6 ways to communicate effectively in geographically distributed teams

Until I wrote this article, I always wondered why business schools and some corporates would have specialized training material on Effective Communication. Good communication should be a given in many office or college setups. However, some of the recent past experiences have broken this belief and I am compelled to think deeply about this subject and share my thoughts.

Single Communication Channel/Mode

Today teams at workplace use a wide range of channels — HipChat, MS Teams, Skype for Business, Slack, Cisco Webex Connect, Email, Wikis to communicate. Some teams use more than one channel at any given point of time. E.g. I know a team which uses Teams to communicate about inter dependencies, Skype for point-to-point communication and Emails to convey status or project plans or list down minutes of meeting. This is not a big problem when teams are small and collocated. However, with distributed teams it can be daunting to keep all these channels up to date with members and topics discussed. Also, if someone wants to track a chronology of discussions or decisions made, one must go through all the channels and literally filter the relevant information, clearly not a good utilization of time. Hence wisely choose your communication channel and stick to it.

Clarity of Roles and Responsibilities

No communication medium can be effective unless people participating in it have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. For instance, in today’s setup (from software industry perspective), you can have senior leaders, engineers, architects, business owners and quality assurance people participating in meetings. Imagine one such meeting where a set of people preaching others what they should do while some others remaining completely clueless. This is not a problem if the preaching class is 100% (or even 90%) correct. The real problem emanates when they adopt this tact ‘as per convenience’. For instance, I know of a team, where business owners behave like more than half engineers when questioning the estimates. But when they are questioned in detail about where what is, they very conveniently back track into their business roles. Often such meetings end up being lengthy, mired with confusion and grossly unproductive. More than anything else, it is a wastage of time for others. Hence, it’s a must to allow people to exercise their expertise and others trust them.

Pick up the phone (if needed)

Understanding which medium (email vs call vs face-2-face meeting vs IM chat) to use when is critical to having effective communication. I have seen this best practice being violated almost daily. For instance, quick one-liner questions or status communication or announcements of some sort are best done via emails. One of my old employers was obsessed with scheduling calls for every little thing and all such meetings were a minimum of 30 min. So even if the content was meant to finish in 5–10 mins, attendees end up consuming all the 30 min. One can choose to schedule a call if the topic involves decision making from multiple people and will need some Q&A or some back and forth. Choosing an email for such a scenario would perhaps be a wrong. Likewise, general announcements like departures or new members or promotions can very well be communicated via email. The only caveat to this would be extreme urgent situations where we need instant response. Please call in such cases (even if its simple yes/no).

Clear and concise communication

Using too many pronouns and prepositions in verbal communication can be really challenging to others. For instance, take this sentence — I checked it on that day and it was sent to him. Imagine this being said over a phone call — it is a complete disaster to talk like this. Sometimes, this is seen as a relatively small problem. However, after having worked in remote setups for years, I have always had to ask follow-up questions to understand what is being said. Likewise, using incorrect tenses or spelling mistakes or writing confusing (read lengthy) sentences in emails can really turn-off readers. Moreover, this reflects badly on the writer of email. And remember to Keep it Simple.

Inclusivity

Understanding your audience for any form of communication is important. Whether its presenting in front of a big crowd or sending an email to specific people. Equally important is to include all the people who could benefit directly or indirectly from the communication. Imagine a group of people discussing about a project which impacts 10–11 people and making decisions on their behalf (with or without complete knowledge) and assigning action items to those people. This suffers from 2 problems — First, its highly unprofessional to not include them in things which impact them and second, missing them provides additional room for confusion (because they might have missed an important information).

Too many hops

As a general practice, avoid having too many layers in the communication. This not only avoids the problem of chinese whispers but also empowers people to make quick decisions with clarity.