Observing and taking part in hundreds and hundreds of virtual working relationships has provided those of us at Assistant Match with some great insight to what makes a relationship successful. One of the most important…
Have agreements around time and communication!
One of the points of most frustration for folks working in virtual teams is when another person does not communicate in the timeframe the other person sees as appropriate. How do you fix this? Share important information about your work practices and create agreements.
Here are some examples of what some of our current clients and VAs have chosen to do:
- Respond within 24 hours, even if it is to say “I don’t have the info you need right now, but I received your message and will get the info to you by noon.”
- Understand that the client may only return calls between 2-3pm and will not answer unexpected phone calls
- Agree that the virtual assistant’s “workday” ends at 6:00pm and she will not be available again until 7am
- All assignments will be completed in 5 days unless the client requests something different
- The virtual assistant will give weekly time summaries on Monday morning, outlining the amount of time worked the previous week and the work completed.
Usually both people can and want to work well together. Sharing expectations and coming to agreements around communication and timelines will make for a much smoother working relationship.
Tags: communication, manage, outsource, teambuilding, virtual assistants
October 23, 2008 at 11:29 pm |
Really good article!! It’s absolutely right that people working in any teams, especially, virtual teams working with collaborative tools like Taroby [http://taroby.org], skype etc, will be able to maintain a healthy working relationship with their team mates by coming to agreements on timelines and abiding those agreements.