Editorial
Welcome to Courage Coach, where expert columnist Karin Hurt answers readers' tough leadership challenges with practical tools and techniques you can use right away. Have a question for her? Drop her a line!
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Dear Courage Coach,
Any advice for improving my remote team communication?
My team is working across three time zones, which is making team communication tricky enough. We’ve also recently reorganized and had to rework our priorities as a result. I spend a lot of time communicating, so I’m surprised when the team seems clueless about things we’ve talked about before.
For example, I was conducting a skip level meeting, and was shocked to learn that no one was aware of a key strategic initiative that I personally communicated to the entire team — twice!
How do I ensure people actually “get the memo” about what’s most important through all the distractions?
Signed,
Shouting in the Wind
Dear SITW,
That’s got to be frustrating. You said it, why don’t they get it? Are you speaking the same language, or did you accidentally switch to Mando’a midway?
With so many people working from anywhere, effective remote team communication has never been more critical, or more tricky. Saying it once is not enough with so many digital distractions and competing priorities.
Let's play a game I call "5 By 5 Communication," based on four memory hacks: recency, repetition, recall and emotion.
- Recency – Recency is all about sparking memory through recent experiences. When your messages are timely and relevant, you increase the likelihood that your team will remember them. It’s going to take more than covering it in your town hall meeting. If your message is truly important, make sure they’ve heard you talk about it recently. With so much information coming in, you want your message top of mind.
- Repetition – The more often you communicate key messages, the more likely they are to stick in your team’s minds. Turn your message into an earworm – the kind of catchy tune that sticks. But remember, repeating the same jingle in the same style will have your team reaching for the mute button faster than a YouTube ad. Mix it up.
- Recall – Recall is another key factor in effective remote team communication. When your team members must remember information to answer questions or do their work, the more likely they are to retain it. So give them opportunities to use the information you’ve shared.
- Emotion – Boring remote team communications all typically lack one thing: emotion. A message doesn’t need to be emotional to be delivered in an emotional way. Throw in some fun. How about bringing out your inner Spielberg and making a vlog visiting all your remote locations dressed as Iron Man to boost team morale? Just don’t fly off the roof. Or try a virtual scavenger hunt to reveal your new product?
Related Article: Communication Breakdown at Work? Here's What to Do
5 x 5 Remote Team Communication in Practice
Say you’re a technology leader and you want your team to remember to pitch a new product to every customer. Sending five emails isn’t more effective than sending one.
But imagine you bring everyone together in a town hall, with real or virtual balloons, and tell a few strategic stories about how this new product has helped the customers in your pilot roll-out.
t’s not every day that you ask people to come to the office and dig out the helium tanks, or they log in to all their leaders with virtual balloons on their screens, so this brings in a little emotion. That’s way one.
or way two, you change this week’s one-on-one calendar invite to “Bring Your Ideas for Product Launch.” This triggers recall, as they think back and review their notes from the town hall. Then when you have your one-on-one, you’re talking about it. That’s way three.
For your fourth communication, you roll out a recognition program for the first month’s highest sellers of the new product, which you celebrate with a running leaders board on your intranet.
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And your fifth mode of communication could be another way to ignite emotion, like dressing in a costume and visiting each of your remote locations. Before you laugh and say, “Who would do that?” — I did. Back in my Verizon days, I dressed as Princess Leia (and my direct reports came as the rest of the Star Wars crew) and visited 110 locations to remind our sales teams of the importance of selling our new Android devices.
Of course, you don’t have to go that far to trigger emotion. A sincere handwritten note, even in this digital age, can work wonders, too. The only limit to better remote communication is your imagination. You're the director, and it's time for the grand premiere of your blockbuster remote communication strategy! Break a leg, or rather, break the email cycle!
May the force of effective remote team communication be with you.
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