Did you ever feel like screaming at some colleague from work and couldn’t do it? Find out the insights about these situations with Luis!
There will always be times when we feel annoyed by some colleague at work. The problem is, people tend to take assignments on their own when they actually can’t deal with them alone. And when the time to deliver the task comes, they have nothing!
Watch the video if you’re trying to avoid those burnouts!
Luis:
Here’s how to really annoy your remote boss. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Virtual Coffee Chat with Luis. I am your host Luis, and today we are going to learn how to really annoy your remote work boss.
Today, I was really annoyed. I felt like screaming at someone and I don’t usually feel like screaming at someone. And by the way, never do that. Obviously, we’re human. Sometimes humans have a hard time controlling their emotions. There will be outbursts somewhere in your life, so not judging you. I have had emotional outbursts and you will, too, if you’re a human. But, by and large, do your hardest to try to avoid them because it’s not cool. You’re not being the best version of yourself when that’s happening, so do try to avoid. But when it does happen, be kind with yourself because nobody is perfect.
But, anyway, today I really felt like screaming at someone and why did I feel like screaming at that person? Well, it’s because that person, let’s say 24 hours ago, they acknowledged a task that I gave them. They said, “Okay, I’m onto it. Don’t worry. Don’t worry, boss. I’m onto it,” et cetera.
What this means, the implied meaning, is that I checked the task. I’m good to go. I don’t assume that people would acknowledge tasks for me work on them immediately. I assumed that they’re not just hanging around with their hands on their pockets, waiting for me to assign them a task. They obviously have other things to do. That’s fair. Get to it in due time. But if you acknowledge the task, I think it’s safe to assume that you at least have given it a glance. In this case, I sent a video with the QA feedback and I expect those things solved.
And then, the person disappeared on me. I was like, okay, I expect them, as I usually do, as I have felt in these videos, I expect good remote workers to be responsive at the beginning of their workday and at the end of their workday. Tell me what you’re going to do at the start of the day. Tell me what you did at the end of the day. But there was like crickets, crickets at the end of the day. I even think, “Hey, every day okay. Things going on? Any trouble? Any challenges.” No. Crick. Tumbleweed.
Okay. So, next day, 24 hours passed, questions about the assignment. Sometimes you give an assignment to someone and they ask some questions that they’re not the kind of questions that someone sat with the assignment and looked at it at several angles and really pondered about something and they have some questions. Those are very legit kind of questions to have after a 24-hour period.
But then there are the questions that are like, “I just read what you need. I have a couple of questions.” And I’m like, “You told me that you looked at that, that you understood the assignment 24 hours ago.”
Look, predictiveness matters in remote management and your manager, if you tell them that you understand the task, they obviously, if they’re reasonable, they won’t expect you to get right on it because obviously they’ll expect you to have other work. But they at least expect that if you’ve acknowledged the task, that you know what it entails and that you will ask any follow-up questions that are required for you to start doing the work whenever it’s possible for you.
That’s the key thing that I tried to make happen in my remote management style, is that I don’t determine when you start, I don’t determine when you start your task, but I do expect you to ask everything that you need in order to start the task when you are able to.
Remote work is about working asynchronously so whatever you’re doing questions can block you from doing it, questions that you need to ask me. There’s no sense in wasting the time that could be used going towards the goal in wasting the time waiting for someone to be online to provide the answers that you need. In fact, in a good remote working relationship, questions are written on Slack the minute you think about them so that the other person can answer as soon as they login.
So yeah. In short, if you want to really know your remote work boss, then tell them that you understood the task and then be radio silent for a day or two, until finally coming up with a question that clearly shows that you took those one or two days to actually look at the task.
Be clear in communication if you don’t want to have a bad time. That’s the most important thing in working remotely, clear communication.
For other important things, visit thinkremote.com and figure out how to be a great remote worker, really top-of-the-line person that everyone loves to work with. We have several guides on that. And if you enjoy this episode, please press Like, Subscribe and Share.
Let’s have one final sip. See you tomorrow, everybody.
