What tips do you have for working with others remotely? Working from home seems to be falling out of fashion, but even those who work in person often collaborate with team members in other locations or even globally. TextExpander has always been a remote company so we have a lot of experience navigating the challenges of remote collaboration.
It all comes down to communication and how you handle it. Here are a few tips:
- Be verbose: It’s important to be detailed in communication so you’re both understood and not misunderstood.
- Take advantage of emojis: We’re big on emojis here at TextExpander. Emojis are a nice way to respond to Slack messages without causing additional clutter. Emojis are also good to add to messages to convey emotion.
- Always assume the best: A rule here at TextExpander is always to assume the most positive interpretation of a message. This is super important because messages in text often appear much more negative than they actually are. This is also where emojis can come in handy to make the message feel lighter.
How about you? Any remote collaboration tips you can share?
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I really like these tips! I am very wordy with my remote team, and sometimes I worry that I am TOO wordy! I have found that when I have a larger assignment to delegate, I run my work through AI to see if I can clean it up. That has been really helpful not only for clarity, but also tone (not that I am rude, but I like a really peer-to-peer vibe). I am also a huge fan of emojis, which I use liberally (thank you, TextExpander, for the public folder of emoji!). So I guess my one addition is AI. 
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Great tips! I agree communication is crucial. Here are few more tips on email to add:
E-Mail is not private
Never write something in an email that you couldn’t say in front of everyone. Sometimes people unintentionally forward emails. E-Mail is never fully private!
Structure your email
For longer emails, introduce a visual structure. I use TextExpander to have long lines of “=” to highlight headers like I did here.
Only include relevant people
Don’t use reply-all. It’s almost never necessary.
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I think it’s hard to be too wordy in a remote environment, though my coworkers might disagree.
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The email privacy reminder 
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When I was in journalism school in the early 2000s, I was always told not to send anything in an email I wouldn’t want on the front page of the New York Times. Sure enough, many emails since have made it to the front page of the NYT.
