HerMoney Podcast Episode 227: How To Communicate In A Remote Work World

Trying to make the most of hermoney podcast episode 227? You are in the right place. Below we break it down in plain English, with practical tips you can actually use.

Key Takeaways

• How to successfully offer clarity via Zoom, be articulate over email, and convey big ideas via Slack.
• Remote work can actually equal improved communication.
• What does your work week look like these days?

How to successfully offer clarity via Zoom, be articulate over email, and convey big ideas via Slack. Remote work can actually equal improved communication.

What does your work week look like these days? For numerous of us, the lines between work and home are growing increasingly blurred as the months of the COVID-19 pandemic drag on. (I can’t be the only one missing my daily commute, right?!) Those of us who are working from home all the time may be wishing for some quality time with our most beloved colleagues, and pining for those “normal” office conversations that we once enjoyed , and likely took for granted. Perhaps you’re wishing for a shared laugh in the kitchen for someone’s birthday, or a group toast for a work anniversary happy hour… But it’s not just the milestones that we’re missing. It’s day-to-day interactions that are full of key non-verbal clues, none of which can truly be captured via Zoom. 

Although we have no idea how long our fully remote world will last, it’s safe to say we’ve all entered into a new era of workplace communication, one in which distributed teams must work seamlessly from across the country, and across continents. We must offer clarity in phone calls, we must be articulate over email, and we must convey big ideas via Slack. Just how do we do all that successfully? We’re talking through it step-by-step on this week’s episode with Lindsay Kohler, lead behavioral scientist at U.K. consultancy ScarlettAbbott. (Here’s the conversation guide that Lindsay mentioned in her interview with us!) 

“We are 2.5 more times more likely to perceive poor work behavior, such as incompetence, mistrust, poor decision-making or lack of meeting deadlines with virtual colleagues than we would with colleagues we’re located on site with,” Lindsay says. In the “before COVID-19 times” if you had a disagreement with someone, “you could just take a look to the next desk over and see what their face was like, or, you know, give them a nudge and say ‘How ya doing?’ And right now, we can’t do that.”

Lindsay talks about some of the negative assumptions we may be more likely to make with our virtual colleagues, and what we lose when we can’t see people face-to-face. “Don’t assume the worst,” she says. “And when you’re frustrated, don’t assume your colleague is intentionally trying to be a jerk. Maybe something just came up. So give them a chat or pick up the phone when you can’t just walk over in person like you used to, to check in on them and see how they’re doing.” 

Lindsay weighs in on how she keeps her productivity up. “What we’re going to see is that companies won’t have a choice but to switch to output-based performance management, so those people who were already top performers are going to continue to shine, and those who rested comfortably on the fact that ‘As long as my body is in this seat from 9-to-5, I keep my job,’ there’s going to be some reckoning. The way we look at performance is going to have to change,” she says. 

Lindsay also breaks down what similarity bias, confirmation bias, and explanation bias really are, why we don’t always bother challenging our biases, and why we should. She also shares why she’s mentally tired during lockdown like she’s never been before, and what she’s doing to overcome it.

Of course Lindsay also shares some of her favorite tactics that we can all use to improve our communication at work (and in life!), and offers advice for people who are struggling with working remotely. Hint: It’s okay to just “say hi” to a colleague. It’s essential that we replicate some of the spontaneous interactions that we had at the office, and at times we need to be deliberate about doing just  that. Speaking of which, it may also be time to create some intentional boundaries between your work life and your personal life. We’ll tell you how. 

In Mailbag, Jean and Kathryn tackle questions on refinancing a child’s student loan, a backdoor Roth conversion, 2020 IRA contributions, and whether $10,000 is best put towards paying off loans or investing in the stock market. Lastly, in Thrive, how Neflix can improve your credit score. (No, really!) 

Transcript

Lindsay Kohler: (00:01) If you had a disagreement with someone, you could just take a look at the next desk over and see what their face is like. Or give them a nudge and say, how are you doing? And right now we can’t do that.

Jean Chatzky: (00:19) HerMoney is supported by Fidelity Investments. Whether you’re saving for something in the near future or way down the road, Fidelity has tips and tools to help you meet your savings goals. Visit Fidelity.com/HerMoney to learn more.

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Jean Chatzky: (00:34) Hey everyone. I’m Jean Chatzky. Thanks so much for joining me. I know numerous of you listen to this podcast during your work week. We publish on Wednesdays and we typically see that about 14,000 of you will have our latest episode listened to by Friday afternoon. So let me just say that I hope you’re all having a wonderful work week. But what does that even look like these days? I know that for me, the lines between work and home are growing increasingly blurred as the months drag on. And I’ve even heard from some of you who say that you are actually missing your commutes. Those of us who are working at home all the time may also be missing our co-workers. I know I am. And honestly pining for the normal human interaction that we once enjoyed at the office - shared laugh in the kitchen for someone’s birthday or a group toast for a work anniversary happy hour. But it’s not just the milestones with our colleagues that we’re missing. It’s these day to day interactions that are full of key nonverbal cues. It’s the face to face communication about an key project. It’s bonding over completion at lunch. And none of that can really be captured over Zoom. It is safe to say that, although we have no idea how long this era will last, we have officially entered into a new era of workplace communication. One in which teams must work remotely across the country and across continents. We have to offer clarity in phone calls. We have to be articulate over email, which can be really hard. And we must convey big ideas via Slack. And all of that, as you have probably realized, and I have certainly realized over the last few months, is a lot easier said than done. Today we are going to talk through all of these things with the help of Lindsay Kohler, the Lead Behavioral Scientist at UK consultancy, Scarlettabbott. Lindsay has over a decade of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies. She’s a graduate of the London School of Economics, and she has agreed to help us apply what she has learned about workplace communication to life communication. So Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us.

Lindsay Kohler: (03:19) It’s a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for having me.

Jean Chatzky: (03:22) So, tell me a little bit more about what you do.

Lindsay Kohler: (03:26) Sure. So, I’m a behavioral scientist and that means I study why we make the decisions that we make and why we behave the way that we do it. And I do it in the realm of employee engagement because that’s where I started my career. And I started with health and financial decision making. And Jean, as you know, those are two of the hardest areas for which people will actually change behavior. And I didn’t understand why just telling people what to do and giving them education, why that wasn’t enough to change behavior. And so I found myself looking into psychology and behavioral science to understand what we could do to unlock that. And so that’s the science and rigor that I bring into, employee engagement consultancy - to really kind of bridge that gap between academia and things that we can use in our everyday life to maximize performance and make better decisions for ourselves.

Jean Chatzky: (04:30) Well, you know that you are preaching to the choir when it comes to me. I mean, I love everything behavioral science. I just eat it up. I think behavioral economics has been such a lifesaver for so numerous people when it comes to our money and our health, because of course, you’re right. You can tell me to save more and if I want to purchase something, I’m still very tempted to purchase it. You can tell me not to eat the doughnut. And if I really want to eat the doughnut, I’m still going to eat the donut. But I’m really interested to see how all of this fits into workplace communication, which I’ve got to say is a really tough area. I mean, those people who listen to this podcast on a regular basis will know my assistant Rebecca, and about, I don’t know, a month or so ago, I said to her, I don’t want any more Zooms. Can you just please make anything that would have been a phone call, just a plain old phone call? Cause I can’t do this. It’s exhausting.

Lindsay Kohler: (05:34) It is exhausting. I think there’s even a term that’s been coined. It’s zoom fatigue, right? And it sort of dissects all the reasons why we find this online interaction so much more exhausting than the same conversation would have been in person. We have to focus more on the conversation because there’s subtle, but very powerful, cues that we’re going to miss if we’re not in person. I think being on video makes us very aware of being watched, which is acutely stressful. I think we also feel, at least for me, when it’s a phone call or a video call, it feels more formal. I felt like I have to have a proper reason to pick up the phone and call my colleague, versus if I just bumped into them at the water cooler or was going for a walk or was making them a round of tea. You’d have more informal interactions. And so I think sometimes in this new remote working environment, our interactions have changed to more formal and it’s really tiring. It’s exhausting.

Jean Chatzky: (06:45) Yeah. It all has to be scheduled. Right? I mean, that’s the interesting thing. Like in my little company, right? I’m the boss, but still sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t just hit the phone button on Slack and call somebody cause maybe I’m taking them out of something else that they’re doing and I should be polite and schedule it. But let’s back up for a second before we get to the tactics of how to do this right. Do you think that this was always coming, that this era of working from home was just inevitable? Or have we been forced into a place that we were never going to be were it not for COVID-19?

Lindsay Kohler: (07:26) You know, I think it depends on sector. So, I think in certain sectors like tech, this was already the way of working and more and more people were jumping on board. I think what’s been really challenging is more traditional industries that also have a mix of frontline employees and then corporate employees. For them, they’re very, very used to always working on site. And for corporate it’s very much in solidarity with the fact that frontline people have to go to a store every day. They have to go to a bank. They have to go to a construction site. And so, I don’t know that we would have been here had COVID not forced our hands. I think it showed people that we are very adaptable, but I think it also exposed some pretty big rifts and some pretty big issues. And we’re, I think, just uncovering more and more issues between mental health, which we can talk about fairness. So numerous things have been exposed by COVID really.

Jean Chatzky: (08:31) Well, yeah. I’d love to dive into some of those, as well as the concept of mixed signals that you were talking about. I mean, when you point to the things that we are now seeing that have become problematic, what are they?

Lindsay Kohler: (08:48) So, I think that there has been a very big fairness issue that’s cropping between people that had to go into t

Final Thoughts

The bottom line: a little research on hermoney podcast episode 227 goes a long way. Compare your options, watch for seasonal offers, and never pay full price when a better deal is one click away.

Originally published at savingswitch.com.