Hi and why

In an increasingly asynchronous and distributed workplace, it’s super important that managers learn how to leverage the strengths and avoid the pitfalls of a text-oriented way of communicating.

Done right, asynchronous communication can increase clarity, make decisions more durable, and even enforce equitability within teams. But done wrong, it can hinder progress, create churn, and even add unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Here are a few things you can do to be sure you’re getting communication right in your distributed teams.

I love this “manager promise” from Matthew Rechs (above). This is a great rule for everyone to live by, but managers even moreso. If your manager sends you a single message, “Hi,” and then waits for a response, how does that make you feel?

You’re left wondering what’s coming next; will it be a routine question, some critical feedback… Something worse? Who knows!

Rule #1: no preamble

When you open a new DM with someone, no matter who it is, put the reason you’re writing and (preferably) the request you are making in the first message. That doesn’t mean it has to be one sentence, it just means that when you press “send,” the recipient has everything they need to know.

Of course it’s OK to be personable and to show empathy for your recipient, to ask how they’re doing, and so on. Nonetheless, be brief, and include your reason for writing and the request you’re making in that same message before you send it.

Rule #2: async/await

Email and chat are both powerful tools, but we quite often misuse them. We expect that when we send a message, there is a person there on the other end eager to receive and respond to it.

But as the recipient of messages ourselves, we know that isn’t the case. Everyone has work to do and limited attention to spend on the many things that demand it throughout the day.

Write your messages knowing, and accepting, that they may not be read for quite some time. Here are a couple of ways to acknowledge the reality of async in your communications:

1. Be aware of the recipient’s local time. If it’s early or late for them, explicitly note whether the message can wait until normal hours, or consider scheduling the send (Gmail and Slack both support scheduling).

2. Include all relevant details. To reduce “round trips,” take a moment to ensure that all the necessary context and detail is there, so the recipient can absorb and consider it before responding.

3. Offer async alternatives. If you’re making a trivial, non-urgent request, perhaps any brief response will work. But if your request is more important or urgent, you might offer to chat live to work through the issue. Make it clear what you’re willing to do to get to a resolution. Bear the burden of that coordination.

Rule #3: The right tool for the job

Has this ever happened to you? You receive a DM from a colleague, they have a question about a project, and you start chatting. After a few messages, it becomes clear that they haven’t really thought things through before writing. You’re answering questions that you know they know the answers to, they just hadn’t thought of the questions yet.

This is a classic case of reaching for a DM when what was needed was probably a document. Too many meetings should have been emails, and emails should have been DMs, and DMs should have been documents.

Here’s a quick, non-exhaustive guide for when to use which tool:

Email

You need an answer from one or more people, and it isn’t critically time-sensitive, but it’s very important that the recipient(s) do see it eventually. Email is still the number-one best way to be sure your message isn’t overlooked, even if it’s not read for a while.

Slack

Slack’s own marketing claims that it will replace email, and folks do use it for longer-form async communication, so I won’t say that’s wrong to do, but it isn’t Slack’s strongest suit.

Use Slack for quick, more time-sensitive, and less important or complex communications. Slack is a great way to let a whole team know about something that’s happening, or to coordinate during production issues. It’s not a great way to get consensus for a wide-reaching and highly impactful change.

A document (of some kind)

Write a document when you, yourself, aren’t sure of all the details. Writing the document itself can drive your clarity. Until you can get your point across in a document, you probably don’t know what your point is, yet.

A document is an excellent choice for converging on a resolution with multiple people, if you’re using an interactive document like a Google Doc, where comments and suggested edits can be contributed by others. There is almost no faster way I have ever seen to go from “seed of an idea” to “fully realized plan” than with a co-edited document.

Async forever!

In the end, writing drives clarity. The more we each lean into the strengths of writing to organize our own thoughts and make concise and well-articulated points, the less time we’ll spend churning and rehashing things.

As a manager, remember that your directs care about everything you write. When you DM someone, respect the power of your words. Don’t just say “hi” and leave them hanging!

If you’ve had a great (or bad) experience with async communication, I’d love to hear about it.

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