Do you think about how you communicate?
Hello! Welcome back.
Do you think about how you communicate? More specifically, do you think about how you communicate in writing with your coworkers? Communication in a remote environment is incredibly important, and not enough people give it the kind of attention it needs.
When communicating over a team messaging app (like Slack or MS Teams) or email, a lot of stuff is missing, like body language, facial expressions, voice tone, inflection, and other general context that you’d pick up from a face-to-face conversation. When communicating in writing, you not only need to get your point across, but you also need to make up for those other missing pieces.
And being clear with your messaging doesn’t mean you need to be abrupt, plain, and straightforward with your wording. Throw in a greeting and some exclamation points. Hell, don’t be afraid to use emoji and GIFs! (Just first think about your audience and what the emoji mean.)
In her book The Everything Guide to Remote Work, Jill Duffy has an entire chapter on communication in a remote environment. If your job is primarily remote, I recommend reading it. In this chapter, she mentions the use of emoji, reaction emoji (“reacji”), and exclamation points:
“When coworkers don’t see one another face-to-face regularly or get to know each other on a deeply personal level (which happens in location-based work too), it becomes very hard if not impossible to interpret tone in written communication.
To be kind, show enthusiasm, and indicate tone, use emoji, reacji, and exclamation points with abundance. It may feel out of character, but the purpose is to make your communication as clear as possible to others.”
And this sentence is the kicker:
“It’s not about you; it’s about everyone else, and these tools do a lot of heavy lifting in written communication.”
You might ask, “Why should I worry about how other people interpret the tone in my written messages?” To a point, you’re right. You only have so much control over how people react to your communication, and it’s in everyone’s best interest—not just the communicator’s—to always assume positive and friendly intent when interacting with others. But think about how you communicate face-to-face with someone and consider how you can bring some of that into your written communication.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the imbalance between how men and women communicate in writing. Women tend to use more exclamation points and emoji than men. They’re told they’re being too friendly and weak-minded. Instead, they should write more confidently and professionally.
To that I say hogwash. Embrace the exclamation points and emoji.
But look, I’m not here to tell you how you should communicate with your coworkers. Everyone has their own style and their own voice—if you wear a straight face and have an indifferent tone of voice when conversing with people, then yeah, it might be weird if you start using exclamation points and smile emoji in your written communication.
What I will do, though, is implore you to at least think more about your written communication and how it might be perceived by others. But also, don’t be afraid to hop on a Zoom call with your team if there’s something you think is better discussed [virtually] face-to-face.
Any other hot tips or tricks for communicating in a remote environment? I want to hear them! Reply to this email and let me know.
Overtime
Other work-related stuff I want to talk about without dedicating an entire newsletter to it.
Someone in a technical writing Slack group I'm in posted this excellent point: “You are not less of a person because a company doesn't choose to interview or hire you.”
Chef's kiss! It sums up my second newsletter issue in one, beautiful sentence. But in my defense, my newsletters would be pretty boring if they were only a sentence long.
Happy Hour
Fun things I’m doing, TV shows and movies I’m watching, games I’m playing, music I’m listening to, and other neat stuff I want to share.
I finally saw my all-time favorite band, Collective Soul, play live. It was everything I hoped for! I got tickets to see them about 15 years ago, but they cancelled the show. So seeing them this past weekend was my redemption. Switchfoot also played at this concert, and they put on a surprisingly good show.
I once again have upgraded my work-from-home setup, this time with a 34" ultrawide monitor for ultra productivity. I took my old (but not that old) 27" monitor and set it up as a secondary vertical monitor.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you in two weeks. In the meantime, catch up on some older newsletter issues if you’re a new subscriber, and feel free to follow me on Twitter or Instagram for my off-hours shenanigans.