How To More Clearly Communicate With My Team?

[Process]

This is the first time I have people who work for me. It is the next step in my evolution. They are from a country everyone learns English as a second language in school. There is a slight barrier, since they take figures of speech literally.

The solutions I've found through trial and error:

1. The most effective way to label things and show them visually what my objective is.
2. The other effective thing is to pick up the phone and speak with my team's leader. He is experienced and has browsed the internet for a long time, so he understands what I'm telling him on the first try.
3. My other solution has been to create case studies when the results have been horrible, and broken down step by step how I want them to execute the process. This has shortened the learning curve for new team members.

Even with these steps, it typically takes the team multiple tries to meet the standard we strive for. Customers have no idea how much back and forth went into delivering value. It is no wonder most places settle for good enough.

TLDR: Am I taking the right leadership steps? Is it naturally a grinding process of training people? Or am I hiring the wrong people?

 

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[Rabby]

A few things I've done that help, depending on the situation:

1. Make a video or visual to show them what you're talking about.
2. Use 3 way communication to verify understanding before you move on. There are lots of industries this is used in; we use it to make sure we're all talking about the same thing in software.
3. Write, or have someone write, a meeting summary. That summary gets emailed to everyone who attended (assuming small meetings like 3-4 people). The email asks them to correct or clarify anything that is wrong / misunderstood.
4. Have more frequent communication if you're only talking every so often. With remote workers, it is easy to have your targets drift apart, and the planners and developers end up with different priorities.
5. Automate a weekly check-in. Slack channel or <something> asks everyone on the team to identify what they will be working on for the week, what they need from someone else if anything, and stuff that blocked them last week if any.

Here's my weekly check-in message, which comes every Monday at 10am to the main team channel:
-----
Slackbot 10:00 AM
Reminder: Time to re-sync

Please post when you can:

• What you plan to work on this week
• Anything you need from another team member for your work, or that would make your work better or easier
• Anything that didn’t work out related to what you posted last week… and possible solutions

Thank you!
-----

Importantly, I think, I also participate in the weekly sync, since in my case I am at least partly managing the team. When I hire a manager to manage the team, the manager will also need to let people know what she/he is working on. It doesn't work as well if you don't hold to the same standard, lead by example.

 

[Rabby]

Also, to answer your last question, you can hire a genius with perfect language skills, and STILL have misunderstandings. The tools you use to ensure understanding are important.

 

[Process]

A few things I've done that help, depending on the situation:

1. Make a video or visual to show them what you're talking about.
2. Use 3 way communication to verify understanding before you move on. There are lots of industries this is used in; we use it to make sure we're all talking about the same thing in software.
3. Write, or have someone write, a meeting summary. That summary gets emailed to everyone who attended (assuming small meetings like 3-4 people). The email asks them to correct or clarify anything that is wrong / misunderstood.
4. Have more frequent communication if you're only talking every so often. With remote workers, it is easy to have your targets drift apart, and the planners and developers end up with different priorities.
5. Automate a weekly check-in. Slack channel or <something> asks everyone on the team to identify what they will be working on for the week, what they need from someone else if anything, and stuff that blocked them last week if any.

Here's my weekly check-in message, which comes every Monday at 10am to the main team channel:
-----
Slackbot 10:00 AM
Reminder: Time to re-sync

Please post when you can:

• What you plan to work on this week
• Anything you need from another team member for your work, or that would make your work better or easier
• Anything that didn’t work out related to what you posted last week… and possible solutions

Thank you!
-----

Importantly, I think, I also participate in the weekly sync, since in my case I am at least partly managing the team. When I hire a manager to manage the team, the manager will also need to let people know what she/he is working on. It doesn't work as well if you don't hold to the same standard, lead by example.

Thank you I particularly like points 2, 4 and 5. I need to follow up with them like I would a client.

3. would be helpful to make sure they can put what I said into their own words.

Thanks @Rabby, I appreciate all the value you drop on this forum.

 

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[Jon L]

I second Rab's comment about videos. I use snagit capture to create screen capture videos of anything more complex than 'move this button from here to there'

Sounds like you're talking software development? I've recently added this to my list of things I do to ensure that everything is crystal clear: I come up with the initial database design myself. Along with a complete wireframe of the system, this captures most of the intent of the system. My lead dev and I will go through EVERYTHING on a skype call, talking through how everything will work. He will usually spot some errors in my logic, so its a great way to double check the requirements gathering and system design work that I've done.

I also document, in writing, the story behind the system we're building. "Why" is important. Developers need to understand not only to 'make this thing fast' but: 'when an order comes in that needs to get entered into the system, the users have to enter it in 5 minutes or they violate the terms of the contract they have with their clients. Each minute delay costs them $10,000 in contractual fines, so its crucial that everything works smoothly together. As you're coding the system, if there's anything about this design that might cause such a delay, please bring it up with Jon and make sure it gets addressed.'

 

[BigRomeDawg]

"Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" helped us a lot.

It's about how to create a vision and culture for scaling to 8 figures.

Past 6 months, we've been working through the first 3 principles which are something like this:
- Making sure the leadership team is aligned
- Making sure the rest of the team is aligned with the vision, and working toward the #1 quarterly goal
- Creating a consistent meeting & communication rhythm

Those first two really get everyone involved in creating the vision / quarterly goals.. When the team is part of creating the vision, they are way more keen to enforce it & live it.

The meeting rhythm is the accountability portion to keep the vision & goals rolling. We do 1-hour team meeting per week & 15-minute daily huddles.

Is your team remote?

 

[BigRomeDawg]

I second Rab's comment about videos. I use snagit capture to create screen capture videos of anything more complex than 'move this button from here to there'

Sounds like you're talking software development? I've recently added this to my list of things I do to ensure that everything is crystal clear: I come up with the initial database design myself. Along with a complete wireframe of the system, this captures most of the intent of the system. My lead dev and I will go through EVERYTHING on a skype call, talking through how everything will work. He will usually spot some errors in my logic, so its a great way to double check the requirements gathering and system design work that I've done.

I also document, in writing, the story behind the system we're building. "Why" is important. Developers need to understand not only to 'make this thing fast' but: 'when an order comes in that needs to get entered into the system, the users have to enter it in 5 minutes or they violate the terms of the contract they have with their clients. Each minute delay costs them $10,000 in contractual fines, so its crucial that everything works smoothly together. As you're coding the system, if there's anything about this design that might cause such a delay, please bring it up with Jon and make sure it gets addressed.'

Good tips.

For screen capture, I really love Loom.

+99 on documentation - in IT heavy documentation is a given, I forget how little most businesses document. Yes yes yes document every single process and system in your business and get everyone on board to document theirs. It can take awhile to reap the rewards.. but so worth it. Build documentation into your culture/vision, or make it one of your top quarterly priorities, etc.

 

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[Jon L]

Here's a followup on 'have you hired the right people'

In S/W development, some things just need to be a given, especially when you specify that they're a given from the get go. If devs are lazy and don't 'just do' those things, you have the wrong team

What am I talking about? Its all the little things that can cause endless back and forth crap. Stuff like:

• Proper currency formatting (seriously, how hard is this? there's a function for it after all ... but apparently, its hard for some)
• edit/add forms not clearing data between uses properly. No, you should not update the previously edited item with the item you're trying to add now.
• Database crap: Please don't download the entire database three times into the local browser every time you want to update a single record

(not that my team has ever done any of that. Well, not multiple times anyway)

 

[Process]

"Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" helped us a lot.

It's about how to create a vision and culture for scaling to 8 figures.

Past 6 months, we've been working through the first 3 principles which are something like this:
- Making sure the leadership team is aligned
- Making sure the rest of the team is aligned with the vision, and working toward the #1 quarterly goal
- Creating a consistent meeting & communication rhythm

Those first two really get everyone involved in creating the vision / quarterly goals.. When the team is part of creating the vision, they are way more keen to enforce it & live it.

The meeting rhythm is the accountability portion to keep the vision & goals rolling. We do 1-hour team meeting per week & 15-minute daily huddles.

Is your team remote?

Yes most of them are remote. The more experienced people are local.

communicating more frequently is the killer due to time delay. I will have to meet with them directly a few more times a week.

Usually I just communicate daily with the team leader.

I second Rab's comment about videos. I use snagit capture to create screen capture videos of anything more complex than 'move this button from here to there'

Sounds like you're talking software development? I've recently added this to my list of things I do to ensure that everything is crystal clear: I come up with the initial database design myself. Along with a complete wireframe of the system, this captures most of the intent of the system. My lead dev and I will go through EVERYTHING on a skype call, talking through how everything will work. He will usually spot some errors in my logic, so its a great way to double check the requirements gathering and system design work that I've done.

I also document, in writing, the story behind the system we're building. "Why" is important. Developers need to understand not only to 'make this thing fast' but: 'when an order comes in that needs to get entered into the system, the users have to enter it in 5 minutes or they violate the terms of the contract they have with their clients. Each minute delay costs them $10,000 in contractual fines, so its crucial that everything works smoothly together. As you're coding the system, if there's anything about this design that might cause such a delay, please bring it up with Jon and make sure it gets addressed.'

The video capture will be even better than the screenshots. Thanks that’s a really good idea.

I also find doing some of the key part’s outline makes it Easy for them to follow.

 

[randomnumber314]

My 9-5 is as a software engineer. The team I'm on in easily the most productive in our company. What works really well is defining what "it" looks like, i.e. wireframe or crayon drawing of the layout, and secondly defining how "it" works.

Some designs are really simple and only require a sentence for how "it" works, some designs require one design and ten separate lists of steps for how "it" works. Take this WYSIWYG text box, as a whole it would require dozens of paragraphs to describe, so break it down into discrete criteria like "Text input looks like a, b, c" and add a list of specs for each button, e.g. "When the B is pressed all text from then on is bold, font-weight 600, and the button text color is #666, background #ddd while bold enabled"

Just slow down and break things down into discrete and unmistakable steps. After a while you and the team will get a feel for when you need to explain every single thing, and when you can say "make it do y."

 

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