It’s all too easy to terrify workplace colleagues with your confusing instant messenger behaviors.
Many of us use Slack but don't receive guidance on expectations about how to talk on the platform.
“It’s kind of a text and it’s kind of an email and it’s kind of across levels,” said Bradley Brummel, an organizational psychologist at the University of Tulsa. “And then within the same platform, you move from one team, which is a bunch of people at the same level who can make jokes in the flow of their work to one that has all hierarchies where your reputation is really important and at play.”
“You thought you said something clearly and you thought that people understood, but it just totally, in the noise of everything, didn’t land,” he said.That’s why he recommends that organizations set rules on how colleagues should behave and respond on Slack to save employees, especially those who are new or lack power, from this kind of worry.In online work communication, every word and punctuation mark takes on extra meaning in the vacuum of other information like body language and tone.
“When they stop typing, you are wondering, ‘What happened? Do they need to think about it? I need this information ASAP!’ This causes the anxiety,” Ehsaei said. Brummel said that if it’s possible, people can try turning this kind of unhelpful typing feature off. It takes some extra steps but you can actually stop yourself from seeing when someone is typing to you. Follow these steps:Go to the “Messages & media” option, then scroll down to the “Additional options” section. There, you will uncheck the box that reads: “Display information about who is currently typing a message.