Overcommunication in remote working

One of my main pain points (maybe surprisingly to some of the people I work with) is that I have often struggled with communication. I know how to speak, write and all of that but I am really not a great communicator, especially in person.

This is also one of the topics I have learned through experience that I have to teach myself (WIP). Either by reading more, writing more, learning more about the skill of communication. Some people are more natural to it, I am definitely not and so I have to put in a bit of extra work.

Communication in remote work

I have noticed that some people that don’t do great in remote work are just not communicating enough. Could be a bit of an oversimplification, but not communicating enough can cost a lot in a world where no one is looking over their heads to see if someone is doing their job or not.

Maybe because communication via chat is not their cup of tea or just does not come super natural, and would perhaps not have this problem in a office environment which would be more suited to them and their communication style.

There is someone I work with and who I respect a lot on my company that has mentioned to me sometimes that I am a good example for remote working ( I am not saying I am, I am saying I have been told this), and often this person would ask me why that is, which is a great question but that I often dit not have a great answer to.

I would say reliability, communication, autonomy. Buzzwords essentially. General things but nothing clear enough that others could perhaps follow trough and apply in their work as well.

Overcommunicating as a remote skill

After seeing more people come and go in my work and collaborating with more an more people and having worked now remotely for 7 years I think I would honestly say it boils down to overcommunication. This might be surprising to some people.

When in doubt, and in remote, I will always opt for communicate something. I will not leave to maybe a chance that someone will infer or understand what I mean (or even worst, “know the process”). I will usually have very lengthy answers, very detailed (perhaps too detailed).

This does not come for free. I think it can be a bit annoying sometimes. Its absolutely true that sometimes it would be better to have a shorter answer, but when in doubt I prefer to opt for a lengthy answer, for a status update on a task that was not requested, for addition information that was maybe unnecessary or irrelevant but that there is a slight change it will help someone in that channel or thread.

Its tricky to know when to give something a rest, when to add information, when to chime in and when not to and in remote work I feel like this is even more difficult. Hints like people looking at you and waiting for you to say something are just not present and pinging someone is usually considered a last resort so people also don't know when to do that or not. This is an ongoing balance, also to leave room for others to solve issues on their own and not always be in the loop on everything an becoming myself a bottleneck.

But when it comes to communication in a remote working setup, since I know I wont hit perfection, I will choose overcommunicating any day of the week ;)

Small benefit

One of the benefits this approach has over less communication is that it does the work of showing your work and your contributions. Don't expect people will notice it, they probably won’t. They are busy, they have a million things going on..you need to do yourself the work of showing your work. And that’s usually done in some form of communication.