We managers of remote teams hear all the
time: "you have to over-communicate to keep people
engaged and involved". Yet when does keeping
people informed slip over the line into
bludgeoning them with email after email until they
scream for mercy?
I have seen colleagues in far-flun office
locations where would bet on gettung ten
emails a day from their boss. Some of the
information was important, some is completely
irrelevant and some was pure gossip. Either
way, it was difficult for the staff to work out
which was important and which was annoying.
How can you keep your team informed and
connected while not drowning them in emails? Here
are 3 tips:
More comprehensive emails,
fewer one-liners. Try sending out (slightly)
longer, more coherent messages to the team, rather
than a constant thread of ideas as they occur to
you. This is a fine line to walk, because lengthy
emails have a way of burying important messages
amongst the trivia and also tend to get ignored.
Still, if you put the highlights in the first
paragraph (you do know they're scanning that email
to see if it's worth opening, right?) and then
give them just enough detail you will increase the
value of each email and lessen the quantity of
email.
Provide a little context:
you're sending this for a reason. When you share
information with your team, it might be obvious to
you why it's important they know about Jane
in Accounting's promotion but if they've never met
her it might not be obvious to them. Simply giving
the matter some thought and telling them why this
information matters or how it fits into their work
(maybe the point is that if Joe is getting
promoted from within there are opportunities for
your team to do the same) makes it information
they can use.
Get into the habit of using
wikis, blogs and social networking tools
to keep them up to date on other teammates. If the
point of your communication is to get them to know
each other and what's going on with the team, try
not using email at all. Emails get glanced
at and forgotten. When you post something to a
group site, it might not get read right away, but
does get read eventually and can be referred to
over and over.
When we talk about "over-communicating", it
usually means making sure people hear not only
what's relevant to their specific tasks, but
creates an atmosphere where they understand the
context of their work and build relationships with
other teammates and the organization. Planning how
to communicate that information is as
important as knowing how much and how often
Wayne Turme lBnet
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