Let me ask you a question, is it more important to communicate information clearly. Or to communicate it without causing discomfort to other people? That's a trick question, because the answer is both. And that is just one way in which communication is the biggest challenge for most organizations. In the remote environment that challenge is only amplified. Later in this module, we're going to talk about the details of asynchronous communication. But what it effectively means is that people are on different schedules and different time zones. So you may send a message, but it won't be read for several hours or even days. If you don't develop strong communication practices, this can cause pervasive problems in delays. Cross cultural communication is a subtle art and nobody does it perfectly. People have different expectations and that can lead to misunderstandings. Meanwhile, people who aren't in an office can quickly become lonely and feel excluded. Which leads directly to burnout and dissatisfaction. At GitLab, One of our main areas of team focus is on having robust communication practices. We do this in many ways. Our primary tactics are to intentionally be transparent in all communications. To consistently create opportunities for informal communication and to rigorously documents everything. And when all that fails, we approach misunderstandings with the idea that everyone is on the same team with a positive intent. Most organizations are the opposite of transparent, so we know this is a big ask. But can you imagine what it would look like to share information openly, at least internally, among your team? GitLab is an open core company, so we're transparent by default and as a result we believe that were more efficient. People can find the information they need quickly without having to ask. They use our company Handbook or our project management systems. If you don't have transparent communication, you are duplicating work and you are creating blocker for people. So take a good hard look at your intellectual property and your documentation. And ask yourself how much of this could we make transparent and what would we gain from that? Different cultures and groups communicate differently. Low context communication is an approach that's designed to be inclusive of everyone, no matter their background or experience. The idea behind it is to act as if the people you're talking to have no additional context available to them. Give them the full information with links to additional reading if needed. So there's no time or effort wasted and they can act quickly without misunderstandings and false steps. As a leader, this puts the burden on you to communicate more clearly. Will it slow you down in the moment, yes, but the alternative is communicating quickly and not giving full information. And that slows your entire team down much less efficient in the end. Imagine you're based in Asia and your team member is in North America. You have a question about something in their area of expertise, so you write down the question and send it to them, But you may not read their response for a full day. And what if you have a follow-up question? Or, imagine if you are a manager and one of your direct reports Needs some information while you're in the middle of something. You now need to stop what you're doing and go find the answer. Otherwise your report is blocked. Now imagine you have a single source of truth. A complete home for documenting all the information your team members might need to know which is kept up to date. The team member on a different time zone won't need to wait and the manager won't have to break their workflow. Individuals can find the information they need right away without having to ask at all. In the next lesson, You'll learn what it means to have rigorous transparent documentation. And how that can improve inclusivity, efficiency, an communication throughout your organization. Communication breaks down. That is a normal routine experience in the workplace, so we plan for it. GitLab encourages team members to assume that everyone is working towards shared goals. And that we all want the best for the organization and for each other. When we have a misunderstanding, we focus on the positive and work to resolve it. It's surprising how far this shift in attitude can take you. Give it a try. [MUSIC]