This guide to team communication is not your average list of “7 Cliched and Over-Generalized Tips to Improving Team Communication”. We went ahead and did the research on team communication, got to the core of communication breakdown causes, and wrote down what we found out.

Sounds interesting? You bet. Let’s dig in.

What is Team Communication, Really?

First of all, let’s be clear about what is team communication. A team is not any group of people.

“A team is a collection of people who must work interdependently to achieve a common goal or output.” — Baden Eunson (from Communicating in the 21st Century)

Today, teams are a typical form of organization in companies. In fact, according to some research, teams are considered one of the most effective and efficient methods for achieving organizational tasks and goals.

What is team communication, then? Baden Eunson’s definition gives away the first key. Teams must work interdependently. And for interdependent cooperation, we need… (drumroll please)… communication, which is broadly defined as the exchange of information and transmission of meaning.

So, all the interaction and exchanges of information that happens in a team is team communication. Regardless of the type of team and its tasks, all team members need to interact and exchange information in order to achieve their goals.

How Does Team Communication Work?

Now, let’s take a look at how team communication actually works. Team communication takes many shapes and forms, from verbal communication to digital forms of written communication, to things that are left unsaid.

Communication formats and channels

The specific forms and types of communication that take place will depend on your field of work, and the structure of your team. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of team communication channels:

• Verbal team communication: team meetings, one-on-one interactions, water-cooler conversations, calls
• Written communication: paper documentation, electronic documentation, emails, team chat, tasks

Within a team, any combination of these communication formats will be in use. There are no rights or wrongs here, it’s a matter of making sure whatever forms your team uses work for your team. Most typically, it is the team manager’s responsibility to choose the appropriate channels for team communication, ones that help them achieve their team’s goals.

Communication styles

Even more, the team manager has to make sure their communication style works for the team. Some teams lean more towards a top-down kind of interaction, other teams are more flat and encourage two-way communication.

Just like with the channels of communication, there’s no right or wrong with team communication styles. This may be something that you want to give some thought to, if you are a team manager or an influential member of the team looking to make a difference.

For example, think about your own culture and that of your team members. Are your team members more introverted or extroverted? Introverts need time to reflect and process information, while extroverts often think out loud and prefer immediate feedback. In fact, most teams have a mix of introverts and extroverts, and this is something you need to consider when managing your team’s communication styles.

Personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) can help evaluate your team’s communication styles. Taking a test like the MBTI can help you get a deeper understanding of your team’s communication styles and further the bond between your team members as well.

Another great tool for determining different communication styles is the DiSC assessment. The widely popular model provides a useful framework for talking about and evaluating communication styles. According to DiSC, the primary communication styles are: Dominant, Influencer, Conscientious and Steady.

Use frameworks like DiSC or MBTI to figure out your own communication style and those of your team members. This will give you a good foundation to work with in improving your team communication.

Importance of Team Communication

Most people who have worked in teams would agree on the importance of team communication. It seems almost commonsensical that communication affects a team’s performance, morale and work enjoyment levels.

Does team communication affect performance?

There’s no question that communication is a critical functional team process factor and can play an important role in team performance. However, studies of teams provide little consensus on whether communication has determinate impact on performance.

Many studies have indicated there is a correlation between team communication and performance. See for example Willis Towers Watson’s communication surveys (that easily result in over-simplified generalizations), or this meta-analysis carried out by a group of scientists. Very few researchers have zoomed in on the relationship between communication and team performance as deeply as Stacey Hassall.

According to Hassall’s study, the effect of communication on performance depends on the type of task at hand. In this study, the researcher created different types of tasks for teams, and then observed the importance of communication for succeeding in completing these tasks:

“The effect of communication on performance is stronger for a decision making task compared to a production task. [...] While teams needed to communicate for the production task, the critical feature of this task was making as many origami as possible in the time period available. Communication therefore wasn’t the method through which teams were to achieve their outcome; team members using their hands to create origami was.” — Stacey Hassall

These findings seem logical, but they’re not necessarily common sense. They show that communication is not always determinant of performance. As managers, we need to be aware of not making this overgeneralization and simplification when talking about team communication.

Furthermore, various research has alluded that team communication becomes important to performance when teams are diverse. The results from Hassall’s study provide support for this, confirming that when team member diversity is high, team communication does affect performance.

Does team communication affect team cohesion?

Cohesiveness is a characteristic that is commonly present in high-performance teams. The members of a cohesive team are typically more cooperative and effective in achieving their goals.

There is some indication that communication does support the forming of high-performance teams. However, it is not necessarily the key driver in the team’s development of trust.

It might seem almost like a chicken-and-egg problem. It’s not always crystal clear whether effective team communication helps build trust or whether trust built up in a team facilitates easy and effective communication.

What is clear though, is that when you combine trust with easy and effective team communication, it helps build a team’s cohesion. And most likely, you cannot have one without the other. So, rather than asking whether team communication affects cohesion, you should consider how you can work towards both.

How to Improve Team Communication?

What to do if your team is not communicating too well? First of all, you have to get to the root of the problem. If you feel the need to improve your team communication, it means that there has been a communication breakdown. So, you need to figure out what has gone wrong and how.

Identify the root of the problem & do your best to fix it

As you start to evaluate your team communication, the root of the problem may be immediately evident to you. But it’s more likely it’s going to take some serious reflection, looking in the mirror, and a thorough evaluation of your processes. So, buckle up.

Below, we’ll highlight some of the most common causes of team communication breakdown. Think of these as pointers to finding out what went wrong. While this list is in no way exhaustive of all the potential pitfalls of team communication, it does offer some starters and directions for your evaluation process.

Identifying the problem is the first step. Then comes the hard work of fixing it. Below each potential root cause of team communication breakdown, we’ve added suggestions for solving the issues.

Think of these as ideas and guidelines rather than surefire keys to success. Let’s not forget that every team is unique and what works for some, may not work for others. (Harsh truths, sorry!)

Root cause #1: Is it you?

Take a deep breath. This is the toughest one to evaluate. Take some time to consider your role in the team. How do your words and actions affect the team’s communication? Do you have a key role in the team?

In this, think about your own personality and communication styles (with the help of MBTI or DiSC frameworks, if necessary). Could it be these are not helping the team communication as a whole? Consider whether your personality and communication style make you a good listener. Are you a good listener? Are you good at facilitating discussion? What kind of atmosphere do you create in the team? If you find it hard to evaluate yourself, you can also ask for help. Someone neutral from outside the team can help, and it would be even better to involve a professional — a coach, a psychologist or consultant.

Solution: Nope, we’re not gonna suggest taking *you* out of the problem. If you think you may be a cause for communication issues, and are ready to admit this, you deserve a chance at making things better. Even more, you actually have a good chance of making this happen.

Think of ways to improve yourself in the context of the team and it’s communication. This will need some serious work, but it’s not impossible. Some potential strategies include: working on your management skills, working on your communication skills, working on your listening skills.

Recommended reading: Leaders Eat Last, How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Stop Saying “Um,” “Ah,” and “You Know”

Root cause #2: Is your team malfunctioning?

Sometimes, team communication issues are a symptom of a much bigger problem. It can be a sign that your team is struggling with cohesion, culture or alignment. While the topic of team management and issues around it is a whole other field, it will suffice to touch upon a few key factors here.

High-functioning teams do not excel by chance. They are successful because they have shared goals, high levels of trust, confidence in their abilities and a sense of team identity. This is sometimes even summed up as “team emotional intelligence”. So, a malfunctioning team will be lacking in any or several of the aforementioned factors.

Solution: Some might argue that a team’s synergy cannot be forced. While turning a malfunctioning team into a high-functioning team is definitely not an easy task, it can be facilitated.

If it’s in your power, you can start with considering whether you’ve assembled the right people. Often, whether or not people can work well together does come down to personal connectedness.

Other important factors for team development include: clear objectives, metrics for evaluating progress, training, decision-making authority, incentives and an open culture.

Recommended reading: Drive, Good to Great, Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must Reads on Teams, High-performance Teams: Understanding Team Cohesiveness

Root cause #3: Is your team struggling with virtual communication?

Traditionally, teams have operated in the same building, or even the same room. In recent decades, there has been a shift away from face-to-face operations to virtual teams. Members of such teams may be dispersed geographically and thus need to rely on communicating via technology.

Furthermore, as remote work and working from home becomes more common, the challenges of virtual communication also affect any teams that support a culture of flexible work.

In this shift, teams are facing new kinds of communication challenges. For example, Zapier and Baden Eunson have highlighted the following challenges to virtual team communication:

• Time zone differences
• Small misunderstandings snowballing into drama
• Not enough communication
• But also, over communication, exacerbating message overload
• Technology hiccups

So, if your team has faces any of these challenges — you’re not alone. And the good thing is, most of these challenges can be solved. You need to manage expectations, set the right kind of example, as well as figure out the right processes and tools to help your team. Slack is one of the most popular tools that can improve virtual team collaboration, but there are many great Slack alternatives out there as well.

Solution: Depending on the specific virtual communication challenges your team is facing, the solution will be different. Here are some widely recommended strategies for seamless virtual communication:

• Schedule, budget and plan face-to-face time. Research suggests it would be a good idea to plan some in person face-to-face time for the virtual team. This doesn’t have to even happen frequently, but it can help align the team on its goals and move the team from a developing team to a performing team. In bigger and longer-term projects, face-to-face time would ideally happen three times: at commencement, at the intermediate stage and at the winding-up stage (from Communicating in the 21st Century).
• Build processes with different time zones in mind. If your team works from different time zones, take a moment to figure out how to communicate well across time zones. Office Ninjas have provided some great tips for this: make time zones common knowledge in your team, set “official office hours”, make calling easy, unify calendars, schedule less meetings and use more messaging.
• Manage expectations regarding channels and frequency of communication. The easiest way to manage the team’s expectations regarding virtual communication is to come up with good practices & guidelines that suit your team. Ideally, these would be noted down somewhere in writing so that everyone can refer to them when necessary — and any new people joining the team can check them out as well. In these guidelines, be sure to cover what channels the teams are supposed to use for communication. Even more, which channels are for urgent communication (e.g. phone calls) and which ones are for asynchronous or real-time communication (e.g. email, team chat). A real-life example of such communication guidelines for our own team chat use:

Recommended reading: Communicating in the 21st Century, The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work, It’s 5pm Somewhere: Strategies to Run Operations Across Time Zones

Root cause #4: Are there any cultural barriers?

Do your employees come from all around the world or from different cultural backgrounds? Great! Cultural diversity in the workplace has many benefits. However, you need to ensure language and cultural differences don’t get in the way of effective communication.

Cultural differences can pose different challenges to communication. For example, people from different backgrounds may have different understandings of professional etiquette and company culture. People may be less likely to voice their opinions, especially in cases where team members rank in different hierarchies in the company.

Additionally, prejudice and cultural stereotypes can hinder the team’s integration and willingness to communicate openly. Not to mention potential language misinterpretations and miscommunications.

If any of the aforementioned issues remind you of your workplace communication, fret not. There are steps that managers can take to make sure that cultural differences don’t create communication challenges.

Solution: One brilliant way to ensure seamless team communication in a diverse team is to practice reflective listening. Whenever something crucial is communicated to a team member, for example the specifications for a task, have them reflect it back to you. Ideally, this would be done in writing, so you could then review the reflection together before moving on to execution.

Another great way to prevent communication issues in diverse teams is to provide training on cultural awareness and sensitivity. Note that this will be relevant for both those that are a cultural minority in your team, as well as for the majority groups. Educating everyone about differences, as well as about the nuances of communication and teamwork can help the team communicate better.

A very simple and practical step any manager can take is to avoid culturally-specific jargon and slang in team-wide communication. It’s obvious when you think of it — it can be alienating to be in the minority who doesn’t “get” what was said. And it’s easy to forget such nuances when you’re not used to managing a diverse team. A little effort can go a long way here.

Recommended reading: CrossTalk: Communicating in a Multicultural Workplace, Building a House for Diversity, Seven Ways to Better Communicate in Today’s Diverse Workplace

Root cause #5: Is your team struggling with giving or receiving feedback?

Feedback is an essential part of team communication. If you have a managerial role in the team, it’s your responsibility to give the team feedback, both praise and constructive criticism. And even if you are not a leader or manager of your team, you may still want to provide helpful feedback to others in your team (even the manager!).

So yes, the obvious point here is to make sure that feedback is given — and received. However, it is not always that simple. There are many nuances to giving and receiving feedback, and these nuances can make or break the communication.

Even though feedback is necessary, it can be uncomfortable to be on either the giving or receiving end. This is especially so when the feedback is critical.

The person giving critical feedback can easily come off belligerent, even unintentionally. And the person on the receiving end can easily get defensive. In such cases, feedback is not really received, as it is unlikely to be accepted and learned from.

Another common issue with feedback is the lack of detail or examples. When feedback is too generic or non-specific, it is very difficult to accept it, even less improve on it. Bear this in mind as you give feedback and as you receive it — you can always ask for more details if you feel the feedback is too generic.

Solution: Once you have figured out where are the loopholes in your team’s feedback systems, you can get to fixing them. Here are a few steps that may help you in giving feedback:

• Be mindful of the setting you choose for giving feedback. A private and nonthreatening setting will make it a lot more comfortable for both sides.
• Present your feedback with details and provide objective data, if possible. If you’re given feedback, don’t hesitate to ask for details and examples as you see fit.
• When the feedback has been communicated, work out a plan for moving forward. This can help drive the points home, and also helps both sides to have realistic expectations.

Additionally, make sure the person on the receiving end also heard what was said. Whether the feedback is in writing or verbal, it doesn’t hurt to practice reflective listening again here. Or if it feels too much, then just keep an eye on how things evolve after the fact, and bring it up again if necessary.

What about the receiver’s side? Here are some recommendations for receiving feedback.

• Try to avoid being defensive. No one is perfect! You’re lucky that your team members or managers pay attention to your work, and want you to improve.
• Admit your mistakes! Admitting when you’re wrong or when you see you have room to grow puts everyone at ease and shows you as the self-aware and honest person you are.
• If it’s unclear, ask how you can improve. You don’t have to be alone in coming up with a plan for improvements. Often, people will not want to micromanage you, but it can be helpful to hear a few practical pointers.

Recommended reading: Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, How to Resolve Conflicts with a Remote Coworker

Conclusion

Team communication is not a standalone aspect of your team collaboration. In many ways, it’s a practical foundation to teamwork.

But if the communication is breaking down or failing, you have to dig a little deeper before you can start improving the team’s communication. In other words, you first have to determine the heart of why your team’s communication needs improvement.

 As highlighted in this blog post, some of the potential pitfalls lie in:

• Choosing the communication formats and channels
• Choosing and practicing appropriate communication styles
• The team manager’s leadership and communication skills
• Team synergy, cohesion and alignment
• Challenges with virtual communication
• Cultural and language barriers
• How feedback is given and received in the team

There are no silver bullets for improving team communication. However, it is possible to work on the causes for communication breakdown. Once you’ve identified the causes, you can start improving your team’s communication. Good luck!

Further Reading:

• Team Communication Quotes to inspire your team
• Team Communication Strategies of top CEOs and Leaders of top CEOs and leaders
• Remote Collaboration: the benefits for employees & employers

The post How to Improve Team Communication: The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Fleep Blog.

There can be many reasons why you may be looking for Slack alternatives. Many have noted that because Slack is team-centric, they often end up having 10 Slack teams as new “inboxes” to check. Others may find the 10,000 message history limit crippling, dislike the lack of ‘Read’ indicators to see who’s read your messages. Or you may miss having native task management inside the collaboration tool where discussions happen and decisions are made.

The good news is that there are a lot of Slack competitors on the market. Some of them are near-identical to Slack in their capabilities, others are quite different, which means that they may fit your workflow even better than Slack! We did the research for you and selected 25 of the best solutions for this overview of Slack alternatives. Check out their top features, pricing, and find the best one for you and your company.

25 Best Slack Alternatives for Team Chat

1. Fleep

Of course we’re biased, but hey — it is our blog. Here’s our #1 Slack alternative. Fleep has everything you need for ultimate team collaboration: team chat, video and voice calling, native task management and integrations.

Top features:

• Team communication and chat
• Communicate & collaborate with any other Fleep user
• Audio-video calling and screen sharing
• Integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive for file sharing
• Lightweight task management
• Pin important messages in every conversation

Why this tool stands out: Fleep may just be the best solution for you if you work with people outside your team as much as you do internally. Unlike most team communication tools, Fleep does not confine you to a siloed team-only space. Instead, you can communicate and collaborate with any other Fleep user, belong to several teams and work with any other team on the Fleep platform.

Pricing: Basic functionality is free to use, Business subscription from 5EUR / user / month

Don’t just take our word for it. Try Fleep for free >>

2. Blink

The Blink Employee App is a mobile first, all-in-one employee portal from frontline workers. It was created for the unique needs of large distributed workforces, where the majority of the employees don’t sit in front of the computer in an office setting, but work in customer-facing roles. For these deskless workers, an employee app on their personal phones is the suitable solution rather than already popular desktop-based platforms like Slack.

Top Features:

• Team and peer to peer messaging
• Personalized company feed
• Unlimited cloud storage in the document hub
• Shortcuts, custom forms, and reports
• Read receipts and polls
• Admin portal with engagement analytics
• Fully brandable with company colors and logo

Why this tool stands out: Blink is unique in this list in that it focuses mostly on non-desk workers, so they put a lot of emphasis on the mobile experience and usability. At the heart of their mission is employee happiness and all features were developed with the end users in mind. Although most of Blink’s customers are large companies, it is recommended for any company in industries like healthcare, transport, retail, hospitality or facilities management.

Pricing: From $3.40 per user per month. A free 14-day trial is also available where no credit card is required.

3. Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is an easy team messaging platform. It connects diverse teams to discuss and share work within a single interface. This tool allows seamless and faster team communications along with great vendor-client collaboration facilities.

Top Features

• Team and individual messaging
• Group conversations
• File sharing and previews
• Voice-video calling
• Audio messaging
• Screensharing
• Advanced search filters
• Private chat for confidential conversations

Why this tool stands out: It brings all internal teams to one place to bring great work outcomes. This tool has a rich feature-stack that comes with seamless functional flows, unlike its competitors. The UI and UX are well-designed making the tools learning curve easy. It has covered everything in the tool, right from direct messaging, voice-video calling, secured application login, to live chat support. The unique selling proposition of Troop Messenger would be its ease of use.

Pricing: This SaaS freemium application comes free with basic functionalities. The pricing structure features Premium@ $1/per user/per month and Enterprise@ $5/per user/per annum.

4. Rocket Chat

Rocket Chat is one of the top open source slack alternatives. It is designed for anyone who wants to host their own chat service.

Top features:

• Audio and video conferencing, screen sharing
• Live-chat widgets for websites
• Voice messages
• Real-time automatic translation in more than 35 languages
• Endless customization: themes, integrations, and white labeling
• Marketplace for apps

Why this tool stands out: Rocket Chat is completely free to use and you can make it completely your own by means of customization. The downside of open source projects, though, is that there’s no official customer service (although you can seek help in the online forums on GitHub).

Pricing: Free

5. Mattermost

Mattermost is an open source Slack alternative, just like Rocket Chat. Even more, Mattermost is self-hosted, promising modern communication behind your firewall.

Top features:

• Messaging with search and integrations
• Threaded discussions
• Complete customizability
• Custom emojis
• Multi-language support
• Enterprise edition available

Why this tool stands out: Mattermost stands out as the open source Slack alternative that can also be self-hosted.

Pricing: Free plan for small teams, Enterprise plans from $39 / user / year

6. Ryver

Ryver integrates group chat, task management, and a powerful workflow engine into one app, and promises to keep it affordable for teams of any size.

Top features:

• Unlimited collaboration & file sharing
• Group chat
• Threaded topics
• Personal and team task managers
• Voice and video calls (including screen sharing)
• Workflow automation engine
• Flat-rate pricing

Why this tool stands out: Ryver offers a combination of team chat, task management, and workflow automation in one app. Other apps require integrating multiple apps for such functionality. Additionally, Ryver’s flat-rate pricing is very straightforward.

Pricing: $49/month for 1-12 users, $99/month for 13+ users, and Enterprise plans starting at $399/month

7. CA Flowdock

Flowdock has a unique way of combining team chat and team inboxes of differences services on a single, shared dashboard. It promises to replace chat applications in your workflow and free your mailbox from automated emails.

Top features:

• Flows for organized group chat
• 1:1 conversations (“flows”)
• Threaded conversations
• Video calling with appear.in
• Team inbox to see notifications from different services
• Integrate support or other services with Flowdock

Why this tool stands out: Flowdock has focused on integrating your entire team’s workflows and services into their application, so you can always have an overview of what your team is working on.

Pricing: From $3/user/month, with a 30-day free trial available

8. Flock

Flock is a collaboration hub for your team. It is a messaging platform, promising to bring all your team’s communication and information together in one place.

Top features:

• Direct chat and group conversations
• Audio and video conferencing
• File sharing
• Option to add guest accounts
• One-way Announcement channels
• Shared To-Do’s

Why this tool stands out: In general, Flock is not too different from Slack. The main differentiating feature is that in Flock, you can turn discussions into tasks by creating to-dos for you and your team, and add due dates to them. Additionally, Flock’s is more affordable than a lot of the other options.

Pricing: Limited use for free, $3 / user / month for full functionality

9. Twist

Twist is a communication tool by Doist. According to Twist, it offers a calmer and more organized way to work together.

Top features:

• Conversations organized in threads
• Snooze notifications
• Flexible setup with multiple workspaces and groups
• Choose who gets notified
• Schedule notification-free time

Why this tool stands out: The team behind Twist is betting against real-time messaging. So, Twist is designed for asynchronous communication. This shows in how Twist is set up completely differently from most team chat tools that optimize for instant communication.  In Twist, threads keep all conversations clearly separated by topic so responses do not get buried in an endless stream of group chat.

Pricing: Free with limited message history, $5 / user / month for full functionality

10. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a group chat software offered as a part of Microsoft Office 365. When it launched, many perceived Microsoft Teams as the conglomerate’s competitor to Slack. Even later updates to Microsoft Teams draw parallels with Slack (e.g. “Microsoft Teams is properly taking on Slack now”). The main difference is that Microsoft Teams is not a product, it’s a feature — it does not come as a separate product, but only with Office 365.

Top features:

• Group chat
• Full integration across Office 365 apps
• Voice and video chat
• Threaded messaging
• Join multiple internal teams
• Schedule meetings

Why this tool stands out: Because it’s Microsoft. What this means is that the whole experience is optimized for large and medium enterprises — unlike most of the others on this list. So, if you’re at a big company that uses Microsoft Office 365 already, then it is highly likely Microsoft Teams will be your company’s chat-based tool of choice.

Pricing: Free with up to 300 users with core features, $6/month and upwards for a more fuller set of features

11. Glip

RingCentral Glip is a team messaging and collaboration app that promises better, faster team collaboration.

Top features:

• Team messaging
• Share and collaborate on files
• Task management
• Screen sharing
• Video meetings
• Notes for text editing in conversations

Why this tool stands out: While nothing really stands out about Glip, it does have more built-in features (like document collaboration, Calendar and Tasks) than Slack or your average Slack alternative.

Pricing: Free plan for unlimited everything (posts, storage, integrations, guest users) and 500min of shared video chat. Standard plan at $5 / user / month with 1,000 min of shared video, advanced administration controls, Data retention policies etc.

12. Wire

Wire started out as a beautiful, secure instant messaging app. Since then, Wire has been re-invented as a secure collaboration platform, more geared for work communications.

Top features:

• Group conversations and 1:1s
• Team admin capabilities
• End-to-end encryption
• Voice and video calls
• Self-destruct messages
• Sketch for quick editing images

Why this tool stands out: Wire is one of the very few team communication or collaboration apps that comes with end-to-end encryption. As such, “secure” is Wire’s unique selling point.

Pricing: From 4EUR / user / month to 6EUR / user / month, depending on your preferred billing period

13. Missive

Missive is a communication app that combines email and chat. Missive makes it possible to collaborate around any inbox, and use team chat within the same tool.

Top features:

• Team chat
• Manage team inboxes and individual ones
• Collaborate on social media inboxes
• Assign conversations and tasks
• Organize conversations with shared team labels
• Automation for workflows

Why this tool stands out: While many collaboration tools claim to “kill email” or want to move you away from email, Missive embraces email. It makes email collaborative, and allows for chat around that collaboration. Even more, they recently added functionality that lets you collaborate on social media and SMS accounts.

Pricing: Basic functionality can be used for free, and upgrades available from $8 / user / month.

14. JANDI

JANDI is a business messaging app with built-in workplace productivity features. According to Forbes, it is South Korean contender to the list of companies catering to the business communication needs of the Asian market.

Top features:

• Group communication and 1:1s
• Collaborative file management
• Assign tasks to yourself and others
• Integrations with key apps
• Administrative panel

Why this tool stands out: While nothing major stands out about JANDI, it’s all in the details. As a PR representative explained in an interview to Forbes, JANDI optimizes their user experience to fit the culture and expectations of the Asian market — from emoji galore to allowing for a more hierarchical structure inside the app, and not openness as a lot of the US and Europe-based companies might.

Pricing: Basic functionality is free to use, full functionality with an upgrade from $5 / member / month

15. Chanty

Chanty is a simple AI-powered team chat tool that toots its own horn as a top Slack alternative. It promises seamless team communication, for free, forever. While it is still in beta, it is worth keeping an eye on Chanty in the coming years.

Top features:

• Simple team chat
• Unlimited message history
• File sharing
• Search across your workspace
• AI-powered messaging and replies

Why this tool stands out: Chanty’s key differentiator seems to be a focus on AI for “smart responses”, so you don’t have to type your replies in routine cases where Chanty is able to predict it. Still to be seen whether Chanty will take this AI approach even further from smart replies.

Pricing: Chanty promises to be “Free…Forever”.

16. Cisco Webex Teams

Cisco Webex Teams (previously Cisco Spark) is teamwork app with video meetings, group messaging, file sharing and interactive whiteboard drawing.

Top features:

• Direct and team messaging
• Voice and video calling
• Whiteboard for sketching and idea-sharing
• Schedule
• File sharing
• End-to-end encryption

Why this tool stands out: Webex Teams is much more than a secure, end-to-end team communication app — it supports a range of collaboration tools, Whiteboard being the highlight. It’s not too often you see a teamwork app that allows for such a creative and interactive way to collaborate. (And even the drawings are end-to-end encrypted!)

Pricing: From $24 per month for up to 8 people, to $69 per month for up to 100 people.

17. Cisco Jabber

Jabber, another Cisco product, combines instant messaging, voice and video calling, desktop sharing, conferencing and presence.

Top features:

• Instant messaging
• Powerful video conferencing
• Screen sharing
• Audio and video messages
• Jabber bots
• Access Cisco Jabber directly from Microsoft Office apps

Why this tool stands out: Cisco Jabber is definitely a corporate chat tool that works well with other Cisco products (Outlook, WebEx, Cisco phones). As such, it stands out as a tool for corporations that use other Cisco products as well.

Pricing: Cisco Jabber is available on a quote basis. You can contact the vendor for pricing details or to request a quote.

18. Zoho Cliq

Zoho Cliq (previously Zoho Chat) is their chat tool that is built for work. On Zoho Cliq, you can communicate, collaborate, and reach consensus. Zoho itself is a company that specializes in low-cost, online office software, promising to automate your entire office. Zoho Cliq is a part of this offering.

Top features:

• User-centered chat
• View multiple conversations at once in column-style layout
• Audio and video chat
• Unlimited storage
• Integrations with third-party apps and other Zoho tools
• Bots for automation

Why this tool stands out: Zoho Cliq is one of the few team messengers that has a column-style user interface. That means you can open several conversations in the same window, rather than switch between them.

Pricing: Basic functionality available for free, full from $3 / user / month

19. Zoho Connect

Zoho Connect, another Zoho product, is a team collaboration software that takes the form of a social network. While it is much more than a team chat app, it has all the functionality for internal team communication and more.

Top features:

• Feeds with posts
• Channels for real-time communication
• Forums
• Events & calendar
• Tasks
• Like, comment on and share posts

Why this tool stands out: Zoho Connect stands out for its social take on collaboration. Much like an intranet, Zoho Connect promises you’ll have everything you need for collaboration in one place, not just the chat.

Pricing: Limited functionality available for free, paid versions pricing depends on the size of your company, ranging from $0.4 to $0.8 / user / month

20. HighSide

HighSide (previously ClearChat) is a secure Slack alternative for organizations handling regulated or sensitive data. Their goal is to develop the world’s most secure team chat, file sharing and file storage platform, and make it easy enough for an organization’s least technical member to use.

Top features:

• Channels for team communication
• Direct messaging
• File sharing
• End-to-end encryption
• Custom data retention policies

Why this tool stands out: While it’s still early days for HighSide (it’s in beta), there’s no question about what makes it stand out — it’s security! HighSide is betting on high levels of security and compliance with the highest level requirements.

Pricing: Free for basic functionality, additional features available on a quote basis

21. Hibox

Hibox is a collaboration tool that integrates team chat, video conferencing and task management with AI assistance.

Top features:

• Group chat
• Task management
• Audio and video calling
• Group calendars
• AI assistant to help

Why this tool stands out: Hibox combines three key functionalities of team collaboration into one. While it is not the only tool to integrate team chat, video calls and tasks, Hibox also has an Artificial Intelligence assistant bot that adds an entire layer of functionality to the tool.

Pricing: Free for limited functionality, full functionality from $4 / user / month

22. Blizz by TeamViewer

Blizz from TeamViewer keeps your team connected through chat messaging, video and voice calling, screen sharing, and more.

Top features:

• Team messaging
• Face-to-face HD VoIP video and audio calling
• Instant or scheduled group meetings with up to 300 people
• Screen sharing
• Session recording
• End-to-end encryption

Why this tool stands out: Blizz is definitely all about communication. They have thought through and implemented all the functionality necessary for written communication and calls. From messaging to voice calls, conferencing and even session recording, they’ve got you covered when it comes to communication.

Pricing: Limited functionality available for free, upgrades from $6 / user / month

23. Hubgets

Hubgets offers real-time communication for teams of all sizes. Instantly reach your team members through voice, video and chat from your browser, while having access to your entire business knowledge base.

Top features:

• Instant messaging
• “Millennial-friendly” voice and video chat
• File sharing
• Hubgets page for working with external partners
• Team Boards for posting updates
• Business PBX for enterprise customers

Why this tool stands out: Hubgets has approached communication and collaboration a little differently, allowing for communications beyond instant, real-time messaging. Their Boards and Topics offer knowledge sharing and communication in new, unique formats that really stand out.

Pricing: Limited functionality available for free, paid plans from $2.50 / user / month.

24. Atolia

Atolia is a collaborative platform that aims to facilitate team working and teleworking by gathering many collaborative tools in a single space. The software has 3 main features: communication (instant messaging, exchange of documents, video call), organization (shared agenda, project management), and formation (knowledge exchange and internal resources).

Top features:

• Shared agendas
• Project Management
• Team messaging
• Exchange of knowledge and documents
• Voice and video calls

Why this tool stands out: Atolia allows you to easily work with your teams. You can keep your collaborative tools and synchronize them with Atolia.

Pricing: Basic functionality is free and advanced features are available for 5€ or 9€ per user.

25. Crugo

Crugo does position itself as an alternative to Slack, but goes beyond team chat and video calling, as it also offers tasks and calendars on its team collaboration software.

Top features:

• Group chats and direct messaging
• Audio notes
• Audio & video calls
• Shared calendars and reminders
• Task management
• File sharing and versioning

Why this tool stands out: Crugo is a nice solution that goes the extra mile to offer an all-round collaboration tool with task management and calendar scheduling.

Pricing: Basic functionality available for free, upgrades from 5EUR / user / month

Looking for something different?

While doing our research, we found a ton of tools that can work as Slack alternatives, but are different enough that we decided to list them separately. So, below we’re highlighting three Slack alternatives that take the form of a social network for work and seven tools that pack in way more functionality than Slack — but can still work well as alternatives to it.

Social networks that work as Slack alternatives

Yammer

Yammer is much more a social network for the workplace than a team chat application. Nevertheless, it fits into the Slack alternatives list pretty well. That’s because at its core, Yammer is all about connecting with people across your organization to work together.

Top features:

• Chat messaging
• Groups as lists of users
• Share files
• Social network functionality
• Polls
• Office 365 integration

Why this tool stands out: For some companies, collaboration is very social. Yammer is definitely for those companies, as it functions as a social network for your company. So, while most Slack competitors are team chat tools — Yammer is for team collaboration in a slightly different, more social setup.

Pricing: Free for core features, $3/month per user for Yammer Enterprise. Also, Yammer Enterprise is already included with SharePoint Online and Office 365 Enterprise plans.

Workplace by Facebook

Workplace is a collaborative platform made by Facebook. You can use it to communicate with colleagues, and it also offers social network features for a corporate environment.

Top features:

• Groups for communication
• Chat
• News feed with posts
• Live stream videos
• Share files, images

Why this tool stands out: Workplace stands out as the “Facebook for work”. It’s a social network first and foremost, for community and culture building, communication, collaboration in the workplace.

Pricing: Core features are available for free, and the premium tier with enterprise features and customer support costs $3 / user / month, with a 90-day free trial.

Jostle

Jostle is a cloud-based intranet software that works as a communication platform (and more!) for companies internally.

Top features:

• Discussions / forums
• Member directory
• Content management (“News”)
• Surveys
• SAML SSO

Why this tool stands out: As an intranet software, Jostle obviously stands out on this list. As such, a lot of Jostle’s user interface is dedicated to channels for sharing announcements one-way, and the two-way communication (discussions) is just another part of the interface.

Pricing: Depends on the team’s size, but maximum $8 / user / month

Workvivo

The Workvivo Employee Communication App is a communication platform that brings all your corporate apps and content together through a familiar social experience. It puts engaging communications in the hands of every employee, regardless of role or location, through a fully branded employee app, give all employees the ability share, digest and contribute information from one location through an intuitive user experience and replaces existing content-centric intranets to a people-centric experience.

Top features:

• Personal Activity Feeds
• Collaboration Spaces
• Recognition through shout-outs
• Pulse Surveys and Analytics
• Integration to Slack, Sharepoint, Zoom and other communication and content tools
• People Directory and Interactive Org Chart
• Fully brandable with company colors and logo

Why this tool stands out: Workvivo is a communication platform that was built with employee engagement in mind. By using a familiar social experience, employees are able to connect and communicate, but also to align with company goals and values to create a feeling of being part of a community. This social approach to communication has been shown to significantly increase engagement levels in each of Workvivo’s global customers.

Pricing: Not provided by vendor. Pricing only available on request at info@workvivo.com.

Collaboration suites and project management software as Slack alternatives

Freshconnect

Freshconnect is a team collaboration tool, built to simplify team communication. Freshconnect puts context, from the CRM/helpdesk, at the heart of team conversations, so everyone is on the same page and work gets done faster.

With Freshconnect, your team can collaborate to solve support tickets and close sales deals and message each other in real-time. More importantly, your team can log into Freshconnect and access all your important team conversations – even the ones linked to tickets and deals and casual 1:1 conversations – in one place.

Top features:

• Contextual collaboration inside CRM and helpdesk
• Group chat and 1:1 team conversations
• Conversations can involve not just people in the org but also partners and third-party vendors

Why this tool stands out: Freshconnect’s key differentiator is its contextual collaboration feature. Users of Freshdesk and Freshsales can use Freshconnect to start discussions around support tickets and sales deals, right in their CRM and helpdesk. This way, they make sure that internal discussions are tied to context and save all the time they’d otherwise have spent looking for the email/conversation to bring someone else up to speed.

Pricing: Free! (In their Helpdesk, they say “Freshconnect is free right now, and you can add up to 100 collaborators without having to pay anything at all. If you’re looking at adding your 101th collaborator, please write to support@freshconnect.io.”

ProofHub

ProofHub is an easy to use project management and online collaboration tool. It promises to your teams, projects and clients together in one central place.

Top features:

• Tasklists
• Custom workflows and kanban boards
• Online proofing tool
• Discussions and group chat features
• Whitelabeling
• Reports and time tracking

Why this tool stands out: ProofHub is a proper project management software that qualifies as a Slack alternative only insofar as it offers some communication features via “discussions” and group chat features.

Pricing: starts at $45/month (billed annually)

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 offers a free collaboration platform that combines communication with CRM, task management, projects, time tracking and documents sharing.

Top features:

• Social network
• Tasks and projects
• Group chat and video
• Document management
• Calendar and planning
• Email

Why this tool stands out: Bitrix24 is much more than a Slack alternative, as it offers a comprehensive suite of social collaboration, communication and management tools. So, it stands out in how it promises a complete solution that ensures ease of communication.

Pricing: There’s a range of pricing options, from the Free plan to paid cloud plans ranging from $39/month to $199/month, and self-hosted versions.

Quip

Quip is a productivity suite that combines documents, spreadsheets and checklists with team chat. So, it’s definitely more than just a Slack alternative. With very experienced founders and 13 (!) office dogs, Quip is on a mission to build a new class of productivity tool.

Top features:

• Collaborate on documents
• Spreadsheets for teams
• Chat built into every document and spreadsheet
• Checklists
• Connect with Salesforce

Why this tool stands out: Quip is one of the few on this list that does not put team chat at the centre of their tool, but rather combines it with other elements of their suite, documents and spreadsheets. It’s a unique approach, and definitely worth a closer look if you’re looking for a collaboration suite.

Pricing: $30 / month for a team of five, and $10 per every additional user.

uShare.to

uShare.to calls itself a “workplace technology” for rich, private label team communication. Its functionality includes conferencing, chat and sharing information from any collaboration system in instant workspaces.

Top features:

• Group and 1-on-1 chat
• Video conferencing with screen sharing and annotations
• Multiple workspaces with multiple teams
• Option to have a private workspace for personal use
• Integrations with most popular systems

Why this tool stands out: Service providers can private label uShare.to — and this is something Slack and most Slack alternatives do not offer.

Pricing: $50 / user / year, making it a little over $4 / user / month

Samepage.io

Samepage is a collaboration software combining team chat, video conferencing, task management, file sharing, real-time document collaboration, and more.

Top features:

• Share & edit all kinds of content in real time with Pages
• Team chat
• Threaded conversations
• Video calling
• Tasks
• Calendars

Why this tool stands out: This tool is built around its core functionality, Pages. They act as a canvas for teams to collaborate by creating content, sharing tasks and communicating real time. In this, their approach is slightly different from most team chat apps.

Pricing: Limited functionality is free to use, full functionality costs $7 / member / month

Azendoo

Azendoo is a work communication and collaboration application that helps teams plan and share tasks, work on projects and communicate effectively.

Top features:

• Team communication
• Polls
• Calendar
• Task management
• Time tracking
• Social network-like activity feed

Why this tool stands out: Azendoo probably has the most extensive feature list of all the tools on this list. Its complete “work tracking” solution is so feature-rich it probably has everything you need to get work done — outside of emails & meetings.

Pricing: Staring from $7.50 / user / month

Stackfield

Stackfield combines encrypted project management software and team chat. It’s an integrated platform, so it offers more than just messaging — in fact, it promises to cover all aspects of collaboration.

Top features:

• Team communication
• Thread-based discussions
• Tasks and “Approvals”
• File sharing with commenting on them
• End-to-end encryption
• Events for appointments

Why this tool stands out: While Stackfield is quite impressive in its feature-richness alone, its main selling point seems to be its data security standards. Based in Germany, they emphasize their end-to-end encryption and compliance with not only European data privacy policies (GDPR), but also the German ones, which in many cases are even stricter than EU laws. So, if that’s important to you, Stackfield might just be the tool for you.

Pricing: From 29EUR per month (for up to 10 users) upwards, with a free trial available.

Wimi

Wimi offers a digital collaboration suite that helps companies stay organized and make teamwork more efficient. Wimi goes beyond team communication, as it also offers files & drive, tasks, calendars and video conferencing.

Top features:

• Workspaces for project management
• Chat via channels and direct messaging
• File sharing and management
• Task management
• Calendars
• Voice and video calls

Why this tool stands out: Wimi truly stands out as a “all-in-one” solution. From messaging to calendars to documents with version management, Wimi is a complete package. Very few tools even try to do this much inside one platform.

Pricing: Free for up to 3 users, $9 / user / month and up for upgrades

Skype for Business

Skype for Business, also a Microsoft product (formerly known as Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Lync) is an instant messaging software available with Microsoft Office 365.

Top features:

• Instant messaging
• Voice over IP (VoIP)
• Video conferencing
• Screen sharing
• Advanced integrations with other Microsoft software

Why this tool stands out: Skype for Business keeps its focus on “meetings”, i.e. voice and video conferencing. Separate from Microsoft Teams and Yammer, but still a part of Microsoft’s portfolio, Skype for Business is best suited for the distributed teams that have a need for a lot of voice or video calling. As such, less focus is put on other collaborative features or messaging itself.

Pricing: Offered as a part of Office 365, starting from $8.25 / user / month

There are many tools that didn’t make the list, and even more tools that would have, once upon a time, belonged to this list but have since changed their focus or shut their doors (HipChat, Stride, Redkix and Mainframe, to name a few). As online work communication and collaboration tools are a relatively new field, and it’s constantly evolving, we look forward to seeing how the world migrates away from email to more and more tools that offer team communication. Follow Fleep on Twitter and Facebook to keep an eye on our news and updates!

Further Reading:

• Team Communication Strategies of top CEOs and Leaders
• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team
• How to Build Effective Communication in a Team

The post 25 Best Slack Alternatives in 2021 (Free and Paid) appeared first on Fleep Blog.

Unfortunately, it’s not cut and dry for most of us. A lot of workplaces don’t operate this efficiently. Personal misunderstandings, endless back-and-forth discussions and backlogged teams all result in stress and project delays. This is where effective team communication strategies come in. Implementing one can keep all stakeholders aligned with your targets and provide a structured way of communication with each other. It allows information to travel freely across the group and reach the right people at the right time. Team communication is one of the secrets to building great teamwork.

With this, you may be asking yourself, what are the best team communication strategies?  We looked at the secrets of how the most successful leaders and CEOs engage their employees and inspire their team to move forward.

Here are their top team communication strategies:

1. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO: Have an Open Door Policy

By Heisenberg Media (Flickr: Elon Musk – The Summit 2013) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Elon Musk has always been a master communicator. Whether it’s done for his Twitter followers or his annual meeting with shareholders, the Tesla CEO has used a variety of techniques that relays information to other people in a no fuss way. Here’s an example. In an internal memo to employees, Musk highlighted the importance of keeping doors open and organizational barriers for communication flat:

There are two schools of thought about how information should flow within companies. By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it serves to enhance the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company. Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager’s manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else’s permission.
– Elon Musk

In a traditional setting, business communication should go through proper channels. Often, this means relaying your message in a chain of command and through layers and layers of people that are not privy to that information anyways. The problem with this type of strategy is that there can be significant delays and there is always information that gets left out and context gets thrown out of the equation entirely. By the time you get your answer, it’s all watered down.

To you Mr. CEO, I say, tear down the walls standing the way of effective communication! The best way to solve this is to have an open-door policy where everyone is free to communicate with each other regardless of position or tenure. Having this in place allows people from your team to ask the right questions, express concerns or issues and propose ideas without fear from being drowned in the sea of bureaucracy. Keeping doors open empowers your team members to make decisions for you and it builds trust and independence. Making accessibility a challenge for everyone sets the tone that we should only work around our silos and be confined to our internal work flow. That should not be the case.

Removing obstacles in communication allows for everyone to be more agile and solve their problems before raising them in the next team regroup. An easy way to apply this is by bringing everyone on-board a flexible messenger app like Fleep and making the boundaries for communication more relaxed.

2. John Flannery, General Electric CEO: Practice the Rule of 3 Within Your Team

Photo courtesy of the Economist

When John took over the helm at General Electric, he made it abundantly clear to the company’s 300,000 employees what needs to be done and accomplished. In a letter to the team, he said:

I have a relentless focus on three things – customers, team and execution/accountability.
― John Flannery

If you’ll notice, Flannery didn’t highlight 10 or even 5 initiatives. John Flannery knows that people can only carry and pick up 3 or 4 key messages. The best way to get your team members to remember and follow things is to be precise and specific in what you want them to do. Giving and relaying too many action points and next steps often confuses your team and our cognitive understanding cannot process too many ideas at once. This is what researches refer to as “cognitive backlog”. The best way to solve this within your team is to foster the rule of 3. By boiling down everything into just 3 key points, you’ll avoid the fluff and just focus on what matters to people.

3. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook: Share Your Views In A Nonthreatening Way

Photo courtesy of Facebook

Sheryl Sandberg is an exceptionally insightful leader. So it is not surprising she is also an excellent communicator. One of the key team communication strategies she shared in her book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” reflects on how even in business, there’s rarely one absolute truth. Which is why we need to communicate our views in a nonthreatening way:

I learned that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is MY point of view, (my truth), and someone else’s point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak THE truth are very silencing of others. When we realize and recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way. Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person “I” form. The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak. Miscommunication is always a two way street.
― Sheryl Sandberg

Sharing your views in a nonthreatening way is necessary so other people in the room wouldn’t feel put down, silenced. Even more, it shows that you listen and hear what others are saying as well. In this way, no one will feel discouraged from speaking up in the team, fostering the kind of team culture where effective team communication “just happens”.

4. Jack Stahl, Revlon CEO and Former President of Coca Cola: Provide Constructive Criticism Without Demoralizing

Source

Stahl understood the importance of providing constructive feedback early on in his career. But he learned this not as a leader but as a member of the team. His observations on how his superiors would handle errors and failure became the cornerstone of his leadership style when he took over the position of President in Coca Cola. In an article for Harvard Business Review, he outlines the ways he manages to give effective feedback. One situation stands out the most. For a while, he was the lead project manager of taking a company public. His primary task was to develop a prospectus on the operations and finances of the company:

One evening about a month before the prospectus was due, my boss–then the CFO of the company–sat in with my team to review our progress. I thought everything was right on track, but he painstakingly pointed out that there were about 187 holes in the draft document: critical financial information that was still missing, even the phone number of the new company we were forming. We spoke about the need for me to be more focused on details and to follow up consistently with my direct reports to make sure things were getting done. At the end of the conversation, I was worrying about my own future. [But] He went out of his way to reassure me that my missteps weren’t fatal, that he still valued and supported me, It made me understand that when people feel valued, they can hear difficult feedback without being demoralized by it. Instead, they feel motivated to change.
― Jack Stahl

Feedback is necessary to make sure that mistakes are avoided again in the future and your team members understand what needs to change. Remember that constructive criticism should remain constructive. To make feedback more effective, make it clear to everyone in the team. Be detailed and concise on what needs to happen moving forward. At the same time, accept criticism as well. Effective team communication is about giving everyone the opportunity to speak out and give each other the tough love they need.

5. Sam Walton, Walmart Founder and CEO: Be Truthful and Honest to Your Team Members

Photo: Louie Psihoyos/CORBIS

No one understands the value of being honest like Sam Walton, the head of retail giant Walmart.  In his autobiography “Made in America” Walton explains how he believes that it’s important to treat team members like co-owners of the business. He does this by sharing a complete overview of the current status of the business or any project. He knows that by doing so, he will encourage them to suggest solutions to problems and discuss opportunities that can bring them growth:

Our very unusual willingness to share most of the numbers of our business with all the associates … It’s the only way they can possibly do their jobs to the best of their abilities—to know what’s going on in their business. … Sharing information and responsibility is a key to any partnership. It makes people feel responsible and involved …. In our individual stores, we show them their store’s profits, their store’s purchases, their store’s sales, and their store’s markdowns.
― Sam Walton

This is by far one of the most effective ways to bridge the communication gap in the workplace. Honesty builds trust in the team. The key here is to be as open and transparent as possible. Don’t make your employees feel like things are being hidden from them. While there will always be sensitive information you cannot divulge, it’s better to be clear why some information is not being shared. Give your employees the assurance that they can be honest with you without any pushback and ask if they would do the same thing to you. Mutual understanding and belief in one another can be beneficial to any professional relationship. The most effective managers and leaders know how to relate and understand their employees. This involves admitting to failure or lapse in judgement. Taking steps to owning up mistakes you have done can show that everyone is susceptible to mistakes and gives you a sense of humanity that your employees value.

6. Seth Godin, Top Author and Entrepreneur: Create an easy and relaxed environment

Photo by Joi Ito (Seth Godin) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

While achieving business goals is paramount to your success, smart business leaders understand that your team member’s personal convictions matter as well. Being able to inspire and make your employees feel confident about the decisions they are making can lead to less confrontations and more opportunities to discuss anything openly as needed. Seth Godin has always believed that leaders have the accountability to boost their employees’ regard for themselves and empower them to use their ideas:

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
― Seth Godin

When aligned with the company’s spirit, personal goals and values enable people to do more. In keeping with this, it’s important to allow interactions within the workplace that foster this kind of alignment. Set informal meetings with your team members via coffee breaks or lunch outs. It has been shown by research that conversations over coffee or lunch promote healthy communication and encourage open discourse on ideas.

7. Jess Bezos, Amazon CEO: Disagree and Commit

By: Steve Jurvetsonderivative work: King of Hearts via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Healthy discussion is the cornerstone of great team communication. It fosters and allows your team members the opportunity to air out violent reactions or responses to certain decisions that the team plans to take. It’s no secret that there are dissenting opinions across each and every one of us when it comes to how to attack a certain problem or issue. In order to get things done, you must be able align everyone in your team and keep them committed. Compromises are a part of this. Jeff Bezos has recognized the value of compromise, as he wrote to shareholders about disagreeing and committing last 2017:

We use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes. This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.
― Jeff Bezos

Using this phrase actually cuts the time it takes for everyone to decide and curtail what would have been an endless back-and-forth. It’s also a way of showing support to everyone regardless of your own personal views.

8. Steve Jobs, Apple CEO: Build Your Team’s Communication Capabilities

By Matthew Yohe via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Taking workshops and lessons on communication can be great at improving your team’s capabilities. Even if you set the rules or implement a certain strategy, people may still go back to their old patterns. Having regular trainings will make your team more adept than ever before. Steve Jobs knew this well. The top tech CEO was known for being tough on his employees and team members but has always advocated that the role of a leader is to make them the best that they can be:

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.
― Steve Jobs

Communication training doesn’t just underscore the way we converse and communicate with each other. It could also cover important skillsets that can improve your business, like presentation skills, business writing and team management. They can be quite expensive but the benefits can match it when you see your team communicating like clockwork.

At the same time, developing your team’s capabilities in communication is also about highlighting their key strengths. Each and every one of us communicates differently. There are people who would prefer emails to face-to-face meetings. Some would be more adept when they are done via auditory means like a phone call. Others via a personal chat message on a team chat platform like Fleep. Check and see which type of communication works well with your team members. Luckily, Fleep allows you to communicate with everyone regardless if they still want to keep using email, video call or messenger format.

9. Sophia Amoruso, Founder of Nasty Gal: Setting expectations and managing roles

Photo courtesy of Mend

Another effective way of communicating with your team is being clear on what is required from them and what are the roles that each one will do from the very beginning. If you communicate clearly what you need from your team and why, they have a clear direction on where to go. Girl boss Sophia Amoruso captures this well:

Communication is really important. Being proactive with communicating out, but also creating an expectation that your team will communicate back, and making it clear how that should happen. Explaining not just what you want to do, but why you want to do it is really important, because people want meaning.
― Sophia Amoruso

I’ll bet that no one will finish a project or do their work on time if the tasks that are given to them are not clear. Ensure that the entire team understands their scope of work. Round-up the team each week to check on their status reports, ask the right questions and address any concerns they may have. Make them aware of their responsibilities.

Designing Your Own Team Communication Strategy

There you have it! You’ve finally discovered some of the tips and tricks that top CEOs and business mavericks use when they engage with their team members. While these strategies are helpful, it’s equally important to set your own course. As I’ve said earlier, every team is unique and so your team will work differently than others. You are the only one who can bet which strategy will work for you. So, here are some practical tips for developing your own team communication strategy:

1. Decide on the best channels for team communication
   It’s probably smart to choose a tool that is meant for team communications, and leave phone calls for urgent matters, consumer apps for personal life. So you may consider using a team chat app, like Fleep. Unlike other team chat applications, Fleep is an open network and integrates well with email. It’s a vast open network that allows you to contact anyone, anywhere regardless of what device they have! You can also give out tasks – being clear on everyone’s job and pin important messages that they need to remember. You can even work and organize your contacts into project teams for easier collaboration and discussion. It gives you and your team members the power to make communication easier and less stressful.
2. Manage expectations with rules and guidelines
   Once the team is prepped and the chat is up and running, it’s time to set some ground rules. This helps manage expectations for communication, like whether people have to respond quickly or if asynchronous communication works better. Or when and how often the team would need to meet. You may also want to set the tone for your team with some guidelines of participation – allowing ideas to run through brainstorming without passing judgement or ensuring that no one interrupts when another person is speaking etc. All of the rules should be agreed on by everyone.
3. Determine roles
   Have everyone agree on their roles and responsibilities. Be clear on the designations and who have decision making power. In this way, everyone knows what is expected of them – and whenever there is a disagreement, it is clear who has the right and responsibility to call the shots.
4. Have a system for resolve communication issues
   When communication issues rise (as they most certainly will), strive to address them immediately. Have the team leader or other decision-maker serve as the mediator. The first step in addressing such issues is to evaluate if any rule has been broken. Be clear on what your system is for resolving issues, and make sure everyone involved in the issue comes to an amicable resolution.

Takeaways

Taking advantage of these tips can help align your team’s goals and improve communication across all levels of your organization. It creates a stress-free environment that is helpful to the success of the project as whole. Communication is always made easy by being open, honest and transparent with one another. Using the right tools, like Fleep, that allow for transparency in the team is great for that too. Treat your team members like family and they are bound to do the same for you.

Want to communicate with your team easily? Sign up for Fleep now!

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 Team Communication Strategies: How Top CEOs and Leaders Communicate With Their Team appeared first on Fleep Blog.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about personal or professional relationships here – no one can do without effective communication.

In order to build better relationship with your friends, family, clients or employees you must hone your communication skills.

Team communication in particular is important to master. For a team to function effectively, there must be open channels of communication.

In this article we’ve put together some of the best inspirational team communication quotes to inspire your team to have better conversations.

Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.
- Helen Keller

In almost any team that’s bigger than a few people, there is someone who prefers to work alone and have as little interaction with others as possible. This is fine as long as all the committed work as a team gets done. However, active participation from everybody spurs ideas and resources (team members effort) can be used more efficiently and therefore things move faster.

In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly.
- Mark Sanborn

#1 rule of team communication is that everybody should be able to voice their thoughts and ideas. When you feel like some of your team members aren’t contributing enough to the discussions, then try to understand the real reason behind this and possibly solve it. Collectively discussing ideas always brings more on the table than doing it solo.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
- Henry Ford

There’s nothing better than having your team on the same page and moving towards the same goal. That’s why we suggest keeping meetings short, concrete and frequent.

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
- Babe Ruth

We see this a lot. People have their own preferences and some group of people and departments like to handle communication on their own terms. Often, e-mail is used for communication across teams. Fleep is built to help you manage all your team chats and cross-team conversations on one platform so that you could play together and play good.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
- Peter F. Drucker

And not only hear. Only a small percentage of what we say is received via our voices. Nonverbal communication is the single most powerful form of communication.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Hopefully, every team-leader has had these moments where everything is moving. The wheels are turning and progress is being made. Getting people more effective is through self-motivation. Getting things done fast and off your tasklist is definitely satisfying and motivating for lots of people. This can only happen when information moves fast and between the right people. That’s something we aim to achieve with our collaboration software.

Communicate in a respectful manner – don’t just tell your team members what you want, but explain to them why.
- Jeffrey Morales

Having a sense of purpose in your actions is important. You’ll always come off as someone good to work with when you let people know your motives.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
- Plato

One of the most powerful skills to master as a team player is to know when is not the time to talk about your dog or iterate thoughts of others just because sake of talking. We’ve all been to one of these meetings where someone just keeps talking about something that was covered already. Be wiser, listen carefully and respect the time of your team members. Complement each other, don’t compete for attention.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
- George Bernard Shaw

Never assume people understand you the way you convey your ideas. This can be especially harmful in text-based environment, where there’s more room for interpretation. Additionally, if we’re talking about text-based group conversations, we cannot assume that everybody understood the message the same. If you don’t get a response to your idea, ask for feedback or try break it down to smaller pieces.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you now.
- Jim Rohn

We, humans often think with our emotions and feelings. That’s not a bad thing at all. If we speak with passion and great enthusiasm, we inspired others to follow. Having enthusiasm is contagious and gets your team going faster.

There is only one rule for being a good talker – learn to listen.
- Christopher Morley

Everybody has their own style, but nothing beats being respectful for your peers. Try to be someone who adds value to the conversations and not someone who grabs the attention.

I have always believed that technology should do the hard work – discovery, organization, communication – so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.
- Larry Page

Well, the founder of Google sure knows what he’s talking about. Technology is a wonderful helper to make our lives more simpler. If you’re not using any project management and/or collaboration software for daily conversations a task management – you’re missing out.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.
- Emma Thompson

Businesses and teams are like families. They need to co-exist, get along and generate outcome (in business it’s new products, revenue, campaigns etc). The closer together they work, the higher is the chance of success. That means having fluid conversations.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
- Anthony Robbins

We all come from different beliefs and have different perceptions. Therefore the way we send and receive information varies greatly.

We hope that these team communication and motivational quotes will inspire your team as well it has others. If you want to increase the productivity of your team, consider signing up for Fleep – it’s free to use for as long as you want.

Further Reading:

• Team Communication: the ultimate guide and strategies to improve team communication
• Why Expressing Emotion Really Matters in Messaging
• Team Building In A Virtual World

The post 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team appeared first on Fleep Blog.

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.