, they’ve come up with a system that prioritises asynchronous communication for daily work.

“Simply put, asynchronous communication is when you send a message without expecting an immediate response. For example, you send an email. I open and respond to the email several hours later. In contrast, synchronous communication is when you send a message and the recipient processes the information and responds immediately,” explains Doist founder and CEO Amir Salihefendic.

The Doist team has a general expectation that emails and messages will be responded to within 24 hours, and there is no expectation of immediate answers. The company is betting against real-time messaging apps.

According to Salihefendic, constant synchronous communication “leads to constant interruptions. Interruptions split people’s attention and make it more difficult to make meaningful progress on work. High-value, cognitively-demanding activities – like coding, writing, designing, strategising, and problem-solving – require long periods of deep, focused work. Synchronous communication makes creating large, uninterrupted chunks of time during the workday impossible.”

In addition, he also cites prioritising being connected over being productive, and unnecessary stress as potential pitfalls of synchronous communication.

“The expectation to be constantly available means that workers lack control over their schedules. They spend their workdays reactively responding to requests rather than proactively setting their own agenda.”

When there are specific issues that require real-time communication, the team uses video meetings to get the relevant people together to hash it out, either  through ad-hoc, weekly, or monthly video meetings, as well as monthly one-on-ones.

It is worth noting that Salihefendic and his team have unique challenges, as they are based in different time zones, and the solutions they have built are particularly beneficial to their line of work, and may not necessarily work for different companies. However, quiet time to be productive is something that Lew recommends in her guide as well.

“No communication is a communication process in itself – and an important one in remote work. With time and attention being so precious, you don’t want to bombard people with messages incessantly. You must give them space to accomplish their work.”

To this end, for her team, they’ve devised a system where they make sure employees have uninterrupted work time.

“We’re adamant about creating one four-hour block of uninterrupted time for everyone, a few times a week, at a minimum.”

While communication may be primarily used to achieve a company’s goals and targets, being in an office also provides a chance for important social interactions that have little to do with work directly. Depending on what communication tools a company uses, be it Slack for individuals as well as group channels, WhatsApp, or Zoom for video meetings, both Lew and Salihefendic emphasise the importance of creating a non-work channel.

“Whether it’s a #cats channel in Slack, or a place to say ‘good morning’ to everyone once you hop online, it’s essential for recreating the ‘watercooler chat’ that you might have in an in-person office. Most remote managers and employees in our survey shared that this kind of synchronous chat was their primary mode of communication,” advises Lew.

Whatever elements a company chooses to incorporate into its remote working environment, at the core of it, there also needs to be a high level of trust and accountability.

“When you’re in an office, you see folks come in. You see them leave. They seem ‘busy.’ They seem productive. So, you get this nice, warm, reassuring fuzzy feeling that things are indeed ‘going to plan.’ Stuff is happening. All is well,” says Lew.

“When you’re not in an office and everyone is remote, it’s different. Yes, you might see when someone is online or not. But all of sudden, you really don’t know if they’re working. What if someone is just on Facebook the whole day? What if they’re out with friends or just spending their entire day running errands? Your answer to that should be: So what? Time applied does not equate to progress made.

“Rather, instead of becoming consumed by your own paranoia, remind yourself that you want to focus on the results.”

To ease concerns, she recommends regular one-on-one video meetings at least every week as a strategy to manage performance as well as connect in a way that feels closest to being in the same room.

Admittedly, remote work will not be ideal for everyone, and it can be a steep learning curve for many companies that require a drastic shift in company culture; Salihefendic is adamant that this is the way of the future.

“We’re betting that in the future, the most successful companies and teams will be the ones who make this shift. It will be the teams that don’t require their employees to be always-on, prioritise asynchronous communication to create space for deep work, and allow employees to disconnect and recharge fully.” ML

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