February 9, 2005	Volume 5, Issue 6
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Virtual Communications: Part III

by Rick Brenner

Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here's Part III of some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.

Here's Part III of my guidelines for communications in virtual teams. See "Virtual Communications: Part II," Point Lookout for February 2, 2005, for more.

Don't give the time or date in voicemail

Most systems already provide the day, date, and time for messages. Why duplicate it? And if you're in a different day and time yourself, you could just confuse the recipient.

Give your phone number twice

For voicemail messages, supply your phone number not only near the beginning, but also at the end.

If using a desk or wall phone, press the button to hang up

Replacing the handset to hang up creates a clattering sound that can be irritating in voicemail.

Eating, drinking, and chewing gum are no-nos on the phone

Whether live or in voicemail, avoid these activities. Even when you're muted, you never know when you'll need to speak.

Sit up straight or stand when you're on the phone

Sit up straight
when you're on the phone.
You need the full power
and nuance of your voice.

Slouching or lying down interferes with full use of your lungs and diaphragm. You need the full power and nuance of your voice.

Learn how to use your voicemail system

Learn how to skip, skip-with-erase, move to mailbox, reply-immediate, pause, repeat, transfer to email, forward, forward with preface, forward to list, sort by priority, and whatever else your system offers.

Learn the remote commands too

If you call into your office system to pick up messages, learn the most useful commands. And carry them on a wallet card.

Customize your outgoing message

If you know you'll be returning at a specific time, record an outgoing message that tells callers when to call back. This can really cut down on your voicemail.

Consider calling someone's voicemail directly

Often, you don't really need to speak to the recipient live. If a voicemail will do, call voicemail directly.

Suspend interpretation of silences

If someone doesn't respond to a message — email or voice — check whether the message was received. Going ballistic is usually a bad idea, especially when based on a misinterpretation of silence.

Always confirm — don't rely on silence

Never leave a message of the form "I'll let you know if X condition is satisfied, otherwise execute Y." Always confirm either way, because messages don't always arrive.

Slow down your "offense" response

In face-to-face communications, we use body language, facial expression, and tone of voice to adjust our communications and our interpretations, and this keeps us out of trouble. By email and phone, where these adjustments are problematic or impossible, we're more likely to offend and to feel offended. Slow down and ask for elaboration. Breathe more.

Most important, express appreciations verbally, publicly, and often. In person, we smile, we nod, we backslap, and any number of other things that express approval non-verbally. Remotely, these gestures are unavailable to us, so when we want to encourage each other, or express approval, we have to say things verbally that seem unnatural, artificial, or forced. It takes practice. Get started today.  Top    Next Issue

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Is your organization a participant in one or more global teams? Are you the owner/sponsor of a global team? Are you managing a global team? Is everything going well, or at least as well as any project goes? Probably not. Many of the troubles people encounter are traceable to the obstacles global teams face when building working professional relationships from afar. Read 303 Tips for Virtual and Global Teams to learn how to make your global and distributed teams sing. Order Now!

Would you like to see your comments posted here? Send me your comments by email, or by Web form. Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

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More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:

Mastering Meeting Madness

If you lead an organization, and people are mired in meeting madness, you can end it. Here are a few tips that can free everyone to finally get some work done.

At the Sound of the Tone, Hang Up

When the phone rings, do you drop whatever you're doing to answer it? Do you interrupt face-to-face conversations with live people to respond to the jerk of your cellular leash? Listen to seemingly endless queues of voicemail messages? Here are some reminders of the choices we sometimes forget we have.

Towards More Gracious Disagreement

We spend a sizable chunk of time correcting each other. Some believe that we win points by being right, or lose points by being wrong, but nobody seems to know who keeps the official score. Here are some thoughts to help you kick the habit.

Some Hidden Costs of Business Fads

Adopting business fads is an expensive organizational pattern, with costs that extend beyond what can be measured by the chart of accounts most organizations use. Here are some examples of the hidden costs of business fads.

How to Foresee the Foreseeable: Focus on the Question

When group decisions go awry, we sometimes feel that the failure could have been foreseen. Often, the cause of the failure was foreseen, but because the seer was a dissenter within the group, the issue was set aside. Improving how groups deal with dissent can enhance decision quality.

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness, Effective Communication at Work and Virtual and Global Teams for more related articles.

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On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough, but to project managers, the story is fascinating. Lessons abound. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough. Lessons abound. Among the more important lessons are those that demonstrate the power of the agile approach to project management and product development. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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