Effective Communication While Working Remotely w/ Alisha Shibli
Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast for you today. I have Alisha Shibli. She is a marketing and communication specialist, and she's the marketing manager for logo.com, which we will cover in this conversation. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Alisha. Hi, Alisha.
Hi, Robhata. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? I'm from India. I have been a marketing and communication specialist for eight years now. It's what I studied. It's what I do. It's what I've been doing for, I think, as long as I can remember.
Right now I'm heading marketing at logo.com, but I've worked with small boutique digital marketing agencies and even large corporates. I work with partners across time zones, borders and languages. So eight years of experience and interacting with all these people. I think I've learned a few tricks and tips that I can use, which can help communicate people a little more effectively at work. I'm intrigued by the languages part. If you've met people who speak a different language than you do.
and you don't understand the language, what do you guys resolve to do in that situation? So I work with people who are based in Germany, in Poland, in Czech Republic and English is not their first language. So when that is the case, when your other partner does not understand English as well as you do, I think it's really important to communicate just the key points and in as simple a language as you can because so many times when we're working in our regular
environment, we use these jargons and these complicated words, which may not be easy for them to understand because their understanding of English is quite basic. So it's really about bringing it down to the simplest form using bullet points, stating, writing short sentences. These are tricks, but the more to the point you are, the more bullet points and actionables you write, the more clearly you state that here's what the thing is and here's what I want from you.
I think it becomes very, very easy for the other person to understand. It doesn't overwhelm them either because they don't read like paragraphs of your email with these complicated terms and then feel overwhelmed because now they have to understand what you mean, then understand what you really want from them. And then again, draft a message for that. And it gets very complicated. If you can bring it down to a simple yes or no, you know, you've got your job done and it makes it easy for them. And most importantly, it makes it easy for you.
That's right. I remember when I was a teacher in South Korea, that's the first thing I was told by my recruiter. He said, keep it simple, keep your sentences short. Always. There is a military principle, it's called bottom line upfront. What it says is, for your sanity and for the other person's sanity, what do you want from them? What is the bottom line that you want to communicate? Put that upfront. Well, I had to write to my boss because I needed an approval from him for a platform that I wanted to subscribe to. Now, English is his first language.
But he's my boss, he gets way too many emails and he's involved in way too many projects. I can't expect him to listen to, hey, you know what I've done XYZ and now XYZ has happened and now I want so-so. So now can I please get the subscription? Nobody has a time for that. And your message will get lost in that long email that you write. So what I really did was in the subject line of the email, I said, I need your approval to process this. And in the email, the first thing I said was, hi, this is the platform. This is the monthly subscription fee. I need this for this.
And then below that, I wrote context in bold and explained what it is in three to four sentences. Now for him, it becomes very easy because the bottom line is he needs to give me a yes, go ahead. And if it makes sense, he just go yes, go ahead. He doesn't have to think about, oh, what has she done? What does she want? Does she want this? Is she looking for other options? Is she looking for this? No, no, nothing is getting lost. From the subject line and the first line, she wants an approval. Be as clear as possible.
Always. Nobody has time. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about logo.com. Well, logo.com as the name suggests is a logo maker. So we're a free logo maker and we are one of the two in the market right now that offers high quality professional logos for free. We have a really intelligent platform, a logo editor that we call behind that takes in just your business name, your slogan and a few simple questions like, you know, what color palette do you like? Do you want like an icon, a symbol or not?
just your preferences and we give you hundreds of designs. You customize it and then you download that logo file in high resolution in multiple file formats with transparent background, et cetera, for free. So we're a logo maker and we're a brand building platform. Usually when a company or website says stuff is free, I always wonder what's the catch. So how
Does your enterprise make its money if the stuff you give us is free? That's a very good question. So like I said, we are a free logo maker, but we have a monthly subscription, which is called the brand plan. Now this is optional. If you just want the free logo, you can take the free logo and go home. And we still love you, but we have a monthly subscription, which is called the brand plan. Now here is where it gets really useful and which is why the brand building platform comes in.
Because you get business cards, letterheads, email, signatures, posters, flyers, social media kit, social media post creator. And by social media kit, I mean, you know, your profile photos, your cover photos, all. Everything is branded to your logo. So you have to do nothing. You just have to go there.
If you click on the business card maker, the business card will automatically have your logo. It will take the colors that you have chosen for your brand because they're your brand colors. It will automatically populate it with that. It will take the font. It will automatically populate it with that. It will give you multiple templates. So you pick a template you like, you just change your name. And if anything, you want to tweak it, add some personal touch to it. You download. That is just one part. There's a social media post creator. The social media posts, every single post, whether it's an Instagram story or Instagram.
image or a Facebook post, it has your logo, it has your colors, it has your fonts. It's a ready post. You can either download it right away if you like the message. And if you don't, then you can maybe just change, tweak it a little bit and download and it takes minutes, seconds to do it. A building a business is quite time consuming task in itself. Now, when you add all of these tasks on top of it, it's overwhelming, especially for like someone who's just starting out. The technology has taken 90% of the work out.
You only have to do 10% of tweaks and everything is ready. So this is a subscription based service that we have $10 a month, or I have 50% off $60 a year. The reason I ask also because I'm one of those who the creative side of my brain is not as active as the other part of the team excite. So things like that are very helpful. Cause somebody would just say to me, just come up with a logo for your business. I actually had to go to logo.com and say, okay, I need help. Somebody suggested it to me because if you would just say to me.
or just draw what comes, I have no idea where to get started. You're so right. You know what? That is the biggest problem. Starting from a blank page is so difficult. Like be it a writer, a designer, be anybody. If I give you a blank page, it's one of the most terrifying things ever. Where do I start? Which is why we give you templates. So now it's easy. Now you can choose what you like. You can go like, okay, I like this. I don't like this. You know, I'm going to tweak this. And then you have something you really, really like.
Very, very helpful. And thank you for your service, by the way. You help a lot of us lately. And how long have you been with the company? It's gonna be two years, very, very soon. Earlier, when we had a conversation, you spoke about how the pandemic, due to working remotely, has changed the way we communicate. And I just wanted us to touch on that. What has been your experience in that regard? What happened before the pandemic, which is before we went in lockdown, was I used to work at an office with people in front of me all the time.
We still used an instant messaging app like Slack. We had email, we have project management platforms. We had all of that, but those were auxiliary to in-person communication. A lot of the times we could just ask somebody, hey, what's the status on this? Hey, what's happening here? And it was easy. And we were around for eight hours and we'd get that done. Now jump to post-lockdown, the in-person is completely gone. And now all you have are those auxiliary channels to communicate. So you have email, you have project management, and you have instant messaging.
How do you decide what message goes where? Is this urgent? Should I send this on Slack or is this about a project update that, you know, will do, will be more useful, the project management app, or is this something that I need to send an email about? There was this bit of discomfort initially in understanding because you would receive long messages on Slack about, Hey, we've done this, you've done this, you've done this, and it's how you would talk to a person face to face, which is easier to understand versus imagine getting like a four.
paragraph long message. What are the key points that they're trying to communicate and what do they want from you? That was a bit of a communication gap there because there was a lot going on and there were lots of apps, but we didn't have the etiquette. A better word is we didn't have the understanding what platform should be used for what communication. So that was a learning curve. Here's what I say to my clients sometimes, especially when I look at their writing and I help them with the business English. I would say, the first thing you need to know
when you communicate in a business setting, you don't write an email the way you talk. Yes, I think it's really important to take a pause and step back and then look at what you've written. How many people do that? How many people read back before pressing send? But you're really missing out if you're not doing that. Like if you really want to be good and want to consider a professional, consider...
someone who understands and who knows what they're talking about. If you want to be credible in the space that you are and want to come across as an expert, you have to pause, stand back, see how many times have you written I, I, I or me, me, me. Take that one minute. And if you just read and make slight tweaks or break the paragraph or delete a necessary sentence, that one minute of extra patience and work will make you come across so much more credible, so much more better.
from another person's point of view. Does this make sense? Does it look like a lot? Bullet points like this. Can you give me a project update on bullet point on point one, point two, point three? Is the blog post done? Is the social post done? Have we scheduled everything? Do you need anything from me? If I'm speaking to you, you can see I'm smiling. You can tell that, oh, okay, everything is fine. The energy between me and Roberta is fine. However, if you're writing, that's why we use smiling emojis. We want to say, if I send an email to Alicia, I wanted to see that.
I'm not angry or I'm not being brash or harsh. When people write long, sometimes I feel like they're trying to be more personable, more friendly so that they don't appear harsh. Rabada, this is beautiful. This is something I've personally struggled with and I have had to work so hard to overcome this because that person is me. I am the person who will send these short, pointed messages. And if I were to ever receive a message like that.
I would be offended. I'd be like, wow, that is rude. You could have been polite in the written communication. There is no tone. There is no body language. And so you mentioned emojis. I use a ton of them. So instead of saying, hey, exclamation mark, I'll say, hey, and the big swelling emoji like, hi. Because you're trying to soften the blow in case they are like you feeling offended. What do you think it teaches us about us as humans? You know, that is actually a very good question.
I am an introverted person. So for me, writing short sentences, it comes naturally. When it comes to being offended, I would see how I as a person feel about myself. If I think I have done a good job, if I'm confident, then when somebody reaches out to me and says, can you give me an update? Can you give me this? Can you give me this? I'm normally excited about it because I'm not operating from a place of fear.
So how that person approaches me, that interpretation has more to do with me than that person. Just because they didn't use emojis does not mean that they're being rude or they don't like you. When I'm feeling underconfident, when I feel like I've not given my best and when someone asks me for an update, I get really scared and I hope you know what they know. They know I've messed up. They know I'm not good enough. They know I've not done a good job. It's about me. You need to feel good about yourself and then
These messages, these interpretations, all of these things, they just go away because for you, it's just plain communication. At the end of the day, we're all working together towards one organizational goal. Follow it up with a solution to the problem. Be solution driven. Manage your energy. Do you know when you go on YouTube and if you just type about time management or energy management, do you have any idea how many videos you'll get? If you have a hundred tasks to do today, A. How? How did you get to this point where you have a hundred tasks? They're not all urgent.
Not all 100 are important. Have you realized sometimes that the more things we have on our to-do list, the more we think we are being productive? But we're not. I have been there. I have done that. I have had a week where in my to-do list, I had 94 tasks done. And I said, you know what? Kudos. You are amazing. You know, 90 tasks of those led me nowhere. Only four of those were tasks that really moved the needle. It all comes down to really sitting.
That's what I talked about, taking a pause. Look at your to-do list. Look at the objectives. What is it that you really want then sort it out. Don't approach things with anxiety or with stress that, oh, I have so much to do because there'll always be more to do. Learn to prioritize your time. Learn to distinguish between what's urgent and what really needs to be done, I think.
That is a disease that some people who are in more junior positions suffer from. Because you want to impress your supervisors and those that are directors of companies so that you look like you're very busy and productive and so they must keep you. You want to create an environment where you can be replaced so that it feels like your position is secure. I don't know if you've seen that.
especially the older generation, so that if you are in the dark, you look bad. You are 100% right about people holding back. I think this was one of the complaints I had a lot when I was working in a big corporate, as to I don't know what's happening. I have no idea what's going on. I only have like five things to do. Firstly, let's get on this one one thing. You could meet anybody, you're replaceable. Amen. Make peace with that fact. Your objective is to not be irreplaceable.
Your objective should be how do I get the most out of this for myself? How do I learn like as many skills as I can so that if I am replaced in the future, you know what? I will have like 10 new skills that I can offer the next person. And coming back to your question, yes, people hold back. I don't know if that is intentional. Sometimes managers can say, you know what, this doesn't immediately concern you. And I know that you have these 10 things on your plate. So I'd rather you focus on these 10 things because this is not immediate for you.
That's a little different. I hear what you're saying. Yes. Secondly, I would say ever since I've been in logo.com specifically. Now we're async. So what we have is we have Slack and we have this project management tool called Asana, all the tasks, all the communication, everything is in front of everybody. If you want to know what others are working on, go click what the task is, which is not assigned to you, it's assigned to somebody else and read the comments.
or if you see a communication happening on a different channel that you're not immediately related to or it doesn't immediately concern you but if you do want to be proactive then take an initiative see if you have something to add there. Nobody has said hey don't meddle. Nobody said that you are not meddling because you're worried or you're not meddling because you think oh I'm junior I may not know what if I mess up or what if I say something stupid. I had that fear when I was
Okay, I mean, I do have an idea, but this would be so stupid if I say it. Or what did they realize? It's like, I'm a complete stupid. I don't understand these things and they'll realize what a mistake they've made. And I mean, honestly, again, I go back to in my head, I have weaved the story. Your perception of you. Yeah. So my point is if a manager is not sharing something with you, that does not mean that it's not open to you. It is still open to you. See the projects are all out there. Okay. I understand, you know, in big corporates.
All the projects and all the updates may not be out there because what's happening with the management and senior management may not be open to you. But if that's the case, you have 10 things to do. Just nail those 10 things. Get those 10 things right. What do we do when we don't want to be irreplaceable? We want to show that, you know, I can do things good, fast and quick. So not only am I really good, but I'm so quick. And then you know what happens? You mess up, you mess up. When you do something fast, that means you're not thinking coming back to my point of taking a pause.
When you send something which is a fast job, it will have errors. And you know what? The person receiving it will see errors. But if you take half an hour extra and really think it through and put something together and send it out, and if that reduces that person's job by 20%, 30, even 5%, they're going to appreciate you. And next time when they want something, who do you think they're going to come to?
The one with fairly and errors. I think part of conversation has really gone there. Like it comes down to taking a pause and it comes down to your own perception about yourself. It's how you think about yourself. And that's how you will communicate with the other person because you'll communicate from a place of confidence. That's it actually. And not from a place of fear or confusion. You know what you're talking about. Yeah. Exactly. This has been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you, Alisha. Thank you so much for being here.
You're absolutely welcome, Roberta. This was absolutely amazing. I had such a good time. Me too. And most of all, thank you so much for the free logos. Oh, yes, absolutely. I would love if you guys and if anyone who's listening to you or you, if you make it, please reach out to me and tell me that you did. I mean, I would love to see your designs. Of course. But before you go, when can we reach you? If you wanted to know any more information about the work that you do? Well, the best place to reach me is email because I check that every day.
single time. It's alisha at logo.com. Okay, I am on LinkedIn as well. Just type Alicia. Okay, let's find you on LinkedIn. Alisha Shibli. It's a l i s h a sh i b l i. Perfect on LinkedIn. Alisha Shibli. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Roberta. It was awesome.
