For obvious reasons, 2020 saw an increase in remote work in many industries (looking at you COVID). While things are starting to get better in many places we still need to understand how to properly work from home.

We must then ask ourselves the following questions:

• Are you sure you’re working remotely effectively?
• Are you making the most out of your remote situation or are you just using Slack and calling yourself a remote worker?

I’ve worked remotely or with remote teams (which is almost the same) for the past eight years in a few companies and with many clients. And during that time, I’ve seen many bad practices — some of them considered “Agile,” but in reality, they work against everything the project needs.

So here are the top four problems I’ve seen in companies working with remote teams. My hope is that if you’re making any of these mistakes, you’ll be able to solve them before it’s too late.

Asynchronous Communication

Distributed teams often involve people from different locations, which in turn means different time zones. I’ve led projects with teammates in Argentina and India at the same time. Not an easy thing to do. Some people were working while others were sleeping.

The main challenge when it comes to leading that kind of project is making sure everyone can communicate effectively. To get there, they need to have the right expectations when it comes to communicating with a teammate.

If remote work is new to you or your team, you’ll be used to sending a chat message and getting a response within a few minutes. Picking up a phone and having a conversation with someone or even sending an email and getting a response within the same day.

However, that’s not the case anymore. Asynchronous communication means you need to know the best channels to use for each situation. Sending an email, writing a private Slack message, and leaving a voice message through WhatsApp are not the same.

The right tool for the right situation

There might be more, but the main three I see repeated over and over are email, chat rooms, and voice messages (anything that requires a “direct” connection with the other person).

In asynchronous environments, they’re not interchangeable. They work very in very different ways and will get you the wrong result if you’re not careful.

• Emails are great for sending long messages, messages that contain lots of details, and messages that don’t require a fast response. Remember, you might be sending an email to someone on the other side of the world, so the person you’re trying to reach might be sleeping. You should expect your email to be read — with a bunch of other emails — the next day. Remember, emails don’t need to be short. You can add as many details as you like. In fact, I would argue this is the place to add the detail.
• Private chat messages are meant for quick requests, sharing volatile information and messages that are more important or need a quicker reply than an email. Do not send big walls of text through chat. Their client’s UI isn’t meant for that and normally makes longer texts harder to read. Those big messages might get lost over time, so don’t assume the person you’re contacting has the time to read them. And please, for the love of everything that is holy, do not share sensitive information through chat. Consider chat to be for volatile messages. If you send anything through chat, it is because you’re OK with sending it again.
• Finally, critical conversations can be shared through audio or video messages. Normally, you’d try to schedule a call with the other person at a time that is good for both of you. That might not always be easy, so remember that sometimes even when you’re within your working hours, the other person might be having a very early morning because of you. Try to keep the conversation short, to the point, and be done with it as fast as possible.

If you try to use emails for messages like “Hey, can we chat?” or “Can you help me out when you get a minute?” those requests will get lost and you’ll get a response when it’s already too late.

The same goes the other way around. Sending walls of text through chat will cause those messages to get ignored until the person who got them has the time to read them.

Remember, context switching is hard. It takes a toll on your performance, and we normally try to avoid it unless the interruption is important. A private chat message normally gets our attention, but the person still needs to make the conscious decision to switch their current context towards reading your message. The hope is that it’ll be a quick one and then they can get back to what they were doing before it’s too late (before they lose their current train of thought). A big wall of text will require a longer time to read. Thus, they’re likely to postpone doing so until they have the needed time.

Lack of Central Knowledge Base

Another big issue when it comes to distributed teams is the way they share information.

Email threads and chat rooms are not the right places to share access credentials, workflow documentation, or even answer commonly asked questions.

While it might be a boring task to update documentation, you need a central knowledge base. There needs to be a single place where everyone knows they can find the information. It also needs to be searchable, browsable, and have all the features required to make that information accessible to those who need it.

Having your server IPs and access credentials on a pinned message in Slack (something I’ve seen done in many companies) is not the right way to do it. And keeping an email thread with the information because “you can search for it and find it there” is, in fact, not the right way either.

There are tools meant for this, such as Confluence (not everyone likes it, but at least it serves a purpose if used correctly), that are known as Knowledge Management Systems. Try to use one and make sure your whole team (and company) do the same.

Proper Video Call Etiquette

Video call etiquette is not something new, but given a distributed situation, you have to also be mindful of the other person’s time. You might be having the conversation in the afternoon where you are, but the other person could be skipping lunch or a family dinner for you.

That being said, you should also keep these aspects in mind:

• If you’re not speaking, mute yourself. Unless you know there are no background noises or that you’re not typing while the other person is talking, you should mute your mic. This ensures the other person is not bothered by any noise you might not be aware of (noises such as you typing on your keyword while taking notes sound a lot louder on the other person’s speakers).
• Do not eat while on the call. Look, I get it. I’ve had many calls during lunchtime, and I’ve been on many calls with other people while they were having lunch. There aren’t many things worse than hearing someone chew their food right in your ears.
• If your camera is enabled, pay attention. Am I having a conversation with you? Then look at the damn monitor! Stop looking at other people walk by or at your damn phone (this happened to me about a week ago)! You might still be able to be part of the conversation and show you’re paying attention (somewhat). However, you’re disrespecting the other person by not showing that you care with your body language.
• Be present on time. I’ve talked about this before. Being on time means being five minutes early — not getting there right at the starting time. The starting time of a meeting is the moment when all attendees start discussing the topic at hand. You can’t do that if people are still joining. So be early. That will also show you care about everyone else’s time.
• Be present at the meeting. Whether you have your camera enabled or not, whether you’re using someone else’s time either to solve your problems or to help them solve theirs, don’t do anything else at the same time. Be 100% present at the meeting and it’ll be done quicker. That way, you’ll be able to go back to doing whatever else you want to do faster.
• If you’re having a mixed meeting, don’t speak to in-person colleagues over your remote teammate. A mixed meeting has a group of co-located people having a conversation with remote teammates. You might have an idea or a comment about a past argument that someone in the same room as you made a few minutes ago, so you decide to just speak while someone else is speaking. That is not just rude, but if the other person hears you, they won’t feel like they’re being listened to. This is why I really try to avoid mixed calls. If you have a group of remote teammates, then have the co-located ones should also join from their computers in different places. That’ll make sure everyone’s experiencing the same conditions and side conversations with only some teammates can’t happen. The rule should be: If we’re all at the meeting, we should all have to hear what everyone is saying.

Video calls and group meetings are very common these days, and if you don’t follow the proper etiquette, you’re disrespecting everyone involved — including yourself.

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Cultural Differences

This is probably the hardest factor to deal with when working with distributed teams. Newsflash: Not everyone expresses themselves the same way you do, and it’s your job to know that.

There are many cultures on our planet, many ways of thinking, many belief systems. And when you’re communicating with people from other places, chances are they’re not going to share the same background as you do. They might believe in something else, speak with a different accent, or use the same words with a different meaning (hello, Spanish-speaking folks).

If you assume right off the bat that the way you speak with your friends is the proper way to speak with people from other parts of the world, then get ready to offend some folks. Mind you, I’m not saying you want to offend them. That’d be a whole different thing. But you will. Some cultures tend to have a softer tone. They normally ask before issuing a command or assigning action items. Others, however, are more direct and straight to the point. Over my years of experience, I’ve had to learn to adapt the way I communicate to make sure my intentions are clear and my motivations for saying the things I say are understood.

For example, I have a very cynical sense of humor and I’ve heard crickets more than once after making what I considered to be silly comments in the middle of meetings. This is simply because not everyone would understand my snarky remarks.

By adapting the way you communicate, the types of phrases you use, the tone, and even the types of jokes you tell, you’re showing that you care about other people’s backgrounds. This is a form of inclusion that all companies — especially those that work with remote teams — should teach their employees.

I can’t emphasize this enough: Working with remote teams means you have to be very careful with the way you communicate. This is especially true if you’re in a management position.

This is because the way you express your needs can be widely misinterpreted and even taken as offensive if you’re not careful. It’s been my experience, for instance, that some cultures have a harder time saying “no” to managers. This, in turn, translates into accepting any kind of timeline you throw at them — no matter how crazy it is. This leads to them overworking or not delivering on time (which makes sense because the timeline wasn’t realistic to begin with).

The only way to counter these types of communication problems is to enable an open space within the team. Make sure everyone feels safe to speak their mind and that there will be no judgment. That way, those who’d normally keep quiet might start opening up.

Another way is to have individual one-on-ones to try to assess how everyone’s feeling about the current workload or the current project. Use different approaches depending on who you’re having the conversation with to ensure they feel comfortable and open up to you. What works for someone in Uruguay might not work for someone in Peru or India.

So keep in mind everyone’s different — no one is wrong here — and their cultural background plays a big role in the way they communicate and interact with others.

Conclusion

Distributed work can be a pain in the butt and cause a lot of stress on the team if the right approach is not followed.

However, if done right, distributed teams can take advantage of talent from anywhere in the world and deliver some amazing results. The caveat here is this: The right approach and the right expectations need to be set for everyone involved.

So what about you? Are you a remote worker? Do you wish you could go back to the office? Leave a comment and share your experience with remote work.