How to foster communication and motivation
A lapse in good communication feels like it spreads to both ends, as why would you communicate to someone who isn’t communicating well? I understand it though, its much easier to keep each other in the loop on the nitty gritty when you’re side by side in a space. Being disconnected makes it all the easier to be just that, disconnected.
We feed off of communication. Many times its the small insignificant details that spur great ideas. Now that your team is fully invested in an idea, the motivational energy bounces around the work-space. But what about those team members who work from afar? How will you keep their motivational spirit high?
I’d like to propose a way to foster communication: update each other on your daily activities at the end of your work every single “work” day.
Now I know everyone still has their own lives to run, and I myself have some projects outside of “Insert Startup Here” to attend to at times, so this isn’t an idea for you to report to each other to make sure you are working. Rather, this should be more of a micro-journal to each other.
If each night you write a quick summary of your day, in what ever format you’d like, talking about things such as: what you did, who you talked to, what you wish you had done, what you thought about(concerning work, or not), etc. So even on a day when you did nothing you might pop in to say “Didn’t do much today, but jotted down an idea for an influencer, will follow up tomorrow”. Just an example.
This is only a simple idea, but the point is to have a minimum once per day informal update to the rest of the team. This means doing this with all future teammates as well, which will be great. Imagine being a newbie and getting to see daily insights into the CEO’s day. Once you grow to a certain size you may limit this approach to individual teams.
This simple tactic gives everyone else an opportunity to lend a hand in any capacity, be it technical or motivational. It could also save you from many wasted meetings and conference calls. Most importantly it fosters the team communicating with each other consistently and candidly. Getting the small stuff off everyone’s chest each day can really add up!
A great way to implement this would be a Slack channel, call it #dailies or something else that doesn’t reference MMORPG’s. Allow discussions to happen there, but be sure everyone sees each other’s updates. Don’t let discussion drown out communication!
