About two years ago, a friend and colleague introduced me to
the power of sharing Google Drive documents. She and I have a system, and are
amazingly in sync when we work together in a document, whether it’s a grant
proposal or research paper. For us, it’s a faster way to bang out a paper on
deadline.
After some reflection today, it hit me that in the
beginning, I was probably the most annoying partner in Google Docs. So, I’ve
pulled together a list of ways to annoy your colleagues in a shared Google Doc.
You could annoy coworkers in an emailed Word doc, but these are especially
bothersome in the real-time of Google. I am guilty of some of these and have
been on the receiving end of others. Here it goes:
- Constantly make
preferential changes – when you change someone’s word choice just because
you like “for example” more than “for instance.”
- Be a grammar witch – you
clean up someone’s grammar immediately after they have typed it. Have the
decency to wait until you both hit the revision stage of the writing
process, and make sure you are both working with the same style guide.
- Be a territorial watchdog – This happens When you monitor who has made changes to your document and make changes
after them, so your name is most current beneath the “last modified”
column.
- “Chat” in the body of the
working document – Google Docs has a chat function, and that’s what it is
for. Save the running commentary for the chat feature, or the notes
function. My colleague and I don’t want to remove all of those remarks
from our document. In many cases, we create our pdf directly from Google
Docs for submission.
Screenshot taken by author. - Don’t give any
instructions to new collaborator to your document – They will be lost and
you will have to clean up their additions that might be off target or
topic. Make sure new collaborators have been given the same courtesy of
instruction as the original collaborators.
- Quietly stew and don’t ask
questions or speak your piece– Even with the chat function, some
brainstorming and organization may be lost in the written word. A quick
phone call or Google Hangout at the beginning or end of a session can
quickly shore up any unresolved project issues.
- Simply hover while the
other party works – If you don’t have anything to offer in a particular
section, find a section of the project where you can contribute.
- Don’t let a minor detail go – Like any project, you can get bogged down in minutia in a Google Doc. Use a note to mark the issue and keep working. Once you finish the first draft that issue may be resolved itself, or may seem much smaller.
I’m proud to report that I’m somewhat reformed, although No.
2 gets me sometimes still. A lot of it comes down to suppressing the control
freak within to truly collaborate.
Dr. Sarah Maben is co-director of the Texas Social Media Research Institute and an editor for The Journal of Social Media in Society.
She teaches journalism and public relations courses at Tarleton StateUniversity. Follow her on Twitter @SarahMaben.
