How to Effectively Communicate in a Remote Work World
Communication is the building block of any good relationship. How overdone is that phrase? What do you mean by communication? And how can an IT company help with communication? Keep reading, we will get there!
My personal life and my business are run on the same principal - effective communication. There are so many resources out there that you could drown in books of how to "effectively communicate".
So what do I mean by "effective communication"?
Verbal communication - literally transferring your message verbally or through sign language
Nonverbal communication - body language, gestures, facial expressions that can help you receive contextual clues when discussing a subject
Written - emails, letters, blog posts, memos all serve the need to transfer knowledge from one person to another
Visual - pictures, graphs, etc. that can help to engage your audience into the message you wish to share
As we have evolved to a largely work from home society, we have taken away the ability to utilize some of our communication techniques. This is leaving a void for our audience that we need to fill to fully engage them and share our message efficiently.
I was much like everyone else in the spring, I jumped on the Zoom platform as quickly as the next person because video conference calls were going to solve all of our problems so we could communicate from home and it would be just like we were all together in the office. Right?! Not quite.
And then the conference call burnout began…and I think it hit a lot of us quickly. I was constantly back and forth in emails and shared file rooms, trying to line up all of the materials I would need to do a presentation. For whatever reason, it seemed like no one ever had the correct Zoom link, we worried about the security of our meeting room and information, and had to deal with sharing Zoom passwords and room ID numbers with so many internal and external resources. I had to make sure everyone had the most current presentation or information to review and was managing this through email. It was exhausting. And ineffective. Quite literally the opposite of effective communication.
What if you could leverage verbal, nonverbal, written, and visual all through one platform to effectively communicate to your audience?
That is exactly what Microsoft has done with their Teams platform.
The Teams platform has evolved in such a way that it takes away the worry and stress of conference calls. Why? Because it is not just a conference call tool. Let me say that again for those in the back. Microsoft Teams is not just a conference call tool!
It is a tool for effectively communicating with your internal and external stakeholders. It allows you stay organized within the application itself, integrating fully with the Microsoft suite of tools that we are all familiar with (ie - Powerpoint, Excel), and gives you access to file sharing right in the application. You can set up different "channels" for each team, all with great backend security so I don't have to worry about a breach of confidential information or sending emails back and forth. You can quickly chat so you can be more effective and you can quickly gather your team on a video conference with a click of a button to "meet now". You can also get a fully transcribed version of your meeting if you had to miss it. And you still have the ability to share your screen so that your team is all on the same page visually.
Contact me (kari@kandidinsights.com) to discuss how Teams can transform your internal and external communications so you can get back to effectively communicating with your team!