Remote team communication: how a smiley can be more powerful than any fancy tool

A colleague walks into your office. He leaves his jacket by the door, turns on his computer and tells you: “Send me the new About Us page design”. What do you do? Go!

I am pretty sure most of us wouldn’t resist replying with: “Well good morning Tom, I’m fine, thanks for asking…” Because most of us would find Tom’s behavior very impolite. A few more times like this, and Tom wouldn’t have a very cooperative team around him.

A colleague’s avatar on your Slack team becomes green. Jane just came online. You get a DM from her: “I can’t access the new repo”. What do you do? Go!

I’ve been working fully remotely since 2010 and I am truly loving the ongoing trend of more and more businesses getting started remotely. I’ve already talked and wrote a lot about the benefits, both for the business founders and the professionals who work within a remote team. Many other remote work advocates keep doing the same. Still, we keep hearing “the online communication can never be the same as the face2face one”. Sure. But do we really want it to be? Maybe it can serve the purpose even better, check out my post How online communication can win over the “real” one. And keep reading for a few simple tips to make up for what the online communication is missing from the “real” one.

Good morning John, how are you today?

№1 If it’s the first time you address a person (or the whole team) in a day, simply do what you’d do when entering your office, joining your colleagues at a table in the meeting room or company canteen: greet them and ask them for their well being. Just because you don’t have the company building anymore, doesn’t mean you need to turn impolite all of a sudden. The code of conduct is the same.

In addition, it probably wouldn’t hurt if you follow up with what you’re colleague has been going through lately.

One “Good morning John, how are you? Feeling better today? Please send those new About Us designs my way when you get a chance.” will probably get Tom those mockups much faster. And a “Hey John! What’s up? Enjoyed your vacation? Could you please check why I can’t access that new repo, might be a permission I’m missing…” would get Jane in in no time for sure.

I’ve stayed friends and in touch with some team members even when we stopped working together. Because we’ve been true colleagues all along. In the age of bots, be aware of the IMs that actually do come from humans.Treat them accordingly.

Smile, you’re running a remote business

A plain “Np” in your chat client can mean a variety of things, starting from: “Fine, if there’s absolutely nobody else who can do the freakin’ deploy while I am busy interviewing 5 junior devs today, I’ll do it, ‘cos I’m always available, ain’t I, so no problem!!!” (probably rated 1) to “Oh, great, I’ve been waiting for Dick to go on a vacation so that I can try to run the scripts myself. He did a great job explaining it to me and I feel confident I can do it on my own. Thanks for trusting me with this. I’ll do it right away before I go out for my lunch, no problem” (reaching 10 or close to it).

A simple “Np :-)” powered by a smiley is much more likely to mean something >5.

In an online chat, we can’t rely on our conversation partner’s facial expression and tone of voice to convey the emotion. Don’t keep your teammates guessing. Share the emoti(c)on.

Banter on company time for company benefit

№3 Be it a founder, product manager, project manager, team lead or chief happiness officer of a sort, as a remote leader your duty is to suppress non-work related conversations that distract the team from their tasks. NOOOOOT!!!!! As a remote leader you’ll serve your team and drive your mission the best if you act as a community manager as well, encourage team building and nurture company culture. Have dedicated Slack channels for sharing interesting links, fun facts and personal updates. Be the first one to post there and do your best to engage your team.

More often than not, the solution is far more simple than you’ve expected. If you’re planning to invest in some complex and probably not so cheap infrastructure to improve your remote team communication, just stop for a bit and think if a simple “Hey, how are you today? :)” could do the job. Followed by a smiley of course 🙂

For any help regarding setting up a remote team, feel free to get in touch with me.

And when you open a banter channel, consider sharing this link 🙂