What is the importance of communication skills for remote teams? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Workleap Director of Product Barbara Bermes, TIM Fmr Engineering Lead Andrew Parker speaks on the importance of strong communication skills for remote teams. Drawing on his experience managing remote teams across multiple locations, he emphasizes that while technical skills are important, the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively across disciplines is what truly defines a high performer working remotely. He highlights best practices for asynchronous communication and provides insights into how output can be measured in remote environments through a focus on outcomes rather than activities. Andrew also shares his perspective on the future of remote work and the incremental changes we may see in how virtual teams communicate and collaborate over the next five years.
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Show Notes
- Communication skills are even more important for remote knowledge workers.
- High performers elevate others through clear communication.
- Async communication challenges include misinterpretation without context.
- Provide views and ask genuine questions in async exchanges.
- Link to context and explain interpretations to avoid misunderstandings.
- Use emojis and custom reactions to reinforce behaviors.
- Encourage working in public channels for information sharing.
- Overcommunicate norms and expectations for remote interactions.
- Criticize privately, show curiosity publicly to avoid shaming.
- Define clear communication channels for different topics.
- Limit @channel mentions to avoid interruptions and distraction.
- Use reminders to avoid forgetting async requests.
- Observe outcomes rather than just activities for measuring output.
- Involve peers to get qualitative feedback on contributions.
- Focus on adding value through collaboration across functions.
- Technical skills alone don’t define high performance for remote roles.
- AI may improve managing the data firehose of remote documentation.
- Remote acceptance will increase with clearer company policies.
- Hybrid and fully remote models will be more clearly defined.
- Incremental improvements rather than revolution in remote tools.
About the speaker
Andrew Parker, the Software Anthropologist, is a software engineering consultant creating highly effective engineering cultures by bringing the right skills to the organisation’s leaders. He has over 20 years of experience leading organisations in various domains, from e-commerce to open-source configuration management software. He augments his practical experience with an MSc in Software Engineering from the Technical University of Munich. His engineering department at TIM Group was featured in two books on building effective teams, where he applied methods from anthropology and sociology to get to the root of what is going on in groups and collaboratively design better systems. You can learn how Andy thinks about and helps organisations on his podcast “Tactics for Tech Leadership”, which he co-hosts with Mon-Chaio Lo.
About the host
Barbara Bermes is an extremely passionate data-driven product leader, a previous International conference speaker, and a book author, with a comprehensive technical background and deep experience in B2B SaaS products at growth-stage companies. Motivated and driven by customer happiness, she is a decisive leader and executive with a proven track record of leading high-performing product teams with empathy, evangelizing product strategy and delivering world-class customer solutions. She frequently writes about product under https://bbinto.medium.com/