3 Interpersonal Communication Tools You Need for Every Remote Team

Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," offers frank advice for your challenging problems. She consults with leaders and teams to help them learn about practical and possible options. They can then decide how to adapt their product development. Her most recent book is "Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility." See www.jrothman.com for all her books.

  Communications Management  

Although we often think of tools or templates when we think about communication tools, we need interpersonal “tools” even more often. When we don’t use our interpersonal tools enough, we create problems in the team.

We can reduce misinterpretations and increase engagement with these three interpersonal “tools” that we all have access to. I find these tools help me be more human—and help the other people be more human with me:

• Assume good intention
• Extend empathy
• Maintain a sense of humor

Interpersonal Tool 1: Assume Good Intention
In my experience, assuming good intention challenges most of us—especially when we feel pressure. Let’s look at an example.

Dan, a scrum master, wasn’t sure what was going on with his team. He always turned on his video for meetings—but he was the only one in the entire team. Everyone worked out of their houses. Most people worked from their kitchen tables or their living room couches. He had an office in his home, with a door.

Aside from not using video, people muted their audio as a matter of course. Dan understood—there were plenty of cats, dogs and small children running around. However, people didn’t always respond when other people expected them to do so.

Some team members were angry about not receiving “prompt” replies to their emails…

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