A year ago, many people would have jumped at the chance to work from home. A seconds-long commute from your bed to your desk, pets to brighten up your day, pajamas as your work uniform—it sounds nice on paper.
However, now that the coronavirus pandemic has abruptly pushed work from the office to online for many businesses, leaders are discovering the challenges of working from home. You can no longer stop by someone’s desk to check in on a deadline, gather a group in a room to collaborate on a project, or notice that Jan is stressed out and running on fumes.
Working from home can be isolating for your employees, and most businesses rely on teamwork and collaboration to function most effectively. As a leader, your job is to keep your team working together even when they are physically far apart. In order to achieve this, you need great communication.
In this article, we’ll look at the challenges of working remotely and what to do to ensure you and your team are maintaining clear lines of communication during this difficult time.
The Challenges of Online Communication
Even in an office setting, communication breakdowns happen. For instance, our friend, Shane, told us an amusing story about how he had been sent off to a conference by his boss. However, his boss had never informed his direct supervisor, Julia, where he was going. Julia called Shane, annoyed and wondering why he wasn’t at work, and Shane had to explain to her that their boss had sent him on a business trip.
The story seems laughable, but those kinds of communication slips happen all the time. They’re even more likely when people are working from home. One issue is that English is not a literal language and contains many abstract terms. For instance, think of the challenges of interpreting the following phrases:
“Wow, that’s hot.” Is that a reference to the temperature of a beverage, the weather, an experience of good luck, or someone’s physical attractiveness?
“Wow, that’s cold.” Do you need a jacket? Was someone rude to you? Does your water have too much ice? Are you discussing a color spectrum?
Many words are fuzzy and need context for clarification. In an in-person conversation, it’s easier to understand context and ask for clarification. It’s more difficult to do this online. People may feel it would be annoying or unnecessary to send an email asking for minor clarification and thus forge ahead with an unclear picture of what is being asked of them.
Our tone of voice and body language—both notably missing in online correspondence—can be communication game changers as well. For example, if a manager says, “You must have worked so hard on this!” while nodding enthusiastically over an employee’s work and smiling, then the employee must have done a great job. However, if a manager furrows their brow, frowns at the employee’s work, then looks up and says sarcastically, “You must have worked hard on this”—well then, the employee is about to have a bad day.
In an email or instant message, you can easily come off as abrupt or even rude without realizing it, causing your employees unnecessary stress. To prevent this and other miscommunications, you must commit to grow as a communicator—both personally and as a company.
Grow as a Communicator
A strong leader communicates truthfully, in a way that honors the dignity of others. They honestly address what needs to get done and how to get there. Their communication is delivered clearly, appropriately, and in a healthy way—in other words, the communication doesn’t come in the midst of an emotional reaction.
Communication is fraught with challenges, so do your best to approach it with humility. Messages may need to be repeated (especially online), so be willing to say things more than once, in more than one way. Don’t let any frustration you feel come through in the message. Take time to cool down if needed, so that you can approach the communication free of emotion. Also make sure to always proofread!
Push yourself to keep learning new communication skills and new strategies. For instance, many work communication apps, like Slack, include emojis. At one point, it was considered unprofessional to use emojis in work communication, but they can be a great way to show what would normally be conveyed by your tone and body language.
In addition, you might want to reach out to your employees to check in on a regular basis. When you can’t see your employees every day, it can be difficult to recognize when they’re struggling. A quick check-in message can open the door for them to bring forth issues or ideas that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Establish a Standard for Communication
It’s not just your personal communication that needs to grow; you need to create standard operating procedures to establish effective communication for your employees. Especially if your employees are working from home for the first time, they need clear rules and guidelines about what is expected of them: what do they need to be communicating, to whom, and where/how (email, Slack, etc.).
Create procedural checklists to ensure necessary communication is carried out. It’s hard to improve systematic processes of communication if there’s no written guide to reference, but if you have a checklist, you can adjust and improve it. Write things down as much as possible and seek out helpful technical tools for communication.
For instance, there are a lot of great video conferencing tools, like Zoom. It’s amazing how quickly and easily some communication issues can be prevented or resolved by jumping on an audio or video call instead of relying on email and instant messaging.
As a leader, you need to model good communication and encourage its growth, and part of how you do that is by ensuring the safety of your employees. Employees need to trust that they can point out communication inefficiencies with the safety and protection of their leader—not get penalized. Invite feedback from your employees regarding communication. By creating a safe, trusted environment, your employees will be able to help your company communicate more smoothly across the board.
Create Connections
Working from home is an adjustment and it can lead to isolation, which is not good for your team from both a personal and professional standpoint. To work most effectively, your employees need to work together–that requires good communication! Setting the tone by being intentional during the COVID-19 crisis can translate to a better post-pandemic work culture and help your business bounce back more quickly.
Fortunately, we have more tools to foster online communication than ever before. With clear guidelines, the modeling of good communication on your part, and a heavy dose of patience, you can create and maintain strong connections with your employees as you all work from home. And as an added bonus, the refined communication skills you build now will transfer over when you return to the office. So get talking!
For more advice on effective communication and leadership, you can find information in Fulfilled, available on Amazon.
