Why Communication is Key to Remote Team Success?
Communication isn’t just another tool that helps you manage remote teams; it is the foundation for your team’s productivity. Let’s imagine a situation where the designer and developer of the team live on two different continents.
Communication between them has to be a combination of synchronous and asynchronous to deliver the project successfully. If there is no regular communication or clarity in their conversations, the design-to-development will be massive chaos.
That’s why it is important for remote teams to plan and execute models that help them manage communication as if they were working from the same place.
Here are all the benefits of having efficient communication in place.
- When you invest in good communication models, your teams can collaborate better. They can easily seek answers to their questions, brainstorm to innovate and improve the quality of their deliveries.
- By managing the transparency in communication between teams, you are able to build trust and accountability. It also helps the members of the team feel valued and stay committed to their work.
- When you have a defined approach towards communication, immediate and delayed, it helps solve the majority of the problems. You will notice it resolves the bottlenecks and reduces misunderstandings, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
- With the help of a defined approach, you can ensure the team provides regular updates and checks in with each other frequently. This can help improve the overall performance of the team.
- Lastly, it offers flexibility while ensuring a certain level of structure within the teams. This ensures that the entire team is working towards a single goal and timeline.
Common Communication Challenges in Remote Teams
Without effective communication, your team is bound to face several challenges. Here are some of the common challenges that your team will go through if you don’t have the right tools or strategies.
- Different Time-Zone: The work timings are different if two members of your team work from different continents. It is possible when one starts their day, the other is ending their work. This can lead to disruptions and delayed responses, which impact the project’s progress.
- Misinterpretations: This can occur when the tone and intent behind a message is misunderstood. If people don’t understand why the written message was sent or think it is too rude, it can impact the project’s success.
- Information Siloes: If the teams don’t collaborate, the information doesn’t flow easily. As a result, if there is an information with one member, it stays there. This can cause knowledge gaps and inconsistent updates, which can also cause more delays.
- Lack of Spontaneity: As the teams are unable to collaborate owing to effective communication channels, it can lead to ineffective brainstorming. Your teams may not be able to share their ideas or casually interact to improve the innovation.
- Managing Responses: As there is no collaborative medium, it can cause issues when getting feedback or managing the responses. This can lead to slow-down and impact decision-making.
10 Communication Strategies for Remote Teams
To overcome these challenges and ensure seamless communication between the members, you must invest in the proper strategies.
#1. Set Clear Expectations
What you expect from your team should be clearly defined. It will help them know what work needs to be carried out and how. It helps manage deadlines, improve communication standards and attain the project goals.
Using this strategy, you can clearly outline the roles and responsibilities for each member. They would know how to overcome bottlenecks and solve their problems. As a result, you will see more alignment within your remote development team and an increased level of productivity. Moreover, it can also help in fostering a supportive environment across the team.
#2. Define the Communication Guidelines
If you want to enjoy the smooth and effective collaboration between the different team members in the remote workflow, you must define the communication guidelines. Having structured protocols like expected response time, the preferred mode for particular communication and meeting etiquette can help in building a collaborative team.
You can expect confident interactions and reduce the miscommunication that leads to delays and disappointments. You should have guidelines on how to maintain respectful communication and manage the priority tasks efficiently. These guidelines will help improve remote team management across geographies.
#3. Determine Technology Needs
Knowing and defining the technology needs of your communication setup is an important part of establishing clear and consistent communication. If you don’t have the right tools, then even the best intentions don’t solve your collaboration issues.
You must have clear goals on effective communication to ensure you select the tools efficiently. For instance, you should know what would make your project management easy and select tools that make it effective and secure.
When choosing tools for real-time communication, you should ensure messaging apps that are secure and safe. Video conferencing tools should be efficient and should allow people from across locations to come online and meet.
#4. Create an Online Office Culture
When you are fostering remote work, you should also define an online office culture. This is one of the key steps to creating open communication within the remote team. As there is no shared physical space in this case, your online culture will help bridge the gaps and create a strong communication-defined environment.
You can use virtual coffee breaks and team activities to ensure that the team members can connect. By providing a supportive online culture, you can get them to share their ideas and celebrate their achievements while ensuring seamless feedback.
#5. Prioritize and Schedule Important Meetings
This is yet another important strategy that can impact communication within the remote teams. If there are too many meetings or schedules that are not timed properly, you might notice burnout and reduced productivity.
You should plan the meetings by ensuring clear agendas and choosing the right time zones. Moreover, you can make up ways for efficient updates and collaborative decision-making. By doing this, you can align the goals with your decision-making processes.
#6. Avoid Micromanaging
One of the key techniques to ensure seamless communication and promote success in remote team management is to avoid micromanaging the team. Giving autonomy to the members and focusing on the outcomes helps you become a better leader to the remote team.
Using this strategy, you give your team members a free hand that can help them communicate positively and share their ideas easily. This allows the members to feel valued and motivated, thus helping to build a natural and accountable team.
#7. Encourage Regular Check-ins
When your team regularly updates the status of the project or issues they are facing, it is easier to take the right steps. Regular check-ins can also help with brainstorming, which eventually helps boost the quality of the deliverable.
Scheduled check-ins also help you stay aligned to the goals as a team and ensures you are able to address the concerns. Moreover, it allows you to create a connection that is not possible with the physical distance.
Lastly, it also helps ensure maximum transparency within the teams and keeps the projects on track.
#8. Accommodate Flexible Work Schedules
This is increasingly important if you want to enjoy seamless communication between the remote team members. You need to understand that the members within a remote team may be living in different time zones and managing personal responsibilities at different hours.
By having a flexible schedule, you can get them to focus on work when they are most available and energized. You can also ensure that they manage their time effectively and deliver quality work.
Using this strategy, you can also ensure that the teams check-in at their suitable hours and nobody is left out in the process.
#9. Prioritize Video Calls
Video calls are a great way to improve communication and collaboration within the teams. While you can have emails and messages in your strategy for immediate communication, video calls ensure clarity and increase collaboration.
You are able to detect the intent and tone by understanding the facial expressions. These calls also reduce the biggest challenge you face within a remote team, misinterpreting the message.
You can build trust and promote clearer communication when you prioritize video calls.
#10. Get Continuous Feedback from Employees
You need to invest in a feedback mechanism that can help improve communication. Daily interactions is a great way to ensure that all issues are resolved and your ideas are worked upon.
Feedback can also help the employees voice their concerns or make their suggestions known. You can also identify and address the problems in the early stages. Using this strategy, you can provide the ownership while adapting to the needs of the employee.
Tips to Improve Communication with Remote Development Team
By implementing the strategies for seamless communication, you can build your remote teams into powerhouses of communication. Let’s find ways to bridge the gap that exists in your remote team’s communication.
- Use tools like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams that help manage real-time communication and ensure seamless task management. You can also use project management tools to improve the tracking of your projects.
- Setting clear and defined expectations from your teams will ensure that every member is clear about their responsibilities. This will help remove the confusion and ensure quality deliverables.
- Foster a culture where the members are allowed to share their feedback openly. They should also be able to share their ideas and concerns without any issues.
- It is crucial to have a strategy to adapt to different time zones. You can use convenient timings or enable recordings to ensure nobody misses anything.
Conclusion
Effective communication is the strongest pillar of a successful remote development team. When the members communicate seamlessly and collaborate despite the physical distance, you can stay assured of timely deliverables.
You can enjoy the seamlessness by providing flexible schedules, offering clarity and defining the communication approach. Prioritizing video calls over emails can also help reduce the struggles that come with remote management.
You should ensure that the teams embrace the cultural differences and offer a way to reduce misunderstandings. Best Remote Team assures you find the right remote team that can help you with the software development.
We also provide teams that have efficient strategies in place to deliver the projects successfully. Hire dedicated remote teams aligned with your needs and goals by connecting with our strategists and consultants.
