Continuing on the topic of effective communication, this post is about calls. By calls, I mean impromptu 1-1 video/audio conversations. Scheduled meetings with multiple participants would be another topic.

Compared to chats, a call is synchronous and can be highly disruptive to someone’s workflow. Because it is an exchange between only two participants, often not recorded, nor summarized, it is not shared with the rest of the team. Therefore, the first thing to consider would be: Is the call justified? Questions to ask yourself before calling a colleague can be:

  • Can I solve my issue myself? By going through documentation, searching online for resources.
  • Can I ask my question in a public chat? Multiple people may know the answer and keeping it in a written form will help build a knowledge base.
  • Quick call for 5min? Mmm, well no, it is never going to last just 5 minutes. If it really is then just type a message, it will actually be faster.

Now there are topics for discussion that can generate a lot of back-and-forth, perhaps the scope is unclear too and an oral discussion flows better. In that case, you might want to consider scheduling a meeting so that a convenient time for both parties can be agreed upon. Giving yourself time to prepare your thoughts and come up with a clear agenda is often half the work for a productive exchange.

Sometimes you also just need to talk freely with a colleague, off record, digress a bit, maybe to relax. That is fine and helps build strong relationships. In that case, you probably know your colleague well enough to find appropriate times for such chats. Or at least, your colleague would feel entitled to decline if the timing is not right or if they are not in the mood for it.

When working on a time-sensitive project or because you don’t want to lose your focus, and the rest of the team is also aligned on that same goal, it makes sense to trigger discussions when needed. You don’t want to lose the easy access to someone else’s brain you can get when working in the same office. Again, this works because both parties are engaged in the same topic and are collaborating very closely. You might want to consider pairing.

But if you must call someone, here are some practical tips to keep it efficient.

  • This is a video call, meaning camera is on. The point of having a call is reduce the friction and the scarcity from a written conversation. You are just simply passing through more bits of information in the same amount of time, so you better use them well. Body language helps a lot to appreciate your counterpart’s reaction. If you don’t want to turn your camera on because your background is not appropriate, you might want to reconsider your work-from-home office space. This is still work, so your living room with your clothes airer and your kids running around is probably not the right place to work from in the beginning. If you happen to use your laptop docked to your external display, lid closed, then consider getting an external webcam for your display too.

  • And you will be speaking, so audio quality matters even more. If you are working from home most of the time, just get a decent headset with a microphone. I personally found the big headphones with noise-cancelling to be heavy and uncomfortable to use over long periods of time so I now use Apple AirPods.

  • It should be obvious at this stage but a good internet connection matters too. There will be latency if you are collaborating from different places in the world, so you don’t want to add a poor connection on top of that.

You want your technical setup to be frictionless, so that jumping on a call does not start with those 5 minutes eaten up by can you hear me?.

Finally, once you’ve had a call, consider sharing the output with the rest of the team. Maybe a design decision was taken, maybe an issue was raised, maybe there is a follow-up action, make it visible for others that were not in the call.

My overall tone might sound quite opposed to calls, and to be honest I’m reluctant to have them most of the time. Here are a few situations where I find them useful though:

  • reviews (code or document), when they start generating a lot of back-and-forth, it makes sense to talk them through. But make sure you summarize your discussions in the code review itself so others can follow.
  • brainstorming, I’m actually very bad at thinking on the spot but sometimes, an open discussion can spark new ideas.
  • mentoring, to help out a colleague. Then you can wonder how to make it scalable, if you are the only senior working with many juniors. Writing down guidelines or sharing via recorded meetings can be more effective to reach the rest of the team.
  • chew the fat, as mentioned before, sometimes you just need to relax like you would do during a coffee break.

Keep it in mind that communication is very personal. Why I’m pushing for my style here but the other participant’s point of view matters too! 🤓