Transcript of AEE: Working Async? How to Set Yourself Up for Success

This is the All Ears English podcast: working async, how to set yourself up for success. Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS quiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

Do you find yourself working online with remote colleagues all over the globe? Maybe you pick up work when they go to bed. Today, get our top tips so that you don't fumble the working relationship in English.

Hey, Lindsay. How are you doing today?

Doing great today, Aubrey. How about you? What's new?

Excellent. I have a question for you.

Okay.

We have mentioned on the podcast before about time zones and daylight savings time being tricky for me, living in Arizona, where we don't observe daylight savings time and it actually throws us off more.

Yes.

But what is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to time zones?

My biggest pet peeve is when people email and they just say, "Let's meet at 10:00 AM."

Right.

Because I don't work with anyone.

Your time or my time?

Yeah. I don't work with anyone in my own time zone, so it's never my time. Right?

Right.

We're not talking to the person next door to us anymore, unfortunately, guys. We're doing business with people around the world, and that just fires me up when people do that because it causes me to reply and waste time and say, "In which time zone?"

Right.

When they could have anticipated that question ahead of time. So it's the lack of because I think it shows a lack of thought about the other person. That's my pet peeve.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting because they may be in more of a habit of working with people who live near them, so they haven't had to think about it a lot. But if you're talking to anyone else who doesn't live right by you, we have to be thoughtful about this, right? To share it.

Yes.

Maybe in our time zone and theirs, or at least be clear about which time zone we're referring to. That is, yes, I struggle with that as well. I mentioned it's frustrating when some places don't observe daylight savings time and then you have to figure out who you match with around the world. And I just recently discovered, because one of our team members lives somewhere where daylight savings time changes on a different date.

Yeah.

Changes in October, and here it's not until November 1st. So that's really tricky too, that it's for anyone who works globally, you have to know not only what time zone they're in, but when daylight savings time is changing. When does it change where they live?

Oh my gosh. Why can't we all just be on the same calendar? Right?

Right.

It's a lot.

It would be so nice.

Yeah. But this is such an important topic today, Aubrey, because we are pretty much all now working across time zones. Right?

Exactly.

And there are certain things we need to keep in mind when we do that.

Yes. Yeah. So we are today giving you the phrases you need and strategies to be able to work async. We'll talk about what that means and how to hand off work clearly and how to keep those connections strong with people that live in different time zones that you don't see often.

All right. Good stuff. All right. So you mentioned an interesting word that I feel like is trending now a little bit. I only just heard this word for the first time maybe.

Same.

6 years ago, 7, 8 years ago. Right? Async. What does that mean?

Yeah. It's short for asynchronous. So this means at different times. So employees that work different hours and have little real-time communication. Right? There's no expectation of an immediate response because if you're sending an email, it could be 2:00 AM their time. Right? You're often your working hours are totally different.

Exactly. And this is a lot of what our team looks like here at All Ears English. Right? We have our wonderful teammates in the Philippines, and we don't have a lot of live time, unfortunately, with them on calls. But so we're working async. When we're sleeping, they're working. And when they're sleeping, we're working. Right? So that is async. Yes.

Yes. And a lot of you listening are probably in a similar situation. The business world is so global now. Or you may just have friends, family who lives across the world. But when it comes to working, this is especially important that we're careful about being clear with time zones, being respectful about other people's time.

Yeah.

So yeah, let's dive in with some phrases, first of all, for working async.

All right, Aubrey. So here's the first great phrase that we love. We do need the words, right, to make it clear that you have the awareness that you're not both working in the same time zone. This goes a long way for professional rapport, don't you think?

Yes. Absolutely. Right? So the first one is, "I'll pick this up in my morning or end of day my time." So you don't have to give specifics about what time that is. Right? As long as you're being clear that you're referring to your time, this works perfectly.

Yes. Exactly. And then saying things like, "I'll take a look when I'm back online." Right? Because maybe you happen to check your work email, but it's like 9:00 PM your time and you're not working. Giving people the awareness maybe that you've received the email, it's something important, and that you'll be back to it when you're working, just reminding people that you're in a different place, right, in your day.

Exactly.

Super important.

Right? So they know it might be several hours before you can really do anything about it. Yes. Absolutely. Or, "I'll continue with this first thing tomorrow my time." Right? So you're just letting someone know if they need an immediate response, immediate eye on it, they're going to need to reach out to someone else.

Yeah. And how would we make that a little bit more formal, Aubrey?

You could say, "I'll resume this during my next working block." So yeah, that is a little more formal way of speaking. Means the same thing.

Yeah. Or you could say, "I'll follow up once I'm back at my desk." These are all ways of saying the exact same thing, but you need to know the relationship and the need for formality or just lack of formality. How casual can we be? That's a separate topic for another day.

Exactly. And what's the platform? Right? The Slack messages are more informal.

Yes.

Email's still pretty informal, but a little more formal. Right? And so that's another thing to take into account. Like, what is the platform? Where is the message being sent?

Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. And then the next piece of asynchronous work is what, Aubrey? What is something that we're frequently doing when we're working across the globe?

Yeah. It's handing work off clearly. Right? So if someone's going to pick it up while you sleep, you need to be clear about that it's their responsibility now or maybe what next steps are. So there are different phrases when next steps aren't clear or don't need to be clear.

Okay.

We'll share those first here.

Okay. So you could say something like, "I've left my updates here. Feel free to keep things moving, and I'll catch up when I'm back online." So this is where you don't need to get them on track. You said they don't need next steps.

Exactly. Right? It's a little more fluid here. Right? You're working collaboratively on something. Maybe you're not sure exactly what they will do next because it's up to them to figure that out. Right? Or you might say, "I'll leave this with you to pick up while I'm offline." So this is a little more of a general handoff where you're letting them know you're done, you're signing off for the day, and it's up to them to take over.

Yeah. And this phrase is the next phrase, "Feel free to run with this while I'm away." Feels really like you're giving them creative control. Right?

Yeah. I love this phrase, "Run with this." Yeah. It's just like, "Do what you're going to do."

Do your thing.

Yep. And then we also have phrases when next steps do need to be a little more clear. Right? If you're handing off work and you need to share where you're at and what would come next. So for example, you might say, "The next step is to review the draft and share any feedback. Can you take care of that while I'm offline?"

Or you could say, "I've completed X, and then Y is the remaining piece." So really orienting your coworker, your colleague to the right place so they're not wasting time. I would imagine it would be really distressing if you show up for work and someone has just left this piece of work and you don't know what you're supposed to do or where you're supposed to start. Right? That could be very stressful.

Right. Especially if you have figured out what needs to come next, that probably took you some time. You don't want to make them reinvent the wheel.

Yes. Absolutely.

Everything that you can tell them so that they can pick right up where you left off and know what to do next is going to save time.

And keeping in mind where we are now in 2026, we're going to be judged. Part of our professional evaluations are going to be based on how well we can work async across the globe. Right?

Absolutely.

How well are we communicating with who's picking up the work after us? Yeah.

Exactly. And the next thing we want to talk about is how to keep that connection with teammates that you don't see live. Right? You don't ever work at the same time. This is tricky to make these async communications feel like a relationship still between people, not just an exchange of tasks.

Yeah. And I feel like this kind of sums it up really nicely. We have to send consistent signals. We want to show them that we know them, we value the work they're doing, and that we're doing this together. They are not just on their own over there in wherever they are doing the work. We're together. We're co-creating something.

Exactly. And you don't need more meetings to do that. You need more human moments that are woven into the work that you are already doing.

Yeah. And I will just start before we get into some of these tips today, one of the ways I like to do this is by using Loom. And it doesn't have to be Loom. It could be any way of recording a video. It doesn't matter what brand tool you use. Recording a video to instead of actually writing these things, you could get on a video and screen share and explain to them because that way they hear your voice. And it depends on how casual your company is, how small your company is. We're a very small company, and I like to do this just to stay in touch. But there's something special about hearing someone's voice rather than just seeing the words written in an email.

Yeah. That leads us right into our first tip here, which is to start with the human touch. And part of that is, like you said, just sending an email that has your voice spoken instructions is more of a human touch than writing it out in an email. Right?

Yeah.

And also, instead of jumping straight into tasks, you can add a little context about yourself or find out about theirs. Right? If email or Slack, for example, your first message, "Hope your week's off to a good start," or "Happy Monday." Just something that acknowledges that you're both human.

For sure. Aubrey, do you ever say, "Happy Wednesday" or "Happy Thursday"? Or is it always just "Happy Monday" or "Happy Friday"?

"Happy Monday" is more common for me. And then if it's a Wednesday or Thursday, it probably would be something more like, "Hope your week's going well."

Ah, okay.

"How's your day going?" Something like that.

Got it. Okay. Good to know. We could get into this another day.

But you could. "Happy Thursday." Why not?

Why not? There's no rule against it.

Right.

Of course, in a face-to-face meeting, yeah, like we said, "How's your week going?" But we don't do these we're talking about async meetings. So again, what are the little nice personal touches you can add instead of going right into business? And of course, you can do the same verbally if you're recording a video. "Hey, hope your week's going well. I wanted to give you a quick video to show you what I've done in the last few hours and let you know where you can pick this back up." Right?

Yeah. Exactly. So those same things you would maybe you would do in face-to-face meetings, you can do them in these messages, in your emails. Add a little bit of human touch. Right? And second here, make your async handoffs feel personal. Try to avoid making them feel transactional. Right? You don't want to type done over to you. Right? This is a human. So instead, you could say, "I made a couple of updates based on your feedback. Curious what you think when you get a chance."

Yeah. It's interesting because even now, and now we're in the age of AI. Right? So we're at All Ears English. We're working with agentic AI and working in there, figuring it out, trying to figure out how to use this to be more efficient as a company. And even AI, the AI voice doesn't say done or mission complete. It doesn't sound like a computer anymore. Right? It sounds more like this. Right? Like, "I've come up with a few ideas. What do you think about these?" So don't sound like a computer. Right? Even the AI no longer sounds like a computer.

Exactly. Right? Or you could say, "Thanks for getting things moving on your side. I'll take the next piece when I'm back online." Right? Any of these things where that feels like I'm talking to a real person that I care about the connection. The more clipped you are, right, with just the done over to you, the more you're giving the message that you don't really care about the connection.

Yeah. And I think with one caveat there, if you have a rapport already established and they know that that's just your style, your personality, your kind of what would be the word? Short-winded, I guess.

Yes.

Concise. You've built some kind of rapport and they get that about you. You could get away with it.

Yeah. It's all about the relationship. Right? Once you have worked together with someone a ton, you have that connection built already. You've spent the time to get to know them as a person. Then some of these messages can be really quick like that. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. What are some other things that we could do, Aubrey, to make async work work?

Yeah. So another thing here is you want to show interest in the person beyond the role. Right? So remembering little details they share, asking about them. For example, you could celebrate personal milestones, maybe birthdays, professional wins. Right? If you find out a win they had, shoot them an email.

Yeah. For sure. I mean, on people's LinkedIn, you often see updates if someone has celebrated X number of years at a company. You might include that in your next email to them. Right? Or even just on your Monday morning email, if they had mentioned something the week before, what they were going to do on the weekend, "Hey, hope the hike was great over the weekend." Right?

Exactly. Right? And sharing snippets of your own life. Right? Hopefully, you're asking back and forth to find out how they're doing, getting to know them a little bit. And it's tricky. Whenever you're able to have a virtual happy hour or something where you can get to know each other better, then this happens sort of slowly over time.

Yeah. I love that. I love that. All right. What would be another tip, Aubrey? What else can we do?

So this is great to create a few spaces for conversations that aren't about work. Right? If every interaction is a handoff, a deadline, then it's hard to build that relationship. It can feel flat. So for example, a team channel where people share about a book, a recipe, a photo of a pet. Right? A lot of people have Slack channels where there's sort of a non-business related to just share little snippets.

Yes. I love that idea. And this could be set up just within among employees in the company if you want to have it just be at the employee level, or sometimes managers might set this up too. You could do both. Right? You could have a channel that a manager might set up and then one that you just want employees to be involved in, and you just want to keep it on that level. Both work, but some way to do this. Right? Or some way for it to come out, these extra bits of information where we can get to know someone.

Right? Or maybe a shared wins thread. Right? So often, you might just shoot out an email for a shared win, or you might have a thread where little breakthroughs, little wins, behind-the-scenes contributions can be celebrated.

Yeah. I feel like I mean, I think just to kind of bring this down to a bottom line here, Aubrey, this is about making people feel seen. Right? So human beings, yes, we get our work done. Working from home or working asynchronously is very convenient, but we're still relationship people-oriented beings.

Exactly.

Right?

Exactly. Yes. We dove into this in our Business English course.

Yes.

We wanted to make sure that we covered socializing and small talk. Right? Which gives you the phrases you need to connect with teammates wherever they live. And so when you're working async, it might be more over email, more over your DMs. Right? But also in the skills to succeed in the new economy module, you learn about EQ. Right? What is EQ, Lindsay?

EQ is your emotional quotient. So there's so much emphasis put on IQ, but there's actually I believe that there are certain other cues that are more important for your ultimate success in life.

Definitely.

And one of them is EQ. So what is that all about? We do talk about that in a really interesting module in the course, Business English.

Yeah. We're going over self-management, social awareness, relationship management, so many skills that are vital in order to connect with coworkers.

Yeah. Huge. So, Aubrey, where can our listeners get this course, and when can they no longer get it? By when can they no longer get the deal?

Awesome. See you guys next time.

All right. Bye.

Bye.