Post COVID Virtual Communication Guide

In the current lockdown/quarantine environment, work has taken on a slightly new dimension. Other than the challenges of your physical working environment (is there a proper home office available), family arrangements (young and elderly in your household), one significant challenge is to adapt to the main mode of communication: virtual communication.

While this is not new for most millennials, what is different is that virtual communication used to be one (out of many) means of communication, whereas now almost all communication will be virtual.

How then can we thrive in this environment?

Over-communicate

Go back to basics: Be clear and frequent in your communications.

Allow peers and your superiors an opportunity to understand your thoughts, plans, work, and emotions. Try practising the habits below:

1. Make your work more visible:  Agree with your team where and how to give updates. Ie. project updates on gsheet, status updates chat (slack/workplace/teams) group, begin each week with a standup meeting. 
2. Create communication channel norms:   Align with your team/manager on the best ways to stay in touch and when. Try using the channel map below! 
3.  Use emojis to convey tone:  Tone can be mistaken when communicating virtually. Try using emojis to help you communicate more effectively.
4.  Ask for clarity & feedback:  Most people will not communicate with perfect accuracy all the time. Do not be afraid to seek clarity if you did not understand something. Equally important, ask for feedback from others.

Create a communications channel map 

This should be co-developed with your team to align communication norms (when, where, what to communicate). An example is as follows:

Where do you start?

Ask at least one person today for feedback on how you can improve your communication!

And as always, leave comments below for more ideas that you would like to share.