Audio and video have become common ways of interacting with each other already. Yet written communication still remains the predominant way of keeping in touch across geographies and cultures.

According to Albert Mehrabian, in an ambiguous situation,

(…) words account for 7%, tone of voice accounts for 38%, and body language accounts for 55% (…)

Ambiguous in this context means that in the perception of the recipient, the spoken words and the tone/gestures do not match.

Mehrabian’s theory might not be a general rule of thumb for all communication scenarios out there. However, written communication has the required level of ambiguity to make the rule applicable. In particular, if the communicators come from different cultures and therefore don’t share the same mother tongue.

To miss out on a nuance in tone can completely change the meaning of a sentence. The lack of a common cultural background might lead to misinterpretations on an even bigger scale. Even if people speak the same basic language (e.g. English), the meaning of a certain expression might be fundamentally different from the spoken word as shown by the Independent.co.uk in 2015.

I can’t see your eyes, so I don’t know what you’re saying

Crime shows have taught us how agents identify liars by their facial expressions and gestures. In modern coaching, techniques like “mimic resonance” receive a lot of attention because they can help to overcome the “non-verbal” barrier for understanding each other.

But what happens if resonating on the other person’s mimics or gestures isn’t an option?

Everyone has been in a situation in which an Email or a text message has caused confusion, slight irritation or outright fury. In the same way, everyone has experienced the awkwardness of realising that the whole hoo-ha was caused by a misinterpretation or wrong assumption.

If we can’t look each other in the eye in the quest for the word’s real meaning, we need to find other ways to convey feeling or intent.

Read more: How to write a professional email

Emoticons in business are unprofessional – but what of emotion in team communication?

Research and experts can be found on both ends of the spectrum. Statements such as:

(…) smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence. Perceptions of low competence in turn undermined information sharing. (…)
— Source: “The dark side of a smiley“

…live next to charts like this one:
Leading reasons for using Emojis according to U.S. internet users as of August 2015

(Source: statista 2015)

Leaving everything to the recipient’s interpretation probably isn’t the right way to go about it. Plastering digital messages with LOLing yellow faces and other emotional hints might not help much either. The middle ground between “professional” and “warm and cuddly” probably lies in the art of using emoticons (or emojis) in moderation.

We can think of it like company team building events: a drink can facilitate the building of new relationships, too many drinks can destroy the same relationships forever.

Another factor that influences the perception of emoticons in business communications is “protocol” or “social conditioning”. A study from the University of Missouri-St. Louis concluded,

(…) In a task-oriented context, where impersonal, cold, and unsociable features of computer-mediated communication are strongly encouraged in order to build credibility or professionalism, using emoticons in e-mail might create a positive expectancy violation by being friendly, emotional, and personal. (…)

If we deny the importance of emotions and the human touch in business relationships, we condition people to perceive them the wrong way: as unprofessional.

So instead of banning emotion and emoticons from written business communication, we might want to teach people the appropriate use and expression of emotion.

We live in a world in which work life balance and well-being play a bigger role than ever. Therefore bringing some human touch to business communications is surely more appropriate than trying to stick rigidly to the “fun is fun and work is work” paradigm of the old days.

Our take on emojis and reactions at Fleep

From day one at Fleep we were in agreement that conveying emotion in team communication is essential. That’s why we have our own little set of Fleep-style, hand drawn emoticons that we believe work across cultures.

Just recently we introduced emoji based reactions to give our users even more freedom in expressing their opinion or feeling on a topic with a simple click.

Since a reaction can be much more than just a like or dislike, we even decided to offer a broader spectrum of “emotion”. With the entire set of emojis that are established across almost all digital messaging tools. Fleep users can now be more versatile in feedback with a  one-click statement on a team member’s message.

Sign up and trial Fleep today!

Further reading:

• Team Communication Strategies of top CEOs and leaders
• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team
• Email in Business Communication: How Busy People Use Email

The post Why Expressing Emotion Really Matters in Messaging appeared first on Fleep Blog.

If we took all the e-mails produced by a company over the period of one year and looked at it from a “could there have been a better option than e-mail” perspective, I truly believe this is what it would look like:

No matter what the alternative could have been, in the majority of cases email wasn’t the right vehicle for moving a message from A to B.  For a small minority of cases, it probably was.

I’ve never seen any in-depth content or interaction analysis of corporate e-mail usage beyond end user surveys. But, since e-mail has turned into this intrusive curse, chasing information workers relentlessly across devices and time zones like a sinister spirit, it is clear that something’s not ok.

With the Millennials entering the workplace, this creeping feeling about e-mail has escalated further. Which hoody-wearing future talent would even consider information exchange through this antiquated medium? They Facebook, tweet, WhatsApp, Instagram or Snapchat their way through an always-on world, right?

With the intent of solving this challenge, tech companies from all over the world are introducing entirely new ways of communication to companies. Social Media in the workplace is here. What works in the private world so splendidly, must surely be the solution to the mind numbing avalanche of e-mail in the business world, mustn’t it? So the evangelists have started preaching the bright future of productivity, networking and corporate culture.

We don’t seem to have stopped at any time however, and considered the question: why is e-mail broken? Or: is e-mail even broken at all?

E-mail wasn’t built for real-time communication exchange. It was never designed for collaborating on information and documents. It should never have become the only reliable channel through which “need to know” information could be delivered.

Without even realising it, companies have managed to turn e-mail into the foundation of any business or support process. Over the course of two decades, the global workforce has been gradually conditioned to believe that e-mail is the only way for businesses to interact and exchange information digitally.

Even the good old phone call has fallen victim to the short two line message that can be so conveniently fired off between meetings. It’s really no surprise that what used to be a status symbol of “importance” has turned into a curse in the workplace.

Of course, if we insist on using e-mail for things it was never intended, it will seem broken.  But then its on us, not e-mail itself.

Sometimes, a letter is appropriate.

Well, not literally of course. When I say “letter”, I don’t mean the physical piece of paper. A letter in this context is a well considered message. A message that is sent to one or more recipients through an established channel. It conveys a certain level of formality and may be left unread until time allows. A letter can be important but isn’t necessarily urgent. Its recipients are clear and so is the sender.

I believe there are use cases that allow for, or even demand, something other than an instant message, a feed post or an entry in a discussion board. Sometimes popping over a text or answering with an emoji is even outright rude. And sometimes e-mail is the only way anyway, because there simply isn’t any other common channel a group of people share.

Just recently I watched a scene in the Netflix series “The Crown”, in which Queen Elizabeth sat down to write a letter. Before sitting down she paced back and forth, thinking about what she wanted to say. Then she took a piece of paper, opened a fountain pen and took a deep breath before writing the first lines.

This is how we should use e-mail: deliberate, thought through, with a clear objective in mind. The goal should be to convey a message to the recipient, not to just fire it off and be done with it. The format itself should be a clear signal of intent: here is something I need you to really digest and understand. Therefore I have taken the time to write it down. Read it when you have the time.

We can make e-mail great again. Really.

If we as senders take our communication pace down a notch, we will re-gain time to think about how to write what, to who, and where. After that we can still fire away our chat messages, newsfeed posts and collaboration space comments where appropriate.

Occasionally however, we need to sit down and think for a while, take the time to write a text and choose our words and recipients carefully. Then, sign it and send if off, knowing that at the other end of the line someone will appreciate the format and wait until all the posts, messages and comments have gone quiet to then read our message, consciously and with intent.

Having the best of both worlds is possible.

At Fleep we believe in consolidating communication throughout your organization. Most modern day communication tools almost manage this.

It has become standard to expect chat tools to include messaging, voice and video calls and to let you save and share files easily as a minimum. But Fleep takes things one step further integrating with e-mail. This means you can add people to conversations and teams with their email address and they’ll receive messages as emails until they sign up to Fleep.

The very nature of this should help to foster asynchronous, considered communication within a chat app.

We realise that email has been the tool of choice for a very long time and is still at large in many organisations today. It may even have its place in some scenarios. So while we believe that change is inevitable, we’re committed to making the process of unifying your communication channels less painful by keeping them all in one place.

Sign up and trial Fleep today!

Further Reading:

• Email in Business Communication: How the Busiest People in the World Use Email
• Team Communication Strategies of top CEOs and Leaders
• Why Expressing Emotion Really Matters in Messaging

The post Make E-Mail Great Again appeared first on Fleep Blog.

New technologies and greater mobility encourages freelance work for those who prefer flexibility to a monthly pay cheque. This article is about you can can increase collaboration with remote work, combining it with in-office work.

Increase Collaboration With Remote Work: Being present or being there

We still live in a world in which often, being present in an office space is associated with productivity or dedication to the employer. For many companies, home office or remote work is still a privilege for management or those connected to the right people.

But being physically present does not necessarily mean that a person’s mind and focus are on the job. In the world of open office spaces and countless meetings it’s often quite the opposite. According to a survey conducted by Harris Poll, U.S. employees at large-sized companies (1000+ employees) spend only 45% of their time on their primary function. 14 % of their time is spent on email, the remaining 40% of their working hours is spent on meetings, admin and “interruptions”.

Globalisation and the associated decentralisation of organisations mean physical presence should no longer be an indicator for productivity. Being considered for specific roles or even a promotion, should not be determined by location. If companies really want to tap into the global talent pool and profit from diversity and cultural enrichment, it’s necessary to adapt leadership and organisational mechanics to fit that ambition. This means hiring remote workers.

According to a Deloitte study (Winning over the next generation of leaders, 2016), millennial workers feel repelled by traditional corporate structures, often believing such companies are solely driven by bottom-line goals. Companies that successfully manage to keep millennial workers on board, provide a healthy work-life balance, opportunities for personal development and allow for flexible working hours. Trust pays off, according to the latest millennial study by Deloitte:

Accountability and flexibility are highly correlated; those working in the more flexible environments report higher levels of personal responsibility. For example, where flexible working is most deeply entrenched, 34 percent take “a great deal” of personal accountability for their organisations’ reputations. This compares to just 12 percent within enterprises where there is low flexibility.
— The Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017

Increase Collaboration With Remote Work: It’s the right balance that makes for a winning formula.

Mastering the art of remote work requires effort from all participants. Its a balancing act between spending enough time building and deepening relationships, mostly through digital tools since you are not on site. While at the same time leveraging the ability to retract from distraction and noise. The latter is particularly important in the attempt to reach a state called „Deep Work“, which was introduced by Cal Newport in his book in 2016.

• Individuals need to develop a sense for when they need „down time“ from people, and when social contact is beneficial.
• Teams need to find a way to create a solid foundation for virtual collaboration and establish rules so that the absence of one does not create bottle necks for others.
• Managers with local and remote workers need to evolve their leadership and coaching skills. Their challenge lies in unifying a distributed team and maintaining strong bonds to those who get less face time.

For freelancers this way of working is already the norm. Frequently, they don’t see their clients face to face every day. This is particularly true if they are juggling more than one assignment. Freelancers can arrange for face time with their clients and then retract and “get things done”. With the dawn of new communication and collaboration technologies, this has become even simpler. Staying in touch with their clients has never been easier.

Increase Collaboration With Remote Work: Making relationships with remote workers, work

In a publication from the Harvard Business Review on a 2017 study with 1’100 employees, the following key aspects of managing remote employees were described:

• Check in frequently and consistently
• Use face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact
• Demonstrate exemplary communication skills
• Make expectations explicit
• Be available
• Demonstrate familiarity and comfort with technology
• Prioritise relationships

Not all aspects require physical presence, but they require more than the occasional phone call. Modern technology accommodates all the points mentioned above, even without excessive travel or time investment. It also allows for the adoption of these aspects by every member of the team.

The right tools help build bridges with remote workers

At Fleep we believe that conversation is a key element of a successful team, onsite and remote. Whether it‘s about the exchange of ideas or simply about staying in touch. Developing a deeper understanding of one another and fostering relationships of any kind requires talking. Sometimes this exchange is in real-time in a chat or an audio conversation, sometimes it can go on for a longer period and be an asynchronous conversation between two or more people on a specific subject.

Fleep is perfect for onsite and remote collaboration. When your team needs to kick-start a new project, plan an event, collaborate on launching a new product or cooperate on making any project happen, Fleep is the collaboration software that will help you make that happen.

In Fleep, live & persistent exchanges are kept in one place. This is how we give our users the power over their conversations whilst avoiding „fear of missing out“ and the need to constantly check instant messages. Through our integration with any major e-mail client, Fleep can radically improve the way you communicate with colleagues and partners allowing you to connect seamlessly with them all in one place no matter how remote you are physically.

Further Reading:

• How to Work in a Remote Team?
• Coworking Spaces: Perfect Offices for Remote Collaboration
• Team Building In A Virtual World

The post Does a Balance of Presence and Remote Work Increase Collaboration Results? appeared first on Fleep Blog.

This article is about the need to find a way to shield yourself from distraction. To get out of this state of constant distraction and into what Cal Newport calls “Deep Work, (the) professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to the limit.”

The new world of information work

After years of optimising production and manufacturing with concepts like Kaizen, the focus has changed to the productivity of the knowledge worker. Inspired by the spirit of the New Economy  companies introduced open office space concepts in an attempt to resolve boxed thinking and “sitting”. Almost simultaneously the world of business software picked up on the newly introduced social media and networking concepts.

A billion people on Facebook had to be an indicator that people loved being connected in the digital world. But e-mail had already become the every day, and sometimes all night, companion of the employee who wants to show dedication and climb the career ladder as quickly as possible. Being “present” on the other end of the digital line – irrespective of personal situation or time of day – was turned into an implicit requirement for the ambitious. The new social messaging, chat feed and collaboration channels now add to the already constantly humming e-mail box and have begun to chase people with additional notifications across all devices.

Nowadays, the walls of time zones, offices and hierarchies have been (almost) broken down. Combined with a 24/7 exchange and information flow, the knowledge worker is facing a completely new challenge: a million voices that want an answer, and they expect a quick one.

The inbox dictates every day’s agenda

Mobile e-mail, social-style communications and ever present wireless internet have changed expectations for turnaround times. “Immediate” is the new “well informed”. Too often it’s not about substance anymore but the availability of an answer in almost real time. Inboxes dictate the day’s agenda across all devices and because there is more than one person waiting for an answer, actual “work time” gets pushed back…and back…and back.

The information worker is conditioned to an unhealthy multi tasking mode in order to even stay somewhat afloat in the avalanche of requests and digital distractions. The Bryan College has published an impressive info graphic on the annual loss of productivity (est. US$ 450bn globally) because, based on their research, millenials switch their focus 27 (twentyseven!!) times an hour.

Source: Bryan College – Millennials Multitasking in the Workplace

How to shield yourself from distraction?

Self organisation and discipline sounds like the lame advice that parents gave when school got tough. “You just need to be a bit more organised and ignore all the distractions”.

If you listen to people like Jeff Bezos or Ashton Kutcher, it doesn’t seem so far off the actual solution to the problem, though. In an interview with TechCrunch Bezos said: “(…) I like to be doing whatever I’m doing. I don’t like to multi-task. If I’m reading my email I want to be reading my email (…) I multi-task serially.”

Ashton Kutcher, a serious business investor for those who only know him as a goofy guy from television, revealed his simple secret to getting ahead of work at an AirBnB Spotlight event: “When I wake up…I spend the first hour of my work not looking at email, and actually just writing out what it is that I want to accomplish in a given day. And then before I go through my emails, I’ll do all my outgoing, outbound stuff, which is what I want everyone else to do for me. And then I’ll go and get reactive to whatever’s going on.”

“Yes, but I am neither a billionaire nor a TV star. I have to do what people ask me to do,” is what you’re probably thinking right now. However, if you take a step back it’s not about “full control”. It’s about taking the amount of control that it necessary to get things done. According to Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, this won’t be for more than 4 hours of the day, even for the really advanced.

Turn off the voices & temptations and take control over your work

Cal Newport believes that 2 hours of Deep Work, the state of mind in which substantial value creation happens, is realistic for the average Joe. For those two hours it’s about stepping away from all the channels that scream for your attention and from all the notifications, likes & shares, that want to reward you for the small contributions that you have made to the digital world.

Then it’s about being in control of the personal agenda:

• What do I have to do?
• When do things have to be done?
• Where is the information I need, to make well informed decisions?

The more organised the personal workspace or better still, work eco system is, the easier to retain the overview and have all the pieces at hand to solve the puzzle. Two hours of focussed, undistracted work in an organised world can be an eternity. Compared to the 27 attention fractions, that are cramped into a colleague’s hour, it’s productivity on steroids.

Fleep wants to help enable Deep Work experiences

Besides the discipline to “take time out” from the voices and distractions, at Fleep we believe that Deep Work requires a new place to organise communication around knowledge work. The inbox has reached its limit. Conversations and facts get distributed and disconnected in e-mail threads. Action items get lost in digital ping pong. Enter Fleep, a place where all your digital conversations take place, in one place.

We have consciously decided not to hound our users with notifications and bouncing icons in task-bars by default. We want our users to decide for themselves how notifications appear. Or the frequency in which e-mail reminders are sent.  Or even when others see whether their message has been read or not. We want you to shield yourself from distraction.
Fleep is built to radically improve the way people work alone and together on projects. And this irrespective of whether they are all Fleep users or engaged in conversations with others via e-mail. With this confidence, users can visit the conversation they want to focus on in the moment when they want to focus on it – and they are always in charge. Always.

Fleep focusses heavily on making digital communication a pleasant experience again. But we have gone even further, in Fleep you’ll find baked-in light weight collaboration features like assignable task lists or pinned messages (aka reminders) within conversations, primarily for those users who aren’t using suites like Trello or Asana.

Shield yourself from distraction and try the Deep Work experience!

Sign up for Fleep today. It’s free. It’s addictive. It can become your one single hub for private and business conversations thanks to it’s open network and inter-operability with E-mail.

Yes, let me try Deep Work mode!

Manage Business Conversations with Fleep

Get your team ready for Deep Work. Put the power over their attention span back in their hands. At the same time Fleep for Business offers full control over access & user accounts through extended administration features. So you and your team can enjoy the full Fleep experience plus the admin rights you need for a business environment​​​​​​​.

My Team deserves the Deep Work experience. Sign me up!

Further Reading:

• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team
• Why Expressing Emotion Really Matters in Messaging
• Team Building In A Virtual World

The post Deep Work and How to Shield Yourself From Distraction appeared first on Fleep Blog.