6 Ways to Use Slack and Not Make People Hate You
From an employee’s perspective
Every Monday at my previous job, my stomach churned on the subway to work.
Not because I was packed elbow-to-elbow with a group of people I don’t know in an area I couldn’t leave, but because I knew what was waiting for me.
What was waiting for me was a laundry list of my boss’s impulsive afterthoughts, lofty goals, and unhelpful critiques she’d conjured up over the weekend and sent to me over Slack.
Real examples:
My boss: not growing seo fast enough. improve by 20 percent this month.
Me: 20% is a lot for 10 days left in the month, but I’ll try! Do you still want me to set up the rest of the planned Instagram influencer campaigns for this month?
No response.
My boss: write down everything yur department has done and we need to talk tomorrow.
Me in my head: that sounds pretty serious. I’ll spend the entire morning writing down everything I can think of and the rest of the day and night dwelling on it.
She didn’t show up for two days and we never spoke about what I’d written down.
Simple questions were also subject to criticism.
For example, one Friday after clearing my browser’s cache in an attempt to fix a work-related problem, I lost my auto-login for the company Youtube channel.
I asked my boss over Slack for the login information and to share with me the master Google Doc with all company logins (so I wouldn’t have to ask her again in the future).
I came in Monday to the following response:
really?
b more organized.
Classic.
What made matters worse was the fact that my boss would usually arrive at the office much later in the day, if at all. It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear two or three days at a time.
For someone like me who overanalyzes things to the point of insanity, the fact that her confusing messages were allowed to fester for days on-end served as a form of psychological hell.
The most frustrating thing of all was that she wasn’t a bad person.
When I was able to eventually talk to her in-person about her messages, all of the anxiety and confusion and worry that had developed in the days previous almost always disappeared.
I brought all of this to her attention a number of times, but it was a vicious cycle that I could expect to repeat itself on an almost weekly basis.
Fortunately, I don’t work for that boss any more. Where I work now, the use of Slack is much better.
I wanted to understand why it’s better; what my current employer does that my old employer didn’t in regards to how they use Slack. So I took an afternoon and came up with the following…
What I would say to my previous boss (and to myself) to avoid a toxic, unproductive Slack relationship:
Save non-urgent critiques or concerns for in-person communication
Please don’t send me a message at 11:58PM on a Friday night threatening my pay check as a result of my Hubstaff record showing 39 hours worked in the past week instead of 40.
I know I’m not in the wrong (I’m technically only required to work 35), but it’s going to be in the back of my mind all weekend.
Use conversational language
Don’t talk to me like you’re talking to a chat bot.
I get that you have a lot going on. I get that you get frustrated with your non-English-speaking dev team in India and that you form you messages so that they can understand. I get that that frustration probably bleeds into other areas.
I don’t need an essay; just something that lets me know the intent of your message. I’ve heard your business partner tell you the same thing: “ease up on the one-worded answers!”.
How you could do that:
- Specific information about tasks you want completed
- WHY you’re not pleased with something I did instead of just HOW you’re feeling about
- Actual answers to questions I ask instead of reprimanding me for not knowing the answer in the first place
Opt out of shit storms
On the odd occasion that I would respond to my boss’s emotionally-charged message with an emotionally charged message of my own, I would always immediately regret it.
There’s a reason people tell you to “sleep on it”.
Here’s what a shit storm typically looked like for me:
- sees instigating message
- feels negative emotion
- translates negative emotion into a response
- hits send
- refreshes page eagerly awaiting response
- can’t enjoy anything else because I’m wondering how my boss is going to respond
- sees response
- gets more frustrated
- repeats above steps into oblivion
The ideal response: notice I’m being sucked into the quagmire of a Slack shit storm, stop responding, turn off notifications, and wait to talk about it in- person or over the phone.
Don’t prioritize Slack over face-to-face communication
I can’t see your face or hear the intonation of your voice over Slack.
When I can’t see or hear these things, I rely on my imagination to fill in the blanks. My imagination is very rarely a positive place.
There’s too much room for interpretation.
When you’re out of the office, give me a 5 minute video call. I want to translate your long-winded Slack message into something I can understand and incorporate into my work. Or just a phone call; anything where I can hear your voice and/or see your face.
Don’t associate Slack only with criticism
When you stuff our Slack channel with nothing but negativity, it makes me not want to check it. Not checking doesn’t benefit anyone.
I would understand your reel of negativity if I was a shit employee, but you renewed my contract for a reason.
For every five negative comments, maybe throw one positive one in the mix when I do something right. If I know that there is at least the possibility for positive reenforcement, I’m more likely to check for updates with enthusiasm (maybe even outside of work hours!)
Turn off notifications after leaving the office (if you can)
I enjoy what I do, but I also enjoy having a life outside of work.
When I leave the office, I don’t want to be reminded of work every couple hours by that seemingly innocent sound of a Slack notification.
Turning off all notifications from Slack helps me do that. While I don’t like the idea of catching up on all the messages that have built up over the course of having my notifications turned off, I much prefer that to being constantly pulled back into work mode.
…
We live in a world of textual ambiguity where not dotting your sentence with a smiley face can end a relationship.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the words “Sorry, I totally misunderstood you message!” while walking the halls of my company’s shared office space.
I’ve found incorporating the suggestions above to serve as a good start in developing working relationships over Slack that don’t crash and burn into firestorms of capital letters, resentment, and ignorance.
I write to help make sense of my life and it occasionally helps other people in the process.
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My last article (published in Be Yourself):
