Do you work with colleagues in multiple locations? Have you experienced the miscommunication and frustration that come from a lack of face-to-face meetings, different languages and cultures, and varied time zones?
I first learned how to work effectively with remote colleagues during my corporate days and now I use these techniques and more every day with our small, global Team Sasuga!
Here’s what our virtual meetings look like today…
In this shot, Kumiko and I are in different parts of Tokyo, Yumi is in Seoul, and Kat is in Manila.
You can see that we’re all happy!
Here are 3 top tips that keep us happy and productive.
1. Be prepared
I always recommend being prepared for any meeting to get better results, be efficient, and reduce stress and frustration.
This is even more important when communicating remotely – on telephone or video conference calls – because it’s more difficult to keep people focused than in an in-person meeting.
- Be clear on the meeting goals and on your own goals
- Know your role in the meeting – what will you contribute?
- Note key points that you want to convey to your colleagues
- Prepare questions
2. Ask how the team can help each person
How comfortable are you in asking for help in your work? Many people aren’t. I wasn’t for a long time because I thought I should be able to do everything myself. That meant that I didn’t always get the best results and I felt a lot of stress.
You can solve this problem by having everyone on a remote team say how the team can help them.
People might ask for help with a specific task or in how to work best together. For example,
“I’ve drafted the report, but am not sure that the examples I gave in section two are convincing enough. I’d appreciate any ideas to improve it.”
“Because I have a lot of meetings, it’s often difficult for me to answer the phone and I limit the times I look at email, so it would help me if you could notify me by our company chat if you need something urgently.”
In fact, when I was drafting this blog post, I wasn’t happy with my original version, so I asked my team for ideas, and really appreciated their input.
3. Take time to build relationships
Sometimes timing in business is tight. We need to get things done fast. But if we send short, sharp email instructions, our colleagues can easily read them imagining a terse tone of voice and get upset or offended. Then they’re not so cooperative.
However, if we take the time to build relationships and understand how others like to communicate and work, we can then be brief and efficient when we have urgent work.
One way to start doing this is to have a few minutes to check how everyone is at the beginning of a call – and really listen to the responses. When creating a new team, it’s also useful to schedule a “getting-to-know-you call,” so that you can understand each others’ communication and work preferences and what’s important to them.
Do these three tips sound simple? They are! Now ask yourself if you’re really using them all. Maybe not?
What can you do differently on your next call with your overseas colleagues?