Summary

When screens mediate our work relationships, we must consciously show empathy towards our coworkers. There are three opportunities at work to practice digital empathy.

• When reading and writing.

• Before and during meetings.

• In our approach to collaboration.

I describe these opportunities in detail in the post below.

An effective remote worker is nothing, if not proactive. In a distributed workplace where screens mediate our work relationships, that proactivity must also translate to how we show empathy for our coworkers.

I think of empathy as “sparing a thought” for another person. And I must tell you, it’s not something that’s come naturally to me. Allow me to give you a back story. Over the last year or so, I’ve turned my attention to reading a bit more fiction than I used to. It’s helped me improve my comprehension skills since many of these books create vivid worlds that I as a reader must wrap my head around. The payoff from this effort is gratifying too, as each book builds to its conclusion. But the other fun part has been building character sketches of different individuals that appear in these books. 

One of the enduring, if caricaturish, characters I read about last year was Professor Don Tillman of the Don Tillman/ Rosie series. I’ll spare you the details, except the most important one - Don is autistic. In India, we sometimes take neurodiverse conditions such as autism as “cute”. Unsurprisingly, my parents never diagnosed me with it, even though I was always a socially awkward kid. Reading the Don Tillman series prompted me to take an online test for autism, and it seemed to think that I sit somewhere on the spectrum. Of course, I must get a proper diagnosis, but the test results explain some of my idiosyncrasies. Unlike some other people, I’ve had to make a conscious effort to practise empathy.

In a twisted sort of way then, my natural awkwardness helps me reflect on how I’ve tried to be a colleague others may want to work with. So in today’s post, I want to share a few ways that I’ve learned to show empathy for my coworkers. You’ll notice none of these ways are difficult, but also not as common as we’d like them to be.

When working asynchronously 

This is a site about asynchronous work. So I assume you spend a lot of time working asynchronously. And if so, I assume that you have to read and write a fair bit. Here’s how to show empathy through those acts.

• Read carefully. Reading is the equivalent of active listening when you are async. Before you react to any written communication, read it end-to-end. It’s tempting to react to a specific part of the text, but doing this too early risks losing the forest for the trees. Take the time to comprehend everything the other person has written before you respond to any part in particular. 

• Write clearly. Writing is the currency of asynchronous communication, in an era where people read very little. So it’s our responsibility to be brief and clear. Measure twice. Cut once. Run the readability checks and refactor your writing so it's easy to comprehend. Make your writing easy to scan, using headings, bullets, tables and images. Your colleagues will thank you for it.

• Respond comprehensively. Have you ever felt a tinge of frustration when you wrote a long comprehensive email, only to get a one-line response to one of the many points you touched upon? Don’t be that person. Once you’ve read your colleagues’ writing, respond to everything that’s asking for your input. When you’re working on documents or pages, use inline responses to reference context. This doesn’t just show respect for your colleagues, it also makes the asynchronous conversation deep and productive.

• Don’t forget to emote. Writing can seem bereft of tone and emotion, especially when people don’t know you well. Just like a smile can be disarming in real life, a smiling emoji 😀can help liven up your writing. Use emojis in your writing not only to convey emotion but to soften the edge of your communication. 

• Respond in time. Imagine speaking to someone who doesn’t respond to you. Not a good feeling, right? It’s much the same when you don’t respond to written communication within a reasonable time. People are OK with lag, so it’s ok not to respond during your focus time. And yeah, you shouldn’t bother responding over a weekend. But it’s also not OK to keep people waiting, indefinitely. I suggest that as a team; you take stock of all your communication channels and decide what’s an appropriate response time for each of them. From that moment on, respect that team commitment so you don’t make each other feel ignored or anxious.

Reading and writing won’t be your only acts of collaboration though. You’ll often have to meet with your colleagues. And meetings are another opportunity to show empathy.

Before meetings

I argue that to make a meeting effective, a lot of work must happen outside the meeting itself. That sentiment also sets you up to be an empathetic colleague. Do the simple things well, and people will appreciate you for it.

• Share the context. If you’re planning a meeting, share the context that people need to arrive at the meeting. If you’re a senior leader setting up a meeting with someone junior, consider how anxious someone may feel when you set up a meeting without an agenda. It’s the equivalent of beckoning someone with your finger, and saying “In my room. Now!”. Except it’s worse when it’s remote. People stew over such meeting invites and drive themselves nuts, imagining the worst. 

  Be nice. Share an agenda. If you expect to solve a problem in the meeting, share the information people need to come prepared for collaborative problem-solving. It will make the meeting more productive and help everyone bring their most intelligent self to the table.

• Do the prep work. There’s no point sharing prep work for a meeting if no one looks at it. Be an empathetic teammate by preparing for every meeting you attend. If you need time to consume some reading, do so. Set aside “think time” if you must. Whatever you do, don’t arrive at a meeting with zero prep. It doesn’t just slow things down, it’s borderline arrogant - surely you don’t expect magic to happen just because you showed up?

• Nudge people towards productive habits. While it’s important to prepare for meetings, it’s a habit that takes time to cultivate, especially if it’s not a common behaviour in the rest of the company. So if you notice people ignoring the prep work, plan your meetings such that people can use the first few minutes to finish the prep in silence. This is a simple way to nudge your team to take the prep seriously.

• Plan a buffer. It’s hard to get straight into the business when you set up a meeting. People often exchange pleasantries and check in on each other. You also can’t keep going till the last minute of the meeting. You need time to agree actions and meeting notes. Some people may need to get their heads screwed back on for the next meeting. So I suggest always planning some buffer at the start and end of the meeting. That way, you aren’t always racing against the clock and biting off more than you can chew within a time box.

• Accept or decline. How annoying is it, to not know if someone you need for a meeting will attend or not? And how easy is it to spare our colleagues this anxiety? Hit that button to accept or decline the meeting and do that well in advance. Don’t wait till the last minute. And when you decline a meeting or propose a different time, add a note explaining why. That way you don’t keep your colleagues guessing. 

All the work you do before a meeting will pay off during the meeting and after. But that’s not enough. You must also be a thoughtful colleague during such meetings.

During meetings

My old man always said, “Well-begun is half-done”. Preparing for a meeting helps you begin well, but you still need to do the other half of the good job. Being empathetic during the meeting may be amongst the easiest things we can do. After all, this comes closest to the in-person interactions we’ve had at the office or when growing up. Here are my suggestions.

• Be on time. It’s the easiest thing you can do. You don’t just respect other people’s time by being punctual, you also help the organiser stay to their plan. And if you think you’ll be late, give the organiser enough notice so that they can plan for your delayed arrival.

• Start pleasantly. Take a few minutes at the start of the meeting to exchange pleasantries and check in on others. Listen to what others say and respond accordingly. Otherwise, it can seem forced and formulaic. You won’t lose anything from sharing greetings and catching up, but you will gain a lot from the rapport you build. 

• Smile - it costs nothing. Work is serious, but you needn’t do it with a poker face. Unless you’re cross, be generous with your smiles. It helps lighten the mood and humanise the environment. Especially if you have junior people in the meeting, you’ll surprise yourself with how much a smile can lift their confidence during a meeting.

• Don’t multitask during meetings. It’s rather disrespectful to do something on the side when in a conversation with others. You seem like the friend who buries their head into their phone at a dinner table. Don’t be that person. If you’re attending a meeting, give it your full attention. Otherwise, excuse yourself.

• Raise your hand. Wait your turn. As we gain experience and tenure, we become more confident to speak our minds. But it’s a bad idea to speak out of turn. We often interrupt someone else’s flow or disrespect other people who may have been earnestly awaiting their turn to speak. Instead, raise your hand using the tools your conferencing software provides and allow the facilitator to come to you.

• Don’t hijack the agenda. Sometimes we must briefly step away from our agenda. This is OK, as long as you don’t let the digression derail the original intent of the meeting. If you digress, call it out to the facilitator or the organiser. Time box the digression and only if the facilitator feels you can continue that thread of discussion, should you stick to it. Otherwise, work with the organiser to park the discussion for a later time and continue with the planned meeting.

None of these meeting tips are rocket science, but I see people ignore them so often, that they are worth calling out. Reading, writing and meetings aside, our collaboration approach also helps us show empathy to others. 

All other times

Our collaboration approach is the style that drives how we interact with our colleagues when trying to achieve shared objectives. This undescribed approach becomes visible in all the work we do. So think of it as an advertisement for your brand of work.

• Own your commitments. Each of us has probably worked with a colleague who doesn’t keep up their commitments. It’s no fun working with them. It’s also hard to trust them and their competence. We all miss deadlines occasionally. There’s no harm in slipping up if you can give your colleagues an early heads-up. The moment your coworkers have to follow up, you might already have frayed their nerves. And if you see yourself missing your deadlines too often, you must revisit how you estimate the complexity of your work.  

• Watch the noise. People often advise us to over-communicate when working remotely. Don’t do that. No one cares for minute-by-minute updates. A more thoughtful approach works better. Consolidate small chat messages into longer updates that serve as a baton pass of meaningful information. Honour threads on chat groups, so you preserve the context of discussions for everyone else. When working on code, on the other hand, make atomic changes and write a coherent commit message for each commit. By working in a high-signal, low-noise pattern, you’ll ensure that your colleagues don’t have to deal with a deluge of pointless or disorganised notifications.

• Say, thank you. Most knowledge work is a team sport and we’ll do well to take a leaf out of sports teams’ playbooks. Watch how players high-five each other after a good pass, or when the other person takes a catch. Like sports players, we’d be nowhere without the cooperation of others. So take a moment to thank your teammates whenever you have the chance. You’ll bring smiles to their faces and encourage the behaviour you thanked them for. You’ll also encourage them to thank others, and perhaps kick off a virtuous cycle of appreciation in the team. How awesome would that be?

Indeed, each of us would love to be part of an exceptional team. It’s the team where everyone trusts and respects each other. You also feel that the other person appreciates your efforts and cares enough to make work easy for you. Our approach to work helps facilitate such a team environment.

So those were some things I’ve learned about demonstrating empathy for my virtual colleagues. I’ve had to learn these the hard way, and that’s just as well. But you needn’t repeat my mistakes, right? Be original. Make your own mistakes. Oh, and if you have some advice on how you show empathy for your colleagues, tell me in the comments. I’m always keen to get better.