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How to Communicate Online Effectively and What "Asynchronous Communication" Means

Name: How to Communicate Online Effectively and What "Asynchronous Communication" Means
Uploaded: 2020-07-01T23:18:01+00:00
Duration: 1 min 51 s
Channel: Royston G King
Description: In this presentation, the speaker explains two core concepts essential for managing remote teams: asynchronous communication and mindful communication…

1 Jul 2020 · 2 min

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In this presentation, the speaker explains two core concepts essential for managing remote teams: asynchronous communication and mindful communication. Asynchronous communication is defined as the practice of sending messages (e.g., Slack, email) without expecting an immediate reply, recognizing that team members may be in different time zones or working at different times. The speaker stresses the importance of setting clear expectations around response times to avoid frustration. The second focus is mindful communication: because text‑based platforms lack vocal cues, messages can be misinterpreted as harsh or overly direct. The speaker advises managers to train team members to consider tone, add friendly greetings, and avoid assumptions about intent, especially when they haven’t spoken recently. The overall message is that remote leaders must deliberately teach and reinforce both asynchronous norms and tone‑aware messaging to maintain effective, respectful collaboration.

Chapters

So one of the interesting things that we found at Instant Teams that we needed to define and help remote team members understand is asynchronous communication. So what does asynchronous communication mean? So if you're in the tech space, you've probably heard of asynchronous in some terms, but that to your remote teams and your remote workers just means that you may send someone a message, you may send someone an email, and you may not get an immediate response. And that's because everyone's working in their own times. They— maybe the time zone is different. So you have to get used to being able to work and communicate asynchronously and not get upset or have expectations that you're going to have instant communication all of the time. So teaching your team members that and setting that as a precedent is extremely important. The other thing is mindful communication. So have you ever read a Slack message and thought, ooh, that sounded kind of harsh, or I wonder what they mean by that. So people will inherently apply tone to messages, and you have to teach your team members not to do that. It's a constant reinforcement when you're managing remote teams, and you have to also teach your team members to communicate in a mindful way so that they understand, hey, this might come across maybe a little harsh, or maybe this comes across too direct. So I myself have to work on this because I'm a very direct communicator. And so sometimes I'll send a Slack message and then I'll think, oh, I should have said, hey, how are you? And then whatever it was I was going to say, because I hadn't talked to that team member maybe in 2 to 3 days. So it's important to be mindful of how you're communicating, and especially across messaging platforms, because tone will be implied, so you have to teach your team members how to overcome that.