Collaboration practices
Remote work requires special attention to communication. There are two principles underlying everything:
- Keep things moving in an asynchronous way.
- Be careful with your communication.
Don’t leave people hanging.
When you ping someone on chat, ask your question or tell them what it’s about in your opening message. That banishes the pause of doom in which worries multiply.
Good communication requires care for the other person, and this is doubly so in work chats. Whenever you’re reaching out to someone in chat, that person is going to want to know what it’s about. The longer you make that pause, the harder you derail that person’s attention. And the more senior you are to that person, the more you are going to cause them to worry.
There are a few different levels of this. The most minor is just saying “Hi” in one message, and then leaving your real message in another. It may seem silly to complain about, since we’re talking a pause of a few seconds to a minute. But that’s plenty of time for your lizard brain to give you a little shot of adrenaline if its your boss talking.
Worse is when you say “Hi”, then wait for the other person to respond. This stalls the pipeline. It disrespects their attention. It defeats the purpose of asynchronous communication entirely. And it stretches out the pause.
The worst, though, is “Hi, please give me a call when you have a minute.” Not only does it do everything above, but it escalates whatever it was to an environment where you have to think on your feet.1 And the very worst is doing this when you are above that person in the org chart. This creates unbelievable anxiety. (“Holy shit, am I about to be fired?”)