Need to Communicate Clearly while Remote? Try this Easy Team Communication Framework...

Okay, so tell me if this feels familiar. Does anyone else feel like that was a little bit too close to home? I do. Because prior to using the framework I'm going to talk about in this video, that was pretty, pretty much my reality. Running a virtual small team, not only were we virtual, but also distributed. So that kind of miscommunication multiplied by 10 team members really took up a large amount of my time. And it was just so frustrating. I remember reaching a point where I was like, I should just call people or have a meeting for everything because if I don't get somebody in front of me and verbally talk it through with them, I'm going to be wasting so much time on exchanges like that. If, if this is something you can also relate to, I'd love for you to write yes in the comments below. Just let me know. I'm not crazy here. And if you are someone who's never had this happen because you are just so on it, just be quiet because I don't want to hear from you right now. You can still like the video, but just no comment. Don't, don't brag. All right? This kind of communication cycle of getting into that ping pong dialogue is so exhausting, is so hellish. In part because that exchange I just showed you earlier on in this video where would not have taken 10 seconds to watch if it happened in the real world. No, every one of those messages would have been spaced out 15 minutes, an hour, two hours, two days. All of a sudden that exchange that could have been a five minute verbal conversation stretched out over three different work days. Nightmare. Not only is this a nightmare for both parties involved who are constantly getting pinged on this old chain, but it's a nightmare for the VIP client who is waiting on that task to getting done. So what do we do? Do we give in like I was thinking of doing and just have meetings for everything? Have a discord channel where we're constantly talking with our team as an introvert? That is not an option for me or I'd have no energy to actually do my work. So what do we do? Well, in this video, I want to share the four part framework that I use that I've kind of developed for myself to solve this problem. And because I'm also not good at marketing, this framework is called a very basic thing Cars. Because I'm not a communication expert and this was something that I've developed over the years, I fully acknowledge that this might be something that's so basic that you think I'm Ridiculous for thinking it's novel, that's fine, you know, do what works for you. But for me, these four letters have changed absolutely everything in my virtual communication with my team. It's set a clear expectation for how we can communicate and it's cut down so, so much back and forth I can't even put to words. So with that take it or leave it disclaimer out of the way, let me tell you what CARS is all about. CARS is a four letter acronym that stands for context, attempts, request and stakes. Okay, not like stakes, but like stakes. I'm going to go through each letter here and then I'm going to give you an example of how we could apply this to the conversation at the start of this video to shake things up and avoid that ping pong. Basically, we're going to use these four letters in every request for support or external feedback to clearly communicate what we are asking for, to work around any losses of tone that happen when you're in a virtual environment and make it very clear what we're asking for and what we expect in return. Here's how it goes. The C in CARS is for context in this part of your message or communication. You want to explain the situation at large in a short summary. The cool kids might call this the tldr. The too long didn't read even if you were in a long email exchange and people could theoretically read the whole exchange and understand the context to be a cool human. You are going to summarize it here in the context step. The second letter is A and that stands for attempts. In other words, what have you already tried? What have you ruled out? What are you not asking for? What have you investigated so far? Depending on the type of matter we're talking about here, this attempts thing could be as simple as none. Or attempts could outline the five different troubleshooting steps you've already tried. The scope is going to vary, but the but that's what A is all about and related to cars. Here I want to do a quick word from our sponsor, which is a tool that can actually help you implement this inside your own team if you're interested. Basically, I tell textexpander, hey, create this snippet so that every time I do this little icon thing here, this little dash cars thing, populate out for me the entire framework here, each of these pieces. So I'm prompted to fill them in and give them to my team. While I'm typically using this inside say a task or a comment, I can also do it offline in A notepad by just typing out the keyboard command and this case cars, which I defined right here, typing space and voila. It automatically gives me the prompts for each section of my framework. I could get fancier with this, but even just with this simple kind of shortcut here, it saves me so much time on repetitively typing out the CARS framework. That ultimately saves me a ton of time in back and forth and miscommunication. If there is anything that you are typing repeatedly on a keyboard and you're doing it across different platforms, textexpander is a no brainer and one reason why I'm so excited to work with them on this sponsorship. If you are someone that is doing some hands keyboard work and you find yourself retyping things, stop. Just stop. Check out the link in the description below and explore textexpander. They've got a free tester thing on their website which is super fun to help you experience what this is like for yourself. But with that, back to the video after a we have R, which is our request thing step stage, the request is where you're going to specifically say what you are asking for. Cannot tell you how many times in the early days I would have somebody shoot me a message and be like, hey, can you look at this? And I'd be like, here's my thoughts. And they're like, no, no, no, I didn't want your thoughts. I wanted you to tell me if you like the color. Okay? Without clear expectations in that virtual context of what you're actually asking for, you are just asking for disappointment. So in this R step, you want us clearly state with a verb what action you want someone to do specifically not will you look at this? But will you tell me if this is approved? And if you want to get more specific, will you tell me if this color choice is approved? Or for example, if you want feedback specifically, what do you want feedback on? Could you give me feedback on whether you think this campaign would get approved by the CEO? Just your opinion, Unsolicited, unfiltered. Whatever your request is, include that as the R in your communication. Again, this could be one sentence, two words. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it does need to be there and it does need to be clear. Ooh, and just a pro tip on this request piece, this is going to look different at different levels of delegation. So maybe you have kind of like a rassy racy however you say it matrix where there's like who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted who's informed? Well, depending on where someone falls on that scale, this request could look different. If a senior leader is sending me a request, I expect it to be a very specifically worded request. Something like, hey, here was a major crisis, here's how I solved it. Everything's fine, but I just want you to confirm that you've seen this so you're aware. That's a very easy request. Just say that you've seen this. Done. We move down the delegation chain. Maybe it's something like, hey, here's a situation, here's what I've tried to solve it, here's my recommended solution, but I want your okay before I actually go through and do it. That could be our request is just the okay on the recommendation. That's a lower level of delegation than the last format, but it could be a way to use this similarly. If we're all the way down at the bottom, the task oriented level of delegation, the request might be something more literal like, hey, I'm doing this design for you. I've tried to find the brand colors. Can you please send me what brand color I should be using here? Because I do not know the stakes are. I don't want it to look off brand. If for some reason you're dealing with a task oriented person who doesn't yet have the agency to find this information, that could be an example request. This ability to scale up or scale down these pieces is why I really like the CARS framework. Because can I call it the CARS framework? It's just like something I made up, but it's so helpful because of that ability to scale it up or down depending on where people are. At last but not least, we have S, which stands for steaks. Steaks as in not the food, but like the. The odds, the importance of a situation here you want to explain what why you are asking this person, why is this so important that this person's being involved? Why is this so high stakes that you can't decide on your own? Why is this so urgent that you're bothering me on my weekend? That's what stakes is all about. Letting people know the urgency of the situation. Myself here, this stakes piece has been instrumental for avoiding reverse delegation. I'm not perfect at it, to be clear, very much. Not very much trying though. But reverse delegation is the concept of giving somebody a task and then they immediately come back to you with questions and questions and questions until ultimately you're basically doing the task yourself. As someone who hires a lot of junior roles, this has been a Real problem on our team. I'll just be candid. Over the years, I've gotten better, but it's still hard. And this stakes piece has been instrumental in starting to kind of avoid that reverse delegation minefield. One real world example of my own life of using this here is when, you know, we had a social media manager responding to comments, and at one point the social media role messaged me and was like, hey, Layla. So on the YouTube channel, there's some comments that are just not very happy. They're not positive. Um, and she cars, you know what I tried. My request for you is, could you answer them? And the stakes that this person described was none. No stakes. And because there were no stakes, I was given the framework and the common language to kind of push back a little bit and say, hey, I appreciate that there are some negative comments on YouTube. You guys probably realize, I mean, between criticizing the color of your shirt or the way you speak, or the accent you have, or your terrible grammar, or your proclivity for cuss words, whatever it is, YouTube is not the friendliest place. But I told this person, what are the stakes of this? What is so high stakes about these YouTube comments that you need to involve the CEO and creator of the company to resolve these? And basically she was like, nothing really. I mean, at worst, they just get hidden from YouTube. And there we go. That conversation, that s that stakes became the jumping off point for a conversation about how this person could take more responsibility and decide to decide core value of RS in this particular role. And the reverse delegation in that moment was stopped and has not happened again in that area. So that's cars, context, attempts, request and stakes. Oh, and just one pro tip on this stakes piece. If you're looking to kind of raise the bar for reverse delegation or just involvement in general, you can add a dollar value as a guideline on these stakes. It's something I did earlier on, which was something like, hey, if you are looking to involve your manager in this billing issue, the stakes better be at least a hundred dollars. If it's less than a hundred dollars and it's a billing mix up, just figure it out and let us know. But if it's over $100, let your manager know, get them approved, or whatever it might be. Putting this fixed quantitative value on the stakes can be a good guideline for the team, as long as the numbers are easy for them to understand and connect to for when to involve folks or when to just problem solve independently. All right, so now that we've established context attempts requests and stakes and the ability to scale up or scale down as needed. Let's relive that very first scenario, this time Communicating Using Cars. Wow. Wasn't that nice? That was so nice. My Pro Tip My final pro tip for this video is that this same level of clarity of communication can be used both verbally and in writing. You don't have to limit it to just this written format. You don't even have to spell out the letters. But when you're communicating in a professional setting and you're trying to communicate to get work done, being so clear about what you're truly asking for, whether your request is hey, just listen so I can rant, or your request is hey, could you reset that password? This is such a powerful skill, whatever you want to call it, whatever framework works for your brain, that I wanted to make sure I shared it because it has truly been transformative over the last 18 months or so. I've been using it here and if everyone else already knew about this and no one just told me, well, I look like a fool for putting this out there. But for me it's just been such a big change. If you'd like to try using cars inside your own business, implementing this with your team, don't forget about the sponsor of today's video, textexpander. That software will help you remember these steps in your communication and save you time on adding that structure to every message online or offline. Cool thing to check out something I use in the description below, but beyond that, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Let me know what you think if this is helpful. If you have your own version of this that I might be able to learn from. But thanks so much for watching and until next time, enjoy the process.