Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] If there's one thing that you should take away
from this class, it will be a deeper insight into your own communication style
and your own expectations, and hopefully a better
understanding of how technology impacts the way your teams are functioning on a
fundamental level. I'm Rahaf Harfoush, I'm a digital anthropologist,
professor, researcher, and New York Times
bestselling author, specializing in digital culture, innovation, and leadership. I teach innovation and
disruptive business models at the School of Management
and Innovation at Sciences Po in Paris and I'm
the author of three books, most recently, Hustle and Float: Reclaim Your Creativity, and Thrive in a World
Obsessed With Work. This course tackles a subject
that impacts all of us, digital communication in a
constantly connected world. If you work with geographically
distributed teams, have a hybrid world culture, you're trying to figure out communication in
this environment, well, this class is for you. We'll be focusing on
a document that I think every single team needs, the digital charter,
sort like a treaty, part agreement, part
conversation starter, part peace of mind. It's something that you'll
put together with your team to improve your
collaboration and burnout, prove you're working habits. In each lesson, we'll focus on one part of the charter and
we'll fill it out together. I'll show you how to evaluate
your own digital habits, how to talk to your team
about digital boundaries, and how to put some
protocols in place to handle anything unexpected
that comes your way. The hardest part of this class, we'll be taking a look at our
own habits and challenging ourselves and our teammates to consider a different approach. By the end of this class, you'll walk away with
something that you can put into
practice right away. Don't be afraid to
make this your own, you might find that some aspects apply to you more than
others and that's okay. The key here is to
feel empowered, at ease, and in control of
your digital communications. I'm so excited for you to
take this class because I know without a doubt there
is a better way to work, one where you can communicate
with your team in an environment without
unnecessary pressure or stress, and the benefits that you'll
feel will be immediate. Honestly knowing
that I'm helping making people's
working lives just a little bit better is part of the reason
why I love my job. I would encourage you to
share your digital charter, especially your
digital communication audit with other learners
here on Skillshare. The more versions we see, the more our community
will benefit, so don't be afraid
to ask questions or to share your customizations. Are you ready to get
started? Let's go.
2. Decoding Digital Habits : Each one of us has our own habits, routines,
and preferences. Whether it's how we
like to start our day or how we like to
structure our to-do lists, there are just certain
things we'd like to do in a specific way
because it works for us and digital communication
is no exception. For example, you might
have certain apps that you check in a particular order
first thing in the morning, or you might have
your own strategy for how you tackle your inbox, or how you prioritize
notifications. It's very likely that these
habits and routines have become such a normal part of your day that you don't
even notice them anymore. They're like the
invisible infrastructure that guide how you
spend your time, but have you ever stepped
back and considered how your own digital habits could be impacting your
team's culture. Today we are going to try to tackle that question and
we're going to do it by filling out a personal
digital communications audit. We're going to be using
the digital audit PDF, so if you don't have that
handy pause the video, print out a copy, and then come back when
you're ready to go. Let's fill this out together. The first question is your
favorite digital channels. Are there certain
digital channels you prefer over others? For example, some people love Facebook Messenger or others
are die-hard texters. For me, I use Telegram, Signal, and WhatsApp primarily, so we just fill that
out right here. Those are my preferred channels. Other examples could be
something like Instagram DMs, or emails or iMessage,
or Slack message. You get the picture. I want to think about message format. Do you like sending text, voice notes, or video notes? Again, personal preference. I love text messages and
I'm not a super big fan of videos or really notes
unless it's like a friend. The next box is emojis. Are there emojis, phrases, or abbreviations that
you're prone to using? You can check your phone for the most recent
emojis that you've sent in order to get an
idea of your emoji habits. When I did this I realized
that I used the ghost emoji, but not everybody
knows what that means. You might have a
favorite expression, or an acronym, or a set of emojis that you like
to use regularly. This is really important to know about yourself if you work with multicultural teams
because as I've learned, some emojis and phrases have different meanings depending on where you are in the world. Think about that and fill that
out here as a ghost emoji. Next up is your writing style. What about your punctuation? Do you like to write
out the word okay? Do you use all caps? Do you just send a k or
maybe a kk with the period. This is especially important if you're communicating
with people from different generations because if you're a stickler
for grammar you might find that you
like sending messages that have a period
at the end of them, but a younger colleague might
interpret that period as a sign that you're mad or that you're displeased with
their performance. I'm pretty I'd say informal. I'm pretty relaxed. I'm not obviously
breaking rules, but I'm a good texter. Next up we're going to fill
this formality level because some people are more formal in tone while others
are more casual. I live in France and the one thing that
I've noticed is that the French are more formal in their emailing culture
than in North America. For example, you would never use a person's first name
if you don't know them, whereas in North America I would find it totally normal
and fine to get an email from somebody I didn't know saying something
like, "Hey Rahaf. What's up?" I had a French
friend who once tell me that my emails were too informal and could even be
perceived as rude, and I'm so glad they said something because
honestly I had no idea. I tend to be informal
across all channels, so let me just fill
that out like that. I need to know this
about myself so that I can remind
myself that I'm always using the right formality especially with somebody
who doesn't know me. Just fill that out for all
of your different platforms. Next, I want to talk about timing which is this
box right here. I want you to list down how long it takes you to get
back to somebody. Do you respond in a few seconds, minutes, hours, or days. I'm really bad at
rapid replying, but I have friends
who are super quick. Remember, there's no right
or wrong answers here. We're just figuring out our own patterns of
digital communication, so I will put something like 1-2 business days for emails, maybe one day for
my text and chat. Just go through and
list them all out. Go to the box below
and think about when do you expect
somebody to reply to you? What's the appropriate
amount of time that you feel someone should take to get back to one
of your messages? For example, 1-2
days to get back to an email is fine and non-urgent email
is actually fine. One to two days for WhatsApp
is pretty fine as well, so I would just go through
and list all of that. I want us to look at
our tagging behavior. Do you like to copy anyone
and everyone who is on messages or emails
or you're very selective about who gets
looped into a conversation? Let's say I'm pretty selective. I hate when I'm looped in on emails that have
nothing to do with me, that's just my personal
preference. List down your own. Take the time to fill this
out to really understand your own preferences
and what they say about your expectations
around digital communication. I've even left a little box at the bottom in case you have something that
you want to change, or update, or adapt, or a little note you want
to send to yourself. Look at your own answers and now imagine that your boss or your colleague is
somebody who has the exact opposite preferences. You like instant responses, they take hours or days
to get back to you. You love getting included
in conversations, they hate anything that
adds unnecessary chatter. They love to send you
voice notes and you would prefer if they would
please just text. Can you see how tensions and conflicts can arise
in this scenario, or how two people
on the same team could feel disconnected
or misunderstood? The reason we fill
out the sheet with our own preferences
first is that before we can put policies in
place on how a team should communicate or how they
should use digital tools, we have to understand our
own habits, and routines, and our teams' habits and
routines as well so that we can negotiate a mutually
beneficial arrangement. Ideally, you would
have everyone fill out their own copy before beginning
a chat or discussion, but you could also fill
it out altogether. The choice is yours. Once you
have filled out this sheet, you can move on
to the next step.
3. Defining Team Constraints : Our next step is going
to be figuring out what constraints your team
is currently working with. Because before we can get into the details of the
digital charter, we need to understand how the team on a whole
is functioning. You're going to want the team constraints sheets
for this lesson, both the weekly
and monthly page. This first step can be done either alone or with your team, is to start with the top
of the form which is a detailed overview of your team's weekly
responsibilities and constraints. Now every team has
certain deadlines, projects, meetings that
are not negotiable. Any charter policy has to work
around those constraints, otherwise they're not
going to stick and people are not going
to follow them. For example, if your team has a standing meeting with your
director every Tuesday, and that's your director's
only time to meet, you're probably not
going to be able to shift it around that easily. Instead, you'll have to find
a way to work around it. Or let's say your team
is responsible for delivering a report
every Thursday, and that means that everyone
needs to be present the day before to make sure
that it gets done on time. Well, that needs to be
taken into account as well. We're going to fill out this top part where we're
just going to look at the week and figure out
where are our blocks. My company I do advisory
coaching on Thursdays, so that's a hard block for me, so just go ahead
and block it off. On Friday afternoons, I
generally do research, so that's like a semi block,
let's just block that off. On Mondays, I like to block
off the morning for writing, so I would just block
that off here like this. Once you've done
that, I want you to go down to the next box, which is the
operational hours box. Members of my team work
in different time zones, so there are certain hours where not everybody is operational. If you have
international colleagues or across time zone colleagues, you'll want to
identify the window of time during the workday
that overlaps with as many time zones as
possible where everyone is generally awaken
somewhat available. Now most of the teams
that I've worked with have wiggle room in terms
of their available time, so start with these constraints
and then you'll see what parameter you have
left to work with. For example, for
me it's between, I'd say 03:00 PM here
in Europe to about 9:00 PM which gets me to as
many people as possible. Now, different companies have different levels of flexibility, so if your team does have a lot of constraints, don't worry, don't be discouraged, there
are still a lot of things we can do to put a
great charter in place, and we'll talk about
what some of those things are later on. Now, I've given you
two options here, both weekly and monthly, so you can use one or both, whichever works
best for your team. Because some teams have
weekly limitations and other teams have monthly
or quarterly constraints, so just adapt the sheet to
the time-frame that works. I'll show you an example of
the monthly constraint would be if your team
has a deliverable that they have to
hand in every month, they might be
certainties of the month that are less
flexible than others, so you would just
take this little monthly sheet and you would say, okay, this week is going
to be a block for us. This is really useful for teams whose weeks
look quite different. Now you go back to
this weekly frame over here, this weekly overview, and I want you to
start adding in your personal constraints both for yourself and for
your colleagues. For example, you might have
somebody who has to take their child to karate class
twice a week at 5:30 PM, so I put that in here,
in the evenings. You might have
somebody who wants to prioritize an afternoon walk to clear their head or who have elder care or medical appointments
or other commitments. Just go ahead and add those in here as well to get an idea of what personal
constraints your team and your colleagues
are working with. You can even use different
colors if you like, and make it look fancy. Now we're going to
fill in the part of the sheet that's called your personal working preferences. For example, how many people on your team are night
owls or early birds? I once had a client who
did this exercise and realized that most of the people she managed were night owls, and yet their weekly
scheduled meetings were always first
thing in the morning. After she conducted an audit, she decided to shift the team meeting to later in
the afternoon and she noted an improvement in everyone's mood during
this new schedule time. They all had more energy, and the meetings were
more productive, because people weren't
struggling to wake up. Now everyone's life
is complicated, we all have a lot going on. The goal of this
exercise is to put everything on the
table so that we have a complete picture
of what the team needs and what is
expected of them. We want a clear and
concise overview. I've even left a section
at the bottom for you to make notes on anything
that you notice, any patterns or habits just
so that they're top of mind later on when we're
discussing the charter. Because in order for
a system to work, we have to understand
all the players, and all the moving parts. Once you've completed
the whole sheet, it should look
something like this, even some ideas
for improvements, change meeting
times for example. Now that you have
your own preferences and your team's constraints, you're ready to start outlining the details of the charter.
4. Negotiating Clear Expectations : You should have your own
communication preferences, your team's preferences,
your team constraints. Once you've filled all
of that stuff out, we can now start negotiating
the team charter or the agreed upon rules for digital engagement.
What's the goal? The goal here is to set
clear expectations that everyone on the team agrees
with and benefits from. This is a negotiation. Because listen, as much
as we would love for everyone to do things
our way all the time, that's not really realistic. We have to come
to an arrangement that works for
everyone on the team, which means we all
including you, should be ready
to compromise and adjust some of our expectations. Now remember, this
is a negotiation, not a competition, so you're all on the same
side and you're working for the benefit of
the entire team. Now ideally, you would do
this in a meeting altogether. You'd be having a conversation, because what we're trying
to get to is to get really specific about details so that there is no ambiguity. You will need the digital
charter PDF for this lesson, so be sure you have that handy. Once you have the
sheet in front of you, you'll go item by
item or box by box, and you'll discuss as a group what the final policy should be. Let's do an example of this together, so
you get an idea. The first step here is the
agreed upon response time. Here you'll make a list of the tools that your
organization uses, then go one-by-one and determine the appropriate amount of time somebody should take to respond. Let's start with emails. You start with emails and
let's assume that it's not urgent emails because
we will deal with emergencies and urgent
requests a little bit later. This is for just a non-urgent
regular work email. I would open up the
conversation at this meeting that
would say, okay guys, I think we should have two full business days to
answer non-urgent meetings. Then one of my colleagues
would be like, whoa, we're half,
that is way too long. I think everyone should
answer in 30 minutes or less. Then people start weighing, we have a conversation
and hopefully we reach a compromise to what an appropriate response
time should be. For example, in this
particular case, maybe we agree to check our emails three times
a day so that a client always or a teammate
always hears back from us within
a couple of hours. Once we agree on that,
we write it down, emails 2-3 times a day, whatever it ends up being, and you move on
to the next tool. You move on to Slack or text
messages or whatever it is. Now, I want to talk
briefly about why setting these guidelines
is so important. First, it ensures that
everyone knows what their teammates and
colleagues expect from them. When we expect
instant responses, the result is that people
get interrupted and distracted all the time in
their rush to answer us, and this creates a loss of
productivity and focus. By setting the policy upfront, it gives people the chance
to control their time and to ensure that they're
focusing on the right thing. Plus there's no ambiguity. You know that
you're going to get a response within
the set timeframe, so you don't have to spend
your mental bandwidth waiting and anticipating
for an answer. Now, I know not all
messages are created equal, but we'll talk about
that in a later lesson. Right now we're just
setting general guidelines. Next up is the after our email, what happens if you receive an email outside
of working hours? Is there an
expectation to respond or can you wait
until the next day? Now remember, we're not
talking about urgent emails, so you might decide as a team to set a policy that
sounds like this. If you receive a non-urgent
email after working hours, you can disregard it until
the following business day. Now, this gives
people the chance to actually disconnect from work and concentrate on being with their families instead
of tethered to a device. There's something
that's really powerful about giving people
permission to do this. It empowers them to prioritize
their personal time. Because the reality is, if the team communicates
after hours, then that has become
an accepted norm and people will feel socially pressured to keep up
with this expectation. By having a clear
policy written down, people can disconnect
with peace of mind. Let's just go ahead and fill
in your after hour policy. The next section is tagging and copying people on messages. Now, this goes back to your personal preferences about whether you'd
like to be in the loop or whether you want to be really selective about
what messages you receive. This is the time when you can discuss general best
practices with your team. For example, if you were to
use a service like Slack, this issue is usually handled by having different
channels so people can choose to receive the notifications and
messages that are relevant. But if like many companies you have an email heavy culture, it could be great
to identify what makes the cut for a
group wide message. For example, you could agree
that you're going to create some internal resources
that have updates on ongoing projects so that
instead of messaging people, there's a place where they can go if they need
that information. This is called a
pull versus push, because you're creating
a resource that pulls those who want the information versus
pushing it out to everyone whether
they need it or not. Take a second and fill that out. Next up is group chats, which I have a lot of, so get clear on what your
group chats are for. Is it to stay in touch and catch up socially
with your teammates? Is it for updates on a project? How you structure this
group will determine the settings that you use
and how people use it. For example, I have a social chat group with
some of my colleagues, it's just for fun. It's completely
acceptable to mute the notifications and
pop in informally, instead of receiving ping
after ping on my devices. But I am in another
group with a client which is discussing
an ongoing project. For that group, I'll keep
my notifications on, but I told the client that
unless it's an emergency, I'll only answer within
my working hours. The possibilities here are
endless and that's the point. It's about finding the balance
that works for your team. Go ahead and fill out all of
the different group rules. The last section is about
who needs to know what. I have seen teams go through a list of
current projects and determine who needs to be included in meeting invitations, updates, email, sparing their colleagues from
unnecessary email charter. Once you've filled out
this part of the sheet, we're ready to move on
to the next step which tackles meetings
and the calendar.
5. Creating a Calendar Strategy : Now, I want us to talk
about the calendar. The calendar is one of the most misunderstood and underutilized productivity
tools that exist today. Taking some time to
clarify how you'll use it will help your
team be more efficient, more productive,
but also happier. Because if you're like most
companies I've worked with, you might have noticed
that people are spending so much time in meetings that
they're not getting the opportunity to
actually do deep work, and this has been made worse with the rise
of remote work, with research showing
that teams are spending more time in meetings
than ever before. Now, this part of the sheet that we're going
to work on together is designed to help you
rethink how you use your calendar in relation to
your team's meeting culture. We're going to fill it out
together, but remember, you don't have to fill out every single section
of this document. I'm just walking you through
your options so you can find the solution that works best
for you and for your team. The first step is to look at your default meeting time and figure out what the
meeting time should be. Now, you'd be shocked at
how many people just book a 60-minute meeting because
that's the default setting. But more and more companies
are taking a hard look at this default and wondering if they should change it
to something else. What if the default was
30 minutes or 45 minutes? Meetings are one of those
things that can fill up as much time as they are given. Figuring out a default time is a really great way to become more efficient and gain
back some of your time. But you'll want to
do in this little box is make a list of your meetings and see if
the duration makes sense. Should that 60-minute
meetings stay at 60 minutes, should it be 40 minutes, should it be 30 minutes? Just go through the
list and figure it out. By reducing the
default meeting time, you'll reduce the
number of hours people are forced
to be in meetings, which everyone will
thank you for. You might have to experiment
with time duration because it might
take people a few meetings to get the hang of it. If you are trying something new, give yourself a few
weeks to settle and to see if you need to
make changes or not. I am not here to tell you what length your
meetings should be. I'm just suggesting that we take a look at our existing
meetings and makes sure that the timing works and supports your company and what you're trying
to accomplish. This is especially true
for remote meetings specifically because
Zoom fatigue is real, and back-to-back video
calls is exhausting. Another great question to ask in the default section is could
this meeting be an email? You will not believe the
number of times I've sat in a meeting that should have
been a three-line email. I think we're so used to
meetings as a regular part of office life that we rarely
take a step back and say, "Hey, is there a
better way to give everyone this information
that they need?" Now that you've figured
out your new defaults, let's move on to the meeting policies which are the best
practices that we're going to agree to put in
place to make sure that our meetings run as
smoothly as possible. For example, you can
set a policy that every scheduled meeting
has to have an agenda. You can look at your
team constraints and you can say we are not scheduling meetings earlier than 10:00
AM or later than 4:00 PM. You can say we would like
meetings to be scheduled to give people at least
24 hours in advance. You have so many
different options. You can even choose
which meetings are camera optional because
as I mentioned earlier, video calls can be draining so you can reduce the
amount of time people are on-camera and that can help them stay energized. Some companies are even
experimenting with a maximum cap of how many hours you can be in a meeting
per day to give people the chance to actually sit
down and do deep work. Other companies are introducing
entire meeting free days to encourage their teams to focus on working
without distractions. For example, you can say Wednesdays is a
meeting free day. Anything that you want
is possible here. So really think about what
would help your team. Once you've done that, I want
us to talk about buffers, which is this last
little box right here. How are you going to design
your meetings to give people the chance to go to the bathroom or to
take a short break? Because we often
don't give ourselves enough time to think about what we've just discussed
in a meeting, and we're so busy jumping from call to call to
call that we miss an opportunity to
absorb and process what we've learned and even to
have a glass of water. One suggestion I always have for clients is to build
in buffer time, especially if your company
favors 60-minute meetings. In a 60-minute meeting, you'd say something like
we're going to dedicate the last 10 minutes
to taking a break, jotting down important
points of the meeting, getting hydrated,
you get the picture. Now, this is a great way
to design for recovery, which reduces the
rate of burnouts. You can put that right here. So 60-minute meeting,
50 minutes, etc. Whatever you decide
the important thing is is that you're taking the time to clarify how
and when your team meets, in order to make sure that
it's aligned with your goals. Once you fill this out, your sheet should look
something like this. Now remember, this is an iterative process
not assigned contract. You might find that you
thought 30 minutes was enough, but you actually needed 45. That's okay. Go back, readjust and try again. The important thing here is that we are
proactively looking at our meetings as tools to help promote deep work
and reduce burnout.
6. Expecting the Unexpected : Putting a digital charter in
place is all fine and good, but it won't be helpful
if it falls apart at the first emergency or
unexpected occurrence. But fear not, there is a
section that addresses this specifically and
that's what we're going to focus on
in this lesson. You're going to need
the digital team charter emergency response form. Now again, this might
seem basic or obvious, but you'd be surprised at
how smoothly everything runs when there are clear
protocols in place. We're going to be
focusing on two things. First, we need to agree on
what to prioritize, and two, we need to decide
on what the plan of action is when an
emergency does arise. Let's talk about the
hierarchy of urgency. Now, we know not all messages or notifications
are created equal. A message from a colleague about a time-sensitive
project doesn't have the same priority as a company-wide email
congratulating a colleague on a promotion. There are clearly
some messages that have a higher
priority than others, so the key in filling this out is to make
sure that everyone agrees on how and what
we define as important. In this section,
we're going to be filling in what message or messages are the most
important to prioritize. For example, you could
say messages sent from your manager
or from the CEO, you can identify
specific projects or events that have
a set deadline. One best practice that you
could use is you can agree to put a time response in
the email subject line. For example, if I put 5:00 PM in brackets that I need
an answer to this brief, you'll know that you have
the whole day versus if I say I really need an
answer by (11:00 AM). Most of us still tackle emails chronologically
or as they come in, but this isn't actually
efficient at all. By setting a clear
hierarchy of urgency, we can tackle our inboxes
in a way that makes sense to ensure that we don't
miss important information. Once everyone is clear on what the priorities are and how
we're going to signal them, we can move on to the next step, which is how do we handle emergencies and urgent requests? We all know that unexpected
things inevitably come up, so how can we handle
them without panicking? First, we need to get everyone on the same
page about what constitutes an emergency because this is why when everybody's clear on what an emergency is, we all know what
they need to do in order to jump into action. A work emergency is defined as an important
time-sensitive issue that requires
immediate attention. Go through some of your
previous team scenarios to see what people
have considered an emergency in the past
and see if you would still agree or if we need to tweak
the definition a little bit. For example, what if the
company's website goes down? It's that an emergency? What if a social media
account gets hacked? Is that an emergency? What about a colleague who
needs access to a document? This one is a bit tricky
because it really depends on your team
and your company, and you'll have to decide
what can wait and what can't. In response to an emergency, one policy recommendation that I would have for people is to call your colleague on
the phone if there is an actual work emergency. The phone will get
someone's attention faster than group
chats and emails. You can decide who's
responsible for what project, you can decide when they're expected to be on
call and you can decide how you're
going to reach them and fill all of that
out on this form. Now this is really important because once people
know when they're supposed to be on call or when they're expected
to be available, that can make a
difference when you need a fast response in case
something goes off the rails. This also allows people to
be able to step away from their devices without jeopardizing their
work commitments. You also would want to think in the section about an escalation
process for your team. Let's just say
something goes wrong, you call the emergency
contact, what then? Whose sign off do you need
if you need to escalate? When do you need to
contact your manager? Really take your
time to figure out this plan because once
you've filled it out, it should look
something like this. You've got all the
important parts here and once you've done that we're almost done creating
the charter. There's just one
last piece to go.
7. Communicating Your Boundaries: Now that we've put all of these pieces together and
have done all this work, it's time to create
the final step, which is your personal
availability overview. This is a short
statement that you can add to your email signature that puts everything
we've talked about so far into practice. Now you're not going to send everybody a copy
of this document, so you'll want to communicate
your policies and boundaries to colleagues on other teams or to
external clients. Now think about it this
way, when you receive an out of office response
from someone, you know that there's
going to be a delay in response and you're
usually fine with that. But many people
don't communicate their constraints when
they're in the office, so a statement can go
a long way to help manage expectation and
reduce frustration. Now this statement will
vary from person to person, but generally it will contain the following three elements. First up is your
responsiveness window. This is when someone can
expect to hear from you. For example, you can
say something like, I check emails at
9:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 4:00 PM and I will respond before the
end of business day, or I'll respond to your
email in one business days, or my usual response
time to emails is this, or you can expect a response from me by this and this date. Go ahead and fill this
out with whatever makes the most sense
for you and your team. The second element is how someone can reach you in
case of an emergency. Remember we know what
an emergency is, so now we just need to be really clear as to how
someone can reach you. It's something as simple as, please call this
number in case of an emergency or if your
request is time-sensitive, please contact person X. Go ahead and fill that out here. The last element gives people permission to take time
to respond to you, so in case you send them an email that is outside
of their working hours. For example, you can just
write something like, I work flexible hours, and if you receive this email outside of your normal
business hours, please feel free to respond on the following business day. You can fill that
out right here. I found that most people
are quite reasonable. The annoyance we feel with emails and the frustration
that we have from digital communication
usually comes from not knowing when you're
going to get a response. This personal availability
overview statement, it eliminates the ambiguity, gives the person clarity, and gives them a way
to reach you if they feel like it's truly important.
8. Making the Changes Stick: Once your team has
agreed upon the charter, print the document and
sign it altogether. Place it somewhere
where you can see it or pin it in your
digital channels. Signing it means that
you all agree to adhere to the norms that
have been described. There is something
empowering and amazing about making a
commitment as a team, but you should also know that
nobody's perfect and there will definitely be
missteps or mistakes. Habits are really
hard thing to break. Remember to be patient
with each other as you create this new
working team culture. One of the pitfalls
you'll need to navigate is how addictive
technology has become. As you start to implement
these practices, you might find that you need to adjust your own behaviors. For example, if you're having
a hard time disconnecting, you might find yourself answering emails at
all hours of the day and night or responding to messages even on your off hours. This is normal. A
charter takes time, and it will definitely take time for the changes to stick. But a key success factor is
in agreeing upfront that you will hold each other accountable in a kind and compassionate way. Burnout is on the rise and our digital tools
are partly to blame. If you also see colleagues responding to messages
in their off hours, consider a gentle message encouraging them to
sign off and to rest. Point to the charter, use
it as a source of support. You'll be surprised
that you will also encounter your
own resistance, leftover adrenaline from
thinking that every email was urgent and important and every notification
requires your attention, but be deliberate
with how you use your devices and be sure to talk to your team frequently, especially if you
or other people on your team are
continuing to overwork. You'll definitely have to revisit the definitions
of urgency, but stay committed
to the end goal. The goal here is to create a working environment with the least amount of
stress possible, and where your team feels connected, heard,
and understood. One more thing, your work
isn't done just yet. The world is changing and your charter will
need to change too. Check this little
schedule to review box and add a quarterly check-in to go over the charter and see if you
want to change anything. For example, you might have realized that something
you defined as an emergency wasn't as important and you have
new priorities in place. During these meetings, you
can ask what's working, what's not working, and what specifically do we
want to change? Go over each section of
the document together and assess if it can stay the same or if adjustments
need to be made. You might need to tweak the emergency response
or change how you use IM or group chats to better suit your
team's purposes. But either way, know that
this document is meant to be a dynamic and evolving asset
that's designed to help you adapt and thrive in whatever environment
you find yourself in. Schedule a review,
sign and date it, and guess what? Your
charter is done.
9. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you now have your very own digital charter. Good job on filling in
the entire document. I hope it will help you establish working policies
that are designed to prioritize the well-being of you and your team
all over the world. Did you know that you
can use a version of this document with your family
and friends? It's true. Maybe not the full version, but in my own family
and friend groups, we have had specific
conversations about things like reply times, and what to do in an emergency, and what is an emergency? I find having clear
expectations around things like this really reduces the tension and
increases communication. For example, in my own family, even though we use WhatsApp
for a family chat, in case of a real emergency, the agreed upon protocol
is to send a text message, not a WhatsApp message, a text message,
because my phone will prioritize those messages and will make a sound even in
the middle of the night. Now, this is an important
distinction because our WhatsApp group is
just social chatter and we live in different time zones and I'd be pretty annoyed to be woken up at 2:00 a.m. because someone took a
picture of their dog. I mean, this is something that is really important to me, I got to get my sleep. Now, we also have a
policy that if there's an emergency and you call the person but don't reach them, you send a text message explaining the
situation immediately. I cannot stand walking out of a meeting and
seeing that I've missed 28 phone calls from my dad and not knowing
what's going on. It's little things like this that can add
so much clarity and help improve your digital
communication experiences and your relationships. I hope you've enjoyed this class and that you've walked away with a documented asset that will make your daily digital
life much better. I cannot wait to
see your projects, comments, and questions. Feel free to reach out and check out some of
my other classes on Skillshare and connect
with me on social media.