If you’ve been reading with us since the start of the year, you’ll know that our theme this year is all about recovery. We chose this theme because we often forget that after being hit with a crisis, we need to work hard at recovering in order to remain resilient - and get ready for the next crisis.

This month, we have some thoughts about a small but very important part of recovery - and resilience - one of the technical ways that we communicate with each other: calls.

Communication became weird and stifled for many businesses when the global pandemic hit. While we’d always been talking on the phone, in videoconferences, and by email, we also had the ability to smooth over rough patches created by those systems with a little in-person chat.

Suddenly, this option was no longer available and, for many people, confusion increased. (For a sad-but-true laugh check out this satirical video.)

Communications Recovery

You can’t wait for things to change and a return to what we were used to in the past. You don’t know when that will be, what that will look like, and you need to be able to communicate effectively with your team, your strategic partners, your customers and clients - and you need to do that now.

Remote communications have been a vital part of our business at Admin Slayer since day one. Here are a few things we have learned along the way:

Get Formal

If you’re feeling cut off and disconnected from your work environment, you’re not alone. Many of us are used to walking down the halls, stopping by a desk here, an office there, all the way to our own regular place of work. Heads pop around corners for quick questions. It’s easy to just ask what’s going on when the person with the answer is close at hand.

Moving to a remote environment means being thoughtful and mindful about our communications - and getting a whole lot more formal. Instead of knowing you can just tap someone on the shoulder, you now have to book time with regularity… or you could lose touch entirely.

Get Purposeful

We’re all more than a little overloaded and overwhelmed these days. It’s important that you’re not replacing Meetings That Could Have Been Emails with Calls That Could Have Been Emails.

You absolutely should be protecting your time and your calendar carefully. Ending your commute and travel time doesn’t mean that suddenly you have mental space to give away to just anyone for just any reason. That random LinkedIn connection is not entitled to time out of your day so they can prospect you.

P.S. If you are prospecting us on LinkedIn, no we do not have ten minutes to jump on a call with you next week so you can show us what you can do or - worse- you can pick our brains. Our brains are entirely picked over. We publish the pickings in our blog.

Get Ready

For some reason, few people give conference calls or video meetings the same respect as in-person meetings, but that shouldn’t be the case.

This doesn’t mean you need to stiffen up your online dress code or try to banish pets and children from homes (that’s just not reasonable!), but it does mean being just as prepared and professional for a meeting as you would have been face-to-face.

Technology, Audio, and Video

How you deliver your sound and your look matters. It mattered when you were in person - of course, it matters online.

Obviously, you can’t control whether the wifi goes down, but you can be ready with a few things:

• Always have an alternate way of reaching them. If you’re working with telephone, make sure you also have the ability to email. If you’re working with a video conference platform, make sure you have a phone number. Something, somewhere, will go wrong, at some point. You’ll be ready.

• Don’t use your speakerphone. That’s always been awful. It cuts out and sounds weird. Get some good quality earbuds or wired headphones.

• Don’t use your computer audio, it’ll make other people sound weird. Again, good quality headphones or earbuds.

• Get a nice quality video camera. The one built into your laptop looks up your nose. No one wants to see that.

• Don’t use your computer’s built-in speaker, it sounds like you’re talking through shredded metal. Again, good quality headphones and/or a professional microphone.*

• If people are going to see you, test the video before you go on. What’s behind you? No one wants to see your laundry hamper. What’s the lighting like? If you’re fuzzy and dark you completely negate the point of the video. If you don’t have good lighting built into your room, buy some.

We’ve been working this way for a while. Investing in how you look and sound by phone or online is just as important as a decent haircut and a nice outfit was when we met up in person.

Have an Agenda

Sometimes, it makes sense to share that agenda with the rest of the attendees ahead of time. Sometimes it doesn’t. In any case, you need to be prepared with your key thoughts, your purpose, and the outcomes you want to achieve in that meeting - especially if you’re sliding from one meeting into the next with little downtime.

Give Yourself Some Breathing Room

It might seem really inviting to book meetings right up against each other. You’re just hanging up on one call and dialing into another right?

No. You are changing your mindset and your communication style from one person or group of people to another. You’re adjusting your purpose and your goals. Give yourself at least fifteen minutes (thirty is better) to get your brain out of one place, and put it in another. Oh, and to use the bathroom. You’re a whole person. Treat yourself well.

Want to connect with a team that knows just how to communicate online? You’ve come to the right place. Get in touch with us right here.