Mostly our remote team works outstandingly well together but just once in a while, I’m reminded how important communication is when we work remotely.
The other week I was having a video call with one of the team in Alston about a change we’d made to the Trainers’ Conference website. We’d added our new Unique Features pages, which lists some of the things that make Trainers’ Conference special. I was really pleased with the new page that had been put together by Craig and Lee and told Zoe so. I was surprised and disappointed that she didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm:
“It’s great isn’t it” I enthused. “I think it’s my favourite page yet?”
“Really?” replied Zoe. “Well, if you say so.” There was a pause before she continued: “But, don’t you think it needs some bullet points or something?”
“Oh, no” I said. “I think the capital letters are enough”.
“Oh… OK.”
A few minutes later Zoe called back. It turns out that we’d been looking at totally different things. The style sheet behind the website hadn’t refreshed when Zoe loaded the new page, so all she was seeing was a clump of text on the screen, with no graphic at all, whilst I was looking at the full package with neatly formatted text on a lovely new scroll graphic.
“I couldn’t understand why you thought it looked good” admitted Zoe laughing. “It was awful.” (She may not have used those exact words.)
It was a timely reminder of how important it is not to jump to conclusions when talking to remote colleagues and of the importance of questions and summary and clarification. Had I asked a few more questions like: “What don’t you like about it? Or, had we checked that we were looking at the same thing, a lot of confusion could have been avoided.
And yes, she does like it now. ☺
Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com
