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🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

Have you ever wasted time searching through email, chat threads, and document comments just to find one piece of information? How clear are you and your team about where different sorts of communication should happen?

💡 Concept

When teams don’t set clear expectations about communication channels, messages get lost, work is duplicated, and decisions are delayed. That’s why many distributed teams create a communication charter—a shared agreement outlining how and where to communicate.

One of the most valuable parts of creating a communication charter is deciding when to use each of the different channels. Here’s a breakdown with examples:

📧 Email: For formal, external, or long-form communication

• Announcing a company-wide policy change

• Sending updates to clients or external partners

• Sharing detailed reports or proposals that will need to be referenced or forwarded later

💬 Chat (Slack, Teams, etc.): For quick, informal, or time-sensitive exchanges

• Asking a teammate if they’re free to review something today

• Sharing a quick FYI or a link to a new resource

• Exchanging banter that builds team culture

📝 Comments in Collaborative Docs: For contextual feedback tied to the work itself

• Suggesting edits in a Google Doc or Notion page

• Flagging an unclear data point in a spreadsheet

• Asking for clarification directly within a draft presentation

📂 Project Management Tools (Asana, Trello, Jira, etc.): For tracking work, decisions, and progress

• Checking daily priorities and reviewing assigned tasks

• Updating a task’s status when you’ve completed work

• Recording final decisions so they don’t get lost in chat or email

Without clear agreements, important information can get lost in a casual chat thread, email threads go unread, and doc and project comments pile up. A communication charter helps reduce noise by aligning the team on what goes where.

🎬 Take Action

Start small: draft one section of your team’s communication charter focused on email vs. chat vs. document comments. Here are a few prompts to guide you:

• What types of communication must go in email, and what should never be sent there?

• When is chat appropriate—and when should a discussion be moved to a doc or meeting?

• How should team members use comments within a document? In addition to the examples above, comments could be a good place to tag team members who need to answer or take action in response to a question or comment.

• Where should final decisions or key updates be documented so they aren’t lost in chat or email?

And when you’re ready to create your full communication charter, you can start with our template!

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn more about how to set communication expectations in Leadplaceless.

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