I haven’t heard how lucky I am that I get to work from home lately. I am actually. I’d like to help you feel that way too.
The unexpected, mass migration to home-office work has been stressful and disorienting. Leaving your workplace, meant the loss of a social circle and feeling of connection, and also the loss of impromptu encouragement and feedback. These things help you feel grounded and secure in your work.
Working with (and communicating with) people remotely, over digital media is its own beast. I want to give you, some easy to implement, best practices for working with digital media and being heard remotely.
Be unambiguously positive: Subtlety leads to misunderstandings in digital meetings and communications
The subtlety in your tone, facial expressions, gestures are muted or lost over digital media, even video conferences. The loss of body language cues in digital meetings leads to misunderstandings, at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. You must be almost overly positive, now that we are all working remotely – you don’t want to sound like a jerk and you definitely don’t want to be a main contributor to the commiseration portion of group meetings. Let your optimism and kind words help you get your message through, as intended.
Be clear and concise: Long emails get ignored and wordy monologues become daydreaming time
Succinct messages are always the right way to go. With distractions at home, stress from routines being upended, fear for relatives and on and on – now, more than ever, you must fight for your colleagues’ attention.
Your game plan: Define the goal of your communication; what should people do or learn afterwards? Use short bullet points to plan what you will write in an email or slides or what you need to communicate in a meeting. Remove anything that does not further your goal. Use your bullet points in your emails and slides and as the basis for your speech, call, or presentation.
- Bullet points are easier to read & more likely to keep the reader’s attention (emails, slides)
- Flesh out bullet points with as few words as possible for speeches, calls, presentations
Remember, whether it’s a subject line that gets an email opened or slides that keep people awake, keep it brief and focused on your audience and what they need to get out this communication.
Overcommunicate: Get their attention and make sure they know you’re working
Yes. You are fighting for attention now, AND you will also be fighting the perception (of some) that you are lounging around your house all day. Working from home creates pressure to both make yourself heard and show how productive you are. The solution is the communications staple, repetition. Balancing home and work responsibilities, your work schedule has probably changed. Communicate your schedule often to everyone who needs to know your availability. Have you finished a project or reached a goal? Speak up. Joke about how since you’ve been home, you’ve been telling everyone everything you’ve been doing, a hundred times – then tell them again.
Be “heard” in meetings: Let them know you’re there and contributing
You are probably being invited to even more meetings than usual. A lot of things you used to be able to do quickly at the office, have become meetings. Even when they’re boring, be there. Let them know you were on the call. Contribute something useful. At the very least let your voice be heard with a nice, “Thanks everyone. Bye.”
‘The Visual’ is very important in digital media: at home, that means you
Just look at Twitter. The image is everything. Pay attention to the impression you are making. You may need to counter the bias that you are not really working at home or that your job couldn’t effectively be done from home. Set your alarm, get up and showered. Get dressed for work. You are working, so help them see that by looking the part.
A final tip, for your own peace of mind, assume positive intent from your colleagues – ‘It’ is probably not about you. If you can’t do that, then at least, don’t hit «send» on your angry response.
More to come.
Anissa Heyse, Scientific Writer & Consultant
Savoir Dire Scientific Communications
