Workplace Tips - delivered every Wednesday!

With the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, more and more companies have opted to Work From Home. With this, face-to-face conversations happen lesser and lesser and chat conversations, especially in group settings, will happen more. Not all might be formal discussions, and for few introverts who say something but don’t attract any reaction could end up being a big blow to their ego(?) that nobody is paying heed to their expressions.

It’s important to understand and visualize that there are no room full of people (chat room) sitting and watching your text (the messages you type) and choosing to ignore you. Instead, everyone is working on something, or might not even be at desk (even if their status shows as Online). Just know that the scene here is totally different, especially if you start feeling that people are ignoring you. That’s the last thing. They are just busy, it’s important to assume positive intentions, not because we must assume they’re good, but because our moods should not be spoiled because of others’ reactions to what you have to say – that’s the bane of Social Approval Indicators such as the ‘like’, ’emoticon’, buttons. Forget textual responses – you must be lucky (or a manager) if you want them consistently for all your messages.

To conclude, the next time you share something that you think is funny, but find no response at all, just move on! Nobody will remember that a week from now, may be it’s just you. On the contrary, you are the courageous one for contributing to team conversations when the others haven’t done it.

Recommended Reading: The Art of Mingling, Fun and Proven Techniques for Mastering Any Room

 

Cheers, and good luck!

If you have too many items on your to-do list and don’t know where to begin, try these 3 routes to fight “Analysis Paralysis”:

1. Get up from your desk, and walk around – either fill your water bottle, go for a coffee/tea, or just go somewhere, may be even just a short walk. The task that needs more importance will automatically float to the top of your mind like magic, and will stick to your mind sometimes asking you ‘why is it not done yet?’. Pick that task to go with first.
2. Try the 80/20. Which task, if done, reduces 80% of your burden with 20% of the efforts. Start with that task.
3. Big things first – eat that frog. Some people work the opposite way: small things that take less than 2 – 5 minutes to do gets done first. Choose whichever works for you.

A close cousin to these techniques is just pick anything that you have been analyzing too much, and ‘act’ on it for 2 straight minutes. Don’t think. Just do. This 2-minute work propels, and snowballs (more often than not) into multiple 2-minute installments and voila, you’d have accomplished a huge chunk of that task.

Cheers and good luck!

Human psychology with perception, acts totally different when we are in an 1-on-1 setting and when we are in a group setting.

This perception doesn’t see any difference between a live face-to-face situation or in a software-based chat conversation like the Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Slack.

Observe this the next time you have someone state something in a group chat conversation and practice the 5-second check before typing in a response.

If you choose to respond to that public conversation, do you think it’d be a better idea if you instead replied to the person privately, or do you think it’d be okay to respond within that group itself? Does it make the other person look stupid, silly, or does it make them look good – in the group?

Often people take note when you’ve chosen to respond to them in private instead of in the public forum for everyone to see.

That’s the hidden gem in any chatting platform – you can always respond to anyone 1-1 instantly.

This works especially well in two situations:

• when you want to show that you care for the original poster seriously (so the other group members don’t take you for a sucker), or
• you want to avoid a possible perception of ‘showing off’ when providing a solution to a question posted publicly (so the person you’re responding to doesn’t look dumb).

In a simple switch, the other person notices your ingenuity that evidently shows up and they’d respect you for saving their face (if it’s the latter case above). Again, this may not work in all situations but you are the best judge, and that’s when this 5-Second Check will act as your barometer.

Cheers and good luck!