Creating a Healthy Balance Between Asynchronous Interactions and Meetings in Remote Teams
In this post, Pilar shares a question we posed on LinkedIn about how to create a healthier balance between synchronous and asynchronous interactions in teams and the responses we received from our network.
You might be old enough to remember writing letters with pen and paper. (You might even still do that on special occasions, or with special people…) You would write a letter to me, send it in the post, I would get it a few days later, read it, and then reply to it in my own time.
That’s a perfect example of “asynchronous communication”.
As our methods of communication have changed, and the workplace has become flooded with different types of communication and collaboration tools, we now have many ways of communicating asynchronously in our teams. We can have task-based communication in Trello (through moving our “cards” around, labelling, completing them, and having conversations in them); we can leave comments in each other’s documents online, for looking through later. We can record audio, video… you get the picture.
The Key to Sustainable Remote Teamwork
As many people have discovered recently, you can’t rely on online meetings for all communication in a remote team. You need to find different ways of collaborating that don’t involve real-time interactions. Each team needs to find the right balance of real-time communication, and asynchronous conversations to support their collaboration. But it’s not easy.
The Challenges of Adopting Asynchronous Communication
Simon Wilson joined me in a recent episode - WLP282: Asynchronous Facilitation and Collaboration in Remote Teams - to talk about the reasons why it's difficult for individuals and organisations to adopt asynchronous practices. Here are some of the challenges we came up with:
1) Personal preference (sometimes people just prefer real-time conversations)
2) Getting on with async communication requires taking more personal responsibility for organising your time and getting the task done, whereas if somebody invites you to a meeting, you don't have to think about it as much.
3) It's easier to say "Sorry, not available I'm in a meeting" than "I have asynchronous protected time".
Wanting to balance our synchronous discussion in the podcast with some asynchronous contributions which allowed me to reach out to a wider network, I posted a question to my network on LinkedIn:
How can we help / encourage others to create a healthier balance between synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a team, and even in an organisation?
Here’s what we read in response:
Morgan Legge
Morgan Legge, friend of the podcast said:
“So how can we help/encourage others to create a healthier balance between synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a team, and even in an organisation?
Lead by example. Always.
Successful #async collaborations mean getting out of your comfort zone, trusting your collaborators, and experimenting with tools to help you communicate that particular message.
Be the change you want to see, and model the behavior whether you're a C-suite or entry level person. Now, that may not mean you can refuse a meeting, but at least you can get feedback on X, next actions on Y, by using a voice clip, a tool like Loom, working in a shared document, etc.
People feel like they have more control in synchronous meetings. The problem is that the vast majority of meetings are run without clear agendas, facilitation and without a curated invite list. (doesn't sound like too much control to me!)
People often have a FOMO that happens with sync meetings; impressing people, getting info first hand, having to keep up appearances, being heard.
Making sure that async opinions have the same weight as in person meetings will go a long way in breaking down the barrier.”
Maya Middlemiss
Our own Maya Middlemiss replied:
“For 3 (It's easier to say "Sorry, not available I'm in a meeting" than "I have asynchronous protected time".) - scheduling apps. Your time for having a synch call is either available or note, no one can see what you blocked off the rest with.”
Tammy Bjelland
Recent podcast guest Tammy Bjelland said:
“In no particular order: Overall, change is hard. We default to old ways of working because it's easier. Adopting more async practices means trying things out, failing, trying again, and this process takes time. Async = writing, and writing well is hard.”
Tammy knows a thing or to about asynchronous, you can hear her here - WLP286: The Challenges of Adopting Asynchronous Communication.
Katerina Bohle Carbonell
And Katerina Bohle Carbonell, who's also been on the show a few times said:
“What about:
- Highlight benefit of async communication
- Have meeting-free days and slowly increase them from 1 day to 4 days
- Create Slack icon (or whatever tools they use) to indicate "protected (work) time"
- Cancel Zoom plan
Of course, if managers would lead by example that would be very helpful.”
A special thank you to Maya, Morgan, Tammy and Katerina for weighing in.
And now over to you - How would you answer this question:
How can we help/encourage others to create a healthier balance between synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a team, and even in an organisation?
We want to hear your thoughts - let us know in the comments below.
Be sure to follow us over on LinkedIn as we’ll be posting more questions like this, and we’d love to hear from you!
Is your team struggling with communication in the remote workplace? We’ve created a new workshop for managers and leaders of remote teams - Adopting Asynchronous Communication that might be of benefit to you.
If you need further inspiration, I invite you to continue checking out our Virtual not Distant resources, including our free guide Leading Through Visible Teamwork, which is now available when you sign up to our monthly newsletter below.