Whether they’re colleagues within your organization, outsourced or remote talent, customers and clients, or subject experts you’re connecting with, the answer is the same: ownership.

To buy into a project, collaborators need to feel a sense of ownership over the project’s execution and outcomes. But creating a sense of ownership can be hard enough on-site, within a close group. How can we achieve it in a distributed setting, with people we may never meet in person?

1. Ask for ideas, advice or help

Companies routinely ask customers for help and ideas to develop or name products, improve services, and more. Asking colleagues and contacts for their advice will help you to identify those who have experience in similar settings, and have a passion for that type of project.

Using a public forum like social or professional networks to ask a question like, “Have you had this problem?” is frequently the speediest way to find a current solution to technical and other conundrums.

Once they’ve provided their advice, most contributors will be interested in seeing the results of their input. They may also be more inclined to advocate on your behalf, perhaps to secure the assistance of third parties.

2. Invite and reward feedback

Inviting feedback — on ideas, prototypes, and trials — is particularly good for gaining buy-in from customers and suppliers, as well as respected peers.

It may not get a would-be project contributor to the point where they’re willing to commit to your project, but it can make your contacts more amenable to providing insight or advice periodically during development. Reward or recognize the feedback publicly to garner an even stronger sense of involvement, and encourage further contributions.

3. Reveal the process

Making the more innovating, or intriguing aspects of your project publicly available — for instance, through interviews, profiling on social media, or your team blog — can pique the interest of the types of collaborators you want to work with.

If they can see an opportunity to make a valuable contribution to your project, prospective collaborators may contact you primed to get involved. The only hitch is that unless your project is really innovative, you may struggle to achieve impact with this tactic.

4. Make others part of the journey

With this technique, you make the most of others’ desire to build their reputations and demonstrate their experience by inviting them to join you on the project “journey.” You might ask customers to vote on product names, photograph the team at work (or play), and generally open up your project so that peers, customers, clients and others feel they’re part of it.

Generating interest in this way can really help you to build ownership among potential and current contributors. It also provides opportunities to cross-promote or reference those who do contribute.

5. Show yourself

You’ll likely have trouble soliciting buy-in from others if you struggle to communicate that you yourself — and your team members — have already bought into the project.

Whether it’s through social media, an intranet or Yammer, your blog, or the media, make sure your communications illuminate your team’s investments — both personal and professional — in the project. Be as genuine and candid about the project as you can. Would-be contributors will appreciate your clarity, and will be more likely to want to help you out.

Finding collaborators — be they potential employees, or consultant subject experts — can be a challenge, but these five techniques can make the job easier, more natural, and more enjoyable.

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Communication has evolved with technology, but many of those now IMing colleagues cut their teeth writing internal memos on typewriters. Cultural and generational clashes are both common in distributed collaboration, and more damaging than they might be if the working relationships had a face-to-face component.

Many have discussed email etiquette, but for the average web worker, the notion of politesse can seem archaic — or even counterproductive in some circumstances. Here, then, are five golden rules for respectful, productive digital communication, whether you’re using email, IM, video chat, phone, or other communications tools like document sharing and time tracking systems.

1. Have an agenda, and meet it

To keep digital exchanges functional, set an agenda. Whether it’s a one-line email, or a one-hour video conference, your interaction will be more productive if you stay on track. Your colleagues will appreciate it, because it shows respect for their time. And it’ll let you identify any part of the exchange that’s off-topic, and end it — perhaps suggesting an alternative time to address it — before it gets out of hand.

Having an agenda helps cut down on time-wasting, but it also encourages responsiveness, since your collaborators know what you need, and don’t need to wade through the waffle to give it to you.

2. Don’t spam

In this context, spam is any form of unwanted or unnecessary communication. It doesn’t need to involve multiple recipients: leaving your colleague a phone message, then sending a text, and following up with an email, is example of spam. Sharing your new document with a colleague who’s on your team, but doesn’t need to use it, is an example of spam.

Spam overwhelms us. It makes us stressed and cranky, and it makes maintaining focus difficult. Be astute in working out what to share with which team members, and learn to differentiate between information for information’s sake, and necessary communication.

3. Respect time constraints

Having respect for the time constraints of your colleagues governs a range of collaborative behaviors.

Give collaborators time to receive your communication, digest it and formulate a reply around the other work they’re doing before you bug them for their response. Prioritize your communications points so that colleagues know what’s most important, and tell them if something’s urgent. Conversely, don’t earmark a task or communication as urgent if it’s not. As well as indicating the reason for your communication, identify your expectations of a response timeframe, so your colleague can prioritize your request.

Remember: while digital communications tools may seem immediate, we’re only human, and none of us can be in two places at once.

4. Be clear

Clarity and directness underpin digital collaboration. But, particularly in written or very short communications, choose your words carefully. Short can very easily come across as terse. Speak in a way that’s appropriate to your colleague, and your relationship with them, as well as the communications medium your using.

Choosing the right tool for the job can influence your ability to communicate what’s needed. Limits on length, or attachments and other inclusions, can hobble communications, so make sure you choose the medium that suits your needs best. Don’t try to wedge a phone conversation into a voicemail, for example — your garbled, rushed message will just add to the “noise” to your colleague’s day. Instead, just explain why you’re calling and ask them to call you back. Explain the details in person when they do.

Being clear is particularly important in shared, multi-party systems like document sharing and contact management systems. Stick to the guidelines your team has set for aspects like naming and storage conventions — it’ll reduce confusion and communications noise, and generally make life easier for your colleagues.

5. Be open

Digital workers can end up hiding behind a smokescreen of task managers, email autoresponders, and voicemail all too easily if they feel overwhelmed. Lead by example. If you’re asking a team member for something, be available to answer their questions about your request. Be diligent about responding to colleagues in an appropriate way using the foundations outlined here.

Accept that good digital collaboration takes time and mutual understanding — it is, after all, communication between people. Relegating a colleague whose communications approach annoys you to the back of the queue is rarely productive; the best way to encourage others to collaborate with you in the way you want is to take the time to explain your preferences to them.

That conversation could eradicate the kind of uncertainty that undermines good distributed working relationships, and cement the foundations for ongoing productive collaboration.

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How much you feel you should pay remote workers is one thing; what your payment is worth to them — and how its value changes over time — is another.

Recent global financial strife continues to cause some economies to suffer, including that of the U.S. Many digital freelancers earning U.S. dollars are now receiving substantially less for the same work, as their own nations’ currencies gain strength against the U.S. dollar.

The rates that U.S. companies offer to remote workers may no longer compete with firms that are more local to the freelance web worker. For U.S.-based organizations, this may make sourcing good remote workers much more challenging. It may also be a challenge they haven’t had to face before.

Of course, currency fluctuations don’t just affect pay rates. In theory, web workers buying goods from the U.S. should enjoy exchange rate benefits as the U.S. dollar weakens, but this is rarely the case.

Late last year,  for example, I bought a $35 piece of software from the States on a day when the U.S. dollar was worth 1.015 Australian dollars. The software should have cost $35.53 AUD, but my receipt shows that I was actually charged $1.40 AUD more. The effects of a stronger currency aren’t usually reflected across the board.

And of course, your remote freelancer’s local costs don’t fluctuate with your currency’s value. So what could be a great rate for them this month might be a very lackluster rate in a month or two. You may need to consider offering other perks or advantages to procure the remote talent you really want, rather than accepting that which you can get cheaply.

Freedom and fun stuff

If your remote freelancer has some ideas they’d like to trial on your project, or extra suggestions that they feel are worthwhile, can you give them the freedom to implement those ideas?

The extra work may take extra time, but if you can see real value for your project, the extension of scope could be beneficial to the remote worker as well as to your business. It could also ensure you get a top-notch job on the key parts of the project, rather than settling for second-best.

Software and systems

Can you reduce the cost to the freelancer of taking on your project by giving them a license to use necessary software, or providing access to specific systems?

Finding ways to make their lives easier — and more cost-effective — could help you to win the remote worker.

Team involvement

Some remote workers really value the opportunity to work with a team — particularly if they’re solo operators, or work from home. Showing them how you’ll involve them in the project team, making them feel welcome, and communicating their value to their new colleagues are a few ways to help cement good relationships with valuable remote workers.

The promise of close working relationships with like-minded pros is likely to appeal to more than a few web workers — especially those who are interested in collaborative, on-the-job learning, and in building networks.

Credits or kudos

Kudos matters. Can you give credit to the freelancer you’re pursuing, perhaps through social media, LinkedIn references, linking to their site through your organization’s blog, or some other method?

Most freelancers will appreciate being publicly named for their contributions — especially if that recognition can help them win further work, or gain them exposure among peers who matter to them.

These ideas may not win you the remote web worker you want, but they might help sweeten a deal embattled by global financial tumult. Are you finding it harder to land good remote talent in places where your currency has weakened?

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These skilled professionals have decided to decline the nine-to-five regime and fit work in around their other passions, interests, and commitments. You may already unknowingly give freelance or contract work to people who fall into this growing part of the remote web workforce.

The prevalence of technology means that your favorite freelancer could be building a business in a city just like yours, or they could be living in a jungle and tackling your projects between epic surfing expeditions. So long as they have a reliable web connection, you may never know the difference.

Are these “untemplaters” a good skill resource for growing businesses? To many employers, this breed of digital professional might seem flighty and unreliable — after all, they might pick up and vanish into the wild, blue yonder once they finish this job. Where’s the accountability? Can a project as important as yours rest on their contribution?

In most cases, the answer to all these questions is, “yes.” Here are a few of the main reasons why these “rebels” are good for business.

They’re passionate and skilled

The non-conformist freelancer prioritizes things other than work, sure. But they champion quality of life. As such, they may be more likely than your regular business-building freelancer to restrict themselves to projects that really interest them.

Think about it: If you were to restrict the work you did, you’d want the projects you took on to be extra-rewarding. Instead of taking on anything and everything that comes their way, the smarter web workers in this group pick and choose projects they feel will use their skills, ignite their passions, and satisfy their need to contribute.

The idea of the rebel-freelancer being a “drop-out” is no longer current; you’ll likely find your remote resource highly skilled. These individuals are effectively relying on their own, evolving expertise to make a living in less time than it takes the rest of us. To do that, you’ve got to be good.

They can commit

The idea that a freelancer who’s working from a rented room in Salvador to fund their next Amazonian trek won’t be committed or accountable isn’t likely to play out in reality. The days of fly-by-nighters making it online are over. And if your recruitment and screening processes can’t pick them out, then you have bigger problems than working with untethered remote workers.

Solutions to the issues of commitment and accountability are ultimately rooted in the rapport you build with freelancers, regardless of their locations (or how they spend their spare time). If you need a freelancer to be around after they deliver their part of the project, make that clear up-front, just as you would with a local, more traditional freelancer or contractor. If they can’t commit, they’ll be able to tell you so, and you can move on to other candidates.

They are connected

What’s web connectivity like in Salvador? Depending on where you operate, it may be a step up from what you’re used to. Most people who pursue an “untethered” lifestyle know that to support that lifestyle they need to be reliable, and available. And most are extremely tech-savvy — the less technologically capable are less likely to be able to make remote-location freelancing work.

So if your untemplated freelancer comes with good references, work samples, and communicates with you easily through the selection process, you’re unlikely to encounter show-stopping troubles during the project. Again, set your expectations for contactability and availability up-front, and make sure everyone’s comfortable with, and capable of, meeting those needs.

If you’re really concerned — for example, the individual is located in an area where there’s unrest, issues with freedom of information or connectivity, and so on — discuss that with the candidate and develop contingencies that can be implemented if the worst-case scenario turns into a reality.

Are they for you?

Whether the non-traditional freelancer is right for your business will depend as much on your operation as it does on the remote worker.

Your timeframes, project management approach, expectations, and philosophy may all prevent you from working successfully with an “untemplated” freelancer — or any freelancer.

The businesses that are likely to be best suited to collaboration with these individuals will be flexible, technologically adept and versatile, communicative, human, and results-focused. If this sounds like you, “untemplated” workers might be a sensible and flexible asset to your team.

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Despite the proliferation of options for communication, the way workflow, responsibilities, and collaboration are managed in this scenario can be quite different from on-site or partially dispersed teams.

To get it right, team leaders need to consider the interplay of three crucial factors: frequency, transparency, and variability.

Frequency

In an office, communications are incidental, and frequency is high. With dispersed teams, communicating is an effort, and frequency is often much lower.

The concept of frequency affects communication like status updates and meetings, as well as casual team interactions. But it also affects momentum: the timeframes in which outputs are created, and how swiftly they’re taken into the next stage of the project.

Different projects and timeframes require different communications frequencies. You’ll want all the members of your dispersed team to be able to work comfortably to a given level of frequency, or intensity.

So as you’re planning workflow, milestones, and deliverables, consider whether your dispersed team will be working exclusively on this project, or on others at the same time. What does team members’ degree of focus mean for the potential frequency of communications and deliverables? How can you support those needs in order to get the job done?

Transparency

The best dispersed teamwork is supported by strong transparency. Your team members may never meet in person, but they need to get enough of a feel for one another to collaborate closely, and get the work done.

Transparency is important in a number of areas, including availability, progress and outputs, as well as personalities. Setting explicit baseline expectations of transparency — outlining up-front what kinds of project information should be shared, and how, for example — is a good start, but more work may be needed to keep things transparent on a day-to-day basis.

Should all project-related discussions be shared, and is IM therefore a less-than-deal communication tool? Are there times when team members will all be online — and does everyone know what those times are? Are there certain outputs that should not be available to all team members? Will your Yammer steam be strictly business, or will you encourage team members to share more broadly, to make it more fun?

These are the kinds of questions that are easily overlooked, but which can greatly influence the sense of openness and participation of distributed team members.

Variability

It can be easy to see remote team members as resources, or sets of capabilities, rather than real people with real lives. A truly productive, smooth-working dispersed team will flexibly cater to individuals’ needs and differences.

This might mean that you create a rotating schedule for team meetings, so that everyone shares the burden of time zone differences, and the same team member isn’t staying up until midnight every Tuesday to meet with you.

You may encourage team members to share things like personal websites or work histories, so each team member has an idea of others’ experience, capabilities, and areas of interest. You might ask the team to choose the tools you use to share information and communicate about the project.

Promoting the open communication of unexpected hurdles — illnesses and other events that take team members out of the work for a period — may be another way to ensure the smooth running of a team whose members may come online at different times, and at different intervals from the team leader.

Frequency, transparency and variability are critical factors in the smooth running of dispersed teams. Being conscious of them as you establish and support remote team members can have a significant impact on project success.

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It makes sense to focus on project briefs and core competencies — after all, these are what gets the job done. But what gets the job done well? Often, it’s team members’ non-core skills and experience — and their freedom to apply those capabilities to the project — that make the collaboration a real success.

This is especially the case in experimental work, where the path to the desired outcome may be unclear, and work in distributed or completely new teams. If it’s not clear how your team members should make contributions to others’ domains, or whether they’ll be valued, you’ll never get the most out of the project.

What can go wrong

Recently, I worked with a new, distributed team on a fairly experimental project. Team roles, relationships and work patterns hadn’t been clearly defined. While I knew some team members, others were new to me, and I’d never worked closely with any of them before.

As the work began, team members struggled to identify where their contributions should begin and end. We all knew what each others’ core competencies were — it was the extra stuff that got confusing.

There was overlap between team members’ areas of expertise, but the team structure and approach to collaboration — which, while supported by the appropriate tools, was loose and fairly unpredictable — caused blockages. Some team members didn’t want to step on any toes; others wondered why no one was taking responsibility for certain contributions. Few of the team knew what they could expect from their colleagues.

This project didn’t fail, but it took longer than expected, and project overhead expanded, since communication wasn’t smooth-flowing. The usual pitch-in mentality became mired in a subtle kind of confusion. Assumption took the place of inquiry and clarification, so opportunities to capitalize on each team members’ capabilities slipped past.

Welcome more than core skills

Leaders organize people into teams on the basis of their core skills, which is fine. But to really make the most of everything each team member has to offer, you’ll need to go further than simply providing a project brief and setting up a file repository.

• Evidence of a collaborative culture. Culture is particularly important for new teams, or teams that comprise people from several departments, offices or organizations. Give some thought to how you’ll evince that culture — from the way meetings are run, to the way ideas are presented, captured, discussed and actioned. What evidence says to team members that all contributions — not just core-skill offerings — will be welcomed and valued? Does your evidence translate for team members operating from other locations? Keeping that evidence consistent is also critical. It’s all very well to be open, welcoming and responsive in a meeting, but if you neglect to respond to team members’ post-meeting emails or messages for days, you’ll likely erase any goodwill you generated, and engender a culture of flakiness and irresponsibility instead.
• A clear collaboration model. Does all team work involve all team members, or are some working in smaller groups, without the leader’s input? Flat structures and easygoing reporting requirements may seem to encourage the free flow of ideas, but the reality is that groups comprised of team members who haven’t worked together before may need more guidance, encouragement and transparency, especially at first, or if the team is distributed. Leave them to their own devices and silence may well ensue. Discuss up-front the basic expectations you and your team members have for the collaboration, and how extra ideas will be treated and addressed. As you adjust the model to fit the needs and suggestions of your team, make sure everyone’s aware of the model’s evolution. Over time, the team will likely develop its own culture, and you may well be able to take more of a backseat, but be wary of doing this in the initial stages.
• Meet expectations. Once you’ve all agreed on how things will happen, fulfill those expectations for your team, and ensure that your team members do the same. If your team management, or team members, are unpredictable in the way they respond to each other and events, the result is uncertainty. That may translate to team members feeling that the project isn’t important to their colleagues, and deciding to do only what’s required — not to bother making value-add suggestions beyond their core competency. It may reduce team members’ confidence to put themselves — and their “crazy” ideas — out there. Or it may just mean that team members spend more time trying to work out what’s going on than focusing on collaboratively creating the best possible solutions. In any case, unpredictability reduces team members’ ability to focus on the work itself.

A really successful team project is, of course, fulfilling and rewarding for team members. The evolving nature of the digital space may have reduced the likelihood that individuals will be typecast into narrow roles, yet leaders may still struggle to elicit the full breadth and benefits of colleagues’ past experiences if they don’t consciously work at it.

Have you worked with teams that really valued and benefited from the contribution of non-core skills? What aspects of the team management made the project work well?

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The rise of curation

Social recommendation isn’t new; marketers have long known the value of vocal advocacy. The difference is that now, a brand’s audience (or its followers) can register direct and extremely visible benefits from their advocacy.

Thus, curation is a valid, and valued, technique for gaining currency with audiences. We benefit from our own curatorial advocacy (which builds our credibility), and we rely on our favorite brands or businesses to sift through the web and point us to good resources, insights and opinions.

Little wonder, then, that many business brands have built large audiences using the curation approach. These brands are seen as leaders because they have the ability to tell the good from the bad, and they have market-leading contacts who keep them abreast of the latest developments.

In the curatorial approach, the network is critical, along with the brand’s ability to sort the dross from the diamonds.

The role of creation

While curatorial communication dominates some social media right now, it’s important not to forget the valuable potential of creation in audience engagement.

After all, curators curate creations. So when you make, do or say something new and valuable, your online presence will be more likely to be included in the curations of others. It’s the basis of viral marketing, but thanks to the nuances of social media, your creation doesn’t need to go viral to deliver value to your brand, or your team.

If everyone else is funneling or channeling information, those brands that create have a point of difference. When you make ideas, products, or thoughts, the information you deliver to your audience is unique.

Your creative work gives you the scope to engage customers, stakeholders, and other parts of your organization, by inviting them to join the process of creation and development. But more importantly for collaboration, creation allows you to share stories of experimentation, learning and application through social media, the company blog, industry events and so on.

That experiential information can form the glue for engagements with third parties, which, over time, can prove mutually and deeply beneficial. Such benefits could be something as simple as landing a spot in an invite-only beta test, or something as valuable as hearing about a bug that may affect you — in time to preempt disaster.

If you create, you have a lot to gain by sharing your experiences online, and connecting with others doing similar work. If yours is known as a creative brand, you likely already have followers and connections who are craving your creative insights. The question is: are you using that opportunity?

Striking a balance

How can you make the most of the opportunities for curation and creation in your social media activity?

Your team’s online presence may address multiple audiences. But whether you are concerned with engaging with customers, suppliers, or peer organizations, your team has a lot to gain by creating, as well as curating, information. This is particularly the case if your team is an isolated unit of specialists, or has a specific technical focus. It should be imperative for such organizations and teams to be directly engaged in the business of creation.

Connect with the creative leaders in your field. Share product development stories and updates on your blog. Invite creative third parties and peers to contribute their ideas for overcoming challenges, or addressing issues you face in your own creative process — and publish your own thoughts to get the ball rolling.

Traditional businesses may be concerned that asking questions or seeking advice from others, even peers,  online has the potential to damage the brand. Adopting a strategy that encourages individuals in the creative team to seek peer input through their own online activity (as employees of the brand) may be a solution to this impasse.

Do you leverage creation in your online engagements, or do you stick largely to the territory of curation?

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Crowdsourcing startup 99designs recently received $35 million in venture capital and is currently advertising six positions in its Melbourne and San Francisco offices. These hires will see the team grow by about 20 percent and expand management capacity, paving the way for the creation of additional operations roles.

The business has a strong culture and a flat structure. How does 99designs plan to manage its expansion without compromising collaboration or culture?

Collaboration

The tight-knit business was originally run from Melbourne, Australia, and Vancouver, Canada, so communication has always been a focus.

Says CEO Patrick Llewellyn, “We have a long history of collaborating with people all over the world. [Parent company] SitePoint has been connecting [people and contributors] forever and a day from different parts of the world. That’s part of our DNA.”

Indeed, growth has actually boosted collaboration. Since the business moved out of its startup phase, Llewellyn and COO Jason Sew Hoy were given more operational authority. A more formal management structure was put in place in August of last year, and Llewellyn notes, “We’ve been more collaborative than ever.”

Collaboration tools that the team favors include instant messenger, Yammer and Campfire for development problem solving. Email is also essential, as are scheduled and spontaneous video conferences.

But people are crucial to the process: The outcomes of management’s quarterly strategy meetings are fed back to the staff by both team leaders and business leaders. “We get some pretty wild debates, but that’s a good thing,” laughs Sew Hoy. “It’s definitely the variety of the different viewpoints that creates a really robust strategy.

“It’s a pretty open communication model. Everyone’s encouraged to share ideas and make contributions,” he adds. “It’s designed to help everyone have a voice and feel like they’re being heard, but it also helps to guide some of the decisions that we make on a day-to-day basis.”

Culture

The pair see communicating culture as a major challenge as the business grows in the coming months.

“From a cultural and team management point of view,” explains Sew Hoy, “it comes down to having a core group of leaders that represent the business and who we want to be.”

He says that the focus on creating the right management positions and putting the right people in them “will essentially set the foundation for how we communicate and manage the team as it gets bigger.”

As Llewellyn reveals, “The most important thing in our hiring process is making sure that we hire people that we trust. Unless you trust someone, I don’t think you can openly communicate with them.”

The pair also requires staff to have a collaborative philosophy. “It’s got to be a core competency for everyone to be an excellent global communicator,” explains Sew Hoy, “regardless of whether you’re a support person, a developer, a marketer or someone in senior management.”

Recruiting candidates with great communication skills is only part of the equation, he says. “It also comes down to the expectations that you set early on with that person.

“We’ve got two people starting together today, so one of the things we’re doing is getting them to sit down and meet all of the people in San Francisco on video chat.” The team does this, he says, “just to make sure that there’s a little bit more interaction there than seeing that there’s a bunch of people there on our ‘About Us’ page, and to break down those barriers toward getting conversations started.”

Moving team members between offices is also central to ensuring cultural consistency. “We see that as an important investment,” Llewellyn explains. “Even before we raised the money . . . we brought over four people for South by Southwest this year from Melbourne, and a couple of those guys spent another two weeks in our office. We’ll continue to bring some others across to San Francisco and we’ll take people from San Francisco to Melbourne, so that we get that cross-pollination,” he explains.

Competitive advantage

Llewellyn believes that the travel potential within 99designs represents a competitive edge for the business, especially when hiring in the Melbourne market.

“I’m really excited about the opportunities that this will open up over time,” he says. “One of the things about hiring talented Australians is that there’s always a significant wanderlust. And I think that by having offices in two pretty cool cities, we can . . . use that as a competitive advantage in the hiring process.”

The business has already relocated its CTO from Melbourne to San Francisco because, “In terms of new technology, and where things evolve the fastest, San Francisco and the Valley is in the heart of that. So there were definitely going to be advantages to having a technical leader stationed over there,” explains Sew Hoy.

Such relocations — Llewellyn himself was originally hired in Melbourne, Australia — have presented new collaborative challenges. “I don’t want to pretend that we’ve got all the answers,” Llewellyn says. “We’re iterating and learning and finding that there are complexities that we haven’t thought through.” But, he says, open, trusting team communication is key to the business’s future.

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Bad listeners rarely realize they suffer this limitation. But there are some common tip-offs:

• You often find you’re involved in miscommunications
• You find the same colleagues ask you the same questions repeatedly
• You often reply to emails without reading them, or their attachments, in full
• You skip meetings, arguing that the minutes will keep you up-to-date.

As humans, we need to filter and prioritize the information we attend to, but bad listeners can have a detrimental effect on team output, especially if they’re gatekeepers in the production process, or have quality control responsibilities.

Becoming a better listener in the online space isn’t difficult, but it does take discipline. Here are some tactics to help develop better listening skills.

Chunk written comprehension tasks

We’re often more likely to skim-read emails, reports, and other documentation if we’re trying to fit it in around “real work.” Of course, understanding the information we receive is usually critical to that real work. It needs our attention.

Try setting aside chunks of time to do background reading and the communication it prompts. This can help you mentally to validate these comprehension tasks themselves as a priority, and give you a clear space in which to focus. Allot space in your schedule to the tasks you see as distractions, and attend to them in that timeframe. You’ll be more likely to get something useful out of that information in a dedicated space.

Miss a meeting? Ask for details

Competing priorities may necessitate your missing a meeting occasionally. But rather than simply glancing over the minutes when they arrive in your inbox, try speaking to a colleague who did attend about what took place.

Think about which of the attendees will have attended to the information that’s relevant to you; perhaps ask a couple of people to get a composite picture. This way, your understanding of what took place won’t suffer because your colleague answered a call halfway through the meeting and missed ten minutes of discussion.

Also, try to ask specific questions. “Anything happen in the meeting yesterday?” will solicit a shrug of the shoulders more often than not. Unless you indicate to your colleague the general topics or items from the agenda that interest you, they’re unlikely to know what to mention. Their minds will likely drift to the items that were top priorities for them, or the things with which they feel most comfortable, or are most interested in.

Respond in full

Good listening is about good communication. Unless you respond to queries in full, and address all of the concerns your colleagues raise, those issues will just keep hanging around. What you don’t attend to today will be back to haunt you tomorrow — unless your colleague gives up, and makes their own executive decision. And if they’re asking you for direction, they probably don’t feel equipped to make the call themselves.

If you can chunk tasks like email, progress reporting, and status phone calls and conversations, you should find that you have both the time and focus needed to respond to queries in full. As you do so, you may well find that some questions are based on assumptions or misunderstandings that you can clear up on the spot.

Make sure they understand

No matter how clear or succinct your communication, it pays to ask the person you’re speaking to if they understand what you’ve told them. Finish all your emails with the line “Let me know if you have any questions,” and you’ll be surprised how many come back needing clarification — and that goes for video chat, IM, and presentations too.

Asking if your colleagues understand what you’re saying is important not just for getting things done, but also for understanding where and how your communication is missing the mark. What makes sense to one colleague will bewilder another, so asking if they understand will help you tailor your communication to individuals, and avoid time-consuming misunderstandings.

Work to your strengths

Maybe you like to check task status face-to-face with your team members periodically throughout the day. Or maybe you prefer them to update their shared task lists with their tasks’ status at the end of each day. Each of us has our own preferences for the way we receive and respond to information, and of course we all need to adapt to each others’ preferences, at least to some degree.

Take a long, hard look at the ways you prefer to handle communications. Consider everything — from whether you’re a visual or auditory person, to whether you prefer IMing a colleague rather than stopping by their desk and interrupting them.

Understanding your preferences for communication will let you find commonalities with your team members — areas where communication is easy — and identify the points of difference — areas where you’ll know you really need to pay attention if you’re to get and communicate the required information effectively.

These are five easy way to become a better listener in your team. What advice can you add from your own experience?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user borissey.

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While those in traditional fields may pursue study and qualifications in order to advance their careers and earning potential, and see PD as both a reward and a motivator, for those in working in technology and innovation, the pathways for — and value of — professional development aren’t so clear-cut.

And for team leaders seeking to attract and motivate truly innovative staff, the role of PD in employee motivation and satisfaction can be very fuzzy.

In a recent interview, I asked a mobile developer how he keeps his skills at the top of his field. He laughed and said, “Coming to work is a good start!” In this industry, at least, the progress is being made — and knowledge is most quickly gained — in startups and innovative businesses, not in universities.

That explains why younger players entering the industry today face such fierce competition. There are plenty of people already working in innovative technology roles on the strength of experience and talent, rather than qualifications. As the technology sector gains maturity, employers now have the luxury of valuing people with proven experience (with or without formal qualifications) over fresh graduates. And few employers will bother speaking to a candidate who hasn’t learned or created anything new since they finished formal study.

The freshly released Startup Genome Project report corroborates the value of non-school learning. The research found “Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth” than those that don’t. No mention is made of the value of formal qualifications as a basis for startup success.

Your potential team members don’t want to see professional development listed as an employment benefit in their contracts; they choose jobs on the basis of how much the roles themselves will let them learn. The risky thrill of experimenting to create world-first products and take them successfully to market is a core appeal for those who work in innovative technology.

For this reason, proven expertise is usually more respected than qualifications by peers and colleagues. In innovative development, team members expect their peers to be able to walk the talk — for the good of the team, the project itself, and the individual’s own on-the-job PD. That motivates team members to seek productive, challenging, high-profile projects with great teams that they can learn from, rather than formal qualifications. Similarly, successful team leaders know that the bottom line depends entirely on whether team members can deliver, so rewards and respect naturally flow from successful experimentation, not traditional education.

Not surprisingly, the terms on which these types of team members are engaged aren’t those that appeal to those opting to work in more staid, traditional fields. The innovators thrive on possibility, the thrill of pushing boundaries, and the chance to have an impact. Offer to foot the bill for an MBA, and you’ll likely get a lot of blank stares. Employers may expect staff to walk the talk, but team members, too, judge employer credibility in terms of on-the-job projects, tasks, and teams. They want:

• roles that effectively amount to paid experimentation, perhaps through the opportunity to participate in rapid prototyping projects where team members can focus on mastering a new skill or its application in a certain environment
• to attend industry events that combine seminars with networking events — providing access to the “thought leadership” and “mentoring” mentioned in the Startup Genome report
• the ability to contact and engage with other specialists outside the organization, on the organization’s time and, potentially, money.

Rather than being an after-hours, formal, institutionalized proposition, successful PD in innovative teams is holistic and always-on. Instead of tracking the team member’s achievement on the basis of grades, leaders are more likely to assess the ROI on what may be a guesstimated investment in PD by looking at individuals’ influences on company revenues and profits. And team leaders who understand these motivations can consistently attract and manage good innovators.

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