The last few years have forced companies and employees to rethink how remote work is performed. One of the most critical components of a successful remote workforce is communication. Communication is especially important for Engineering roles like SREs and DevOps that require collaborating with multiple disciplines across an organization.
Different teams bring different function-specific language, business context, and team-specific goals to every discussion. How can teams effectively communicate all of that critical knowledge with each other? With storytelling.
Every employee in a company views their work differently, much in the same way every character in a story views the world differently. Collaboratively building shared mental models of the problem at hand allows teams to identify and address those different views to form a more resilient solution.
Similarly, every employee is driven by their own professional agenda, much in the same way every character in a story is driven by their own personal agenda. Identifying all involved employees’ wants and addressing them in the process of building a solution increases employee engagement and buy-in for the solution, which ultimately leads to better engagement with the solution.
Storytelling isn’t always about what’s said, but what’s conveyed. Non-verbal communication like body language, posture, and tone of voice all influence the delivery and understanding of information. Employees will pick up on these cues and tune in or tune out of the conversation accordingly, so engaging your teammates with verbal and non-verbal communication is critical for effective communication.
Finally, let your team be the hero of their own story. Give your team a clear problem statement, position your company’s values as guardrails for solving the problem, and let the team find the solution themselves.
Want to hear more? Check out my website or shoot me an email!
Top comments (0)