Most business communication is done in writing, usually via email and chat messages. According to data from Radicati, there are about 124.5 billion business emails sent and received each day. Writing skills are important.
Posts Tagged Under: instant messaging
Communication in the workplace is essential for the success of any company. Most than anyone else, managers and team leaders should master the art of communication, and be able to engage both their superiors and their underlings into meaningful dialogue. In this article we have a few strategies that will enable you to refine your communication skills at work.
Email and instant messaging have been the foundation of business communication for many decades. Email is the revolutionary medium that moved communication from paper and telephone into the digital environment. The world as we know it now wouldn’t have been possible without this simple, yet effective method of communication. As for instant messaging, even though at first it was used more for personal matters, nowadays an enormous part of business communication takes place on chat.
Meetings are about to die. Particularly since collaborative work has become the staple of modern office life, they are about to die. And after they die, they will move somewhere better, virtual. Somewhere in the cloud, or in a special bundle of apps. But don’t get your hopes up high yet.
After all, there have been attempts to put new life into meetings. Some preach against inherent inefficacies. “Make meetings purposeful”, they say. Others are deluding themselves that theater methods will do. So “treat your meetings like an improv session”, they say. Seems like everyone thinks that “The Office” is a documentary. That we should all turn Michael Scott and do some improv.
Team collaboration is what makes a team. Without it, you don’t have a team. Instead, you have a bunch of people working at the same time. However, true teams do more. They use collaboration to synergize.
Be that as it may, collaboration is not an intrinsic human need or priority. In fact, we learn to collaborate. And it’s a difficult process. This process has helped us achieve a lot. Most modern achievements are the result of collaboration.
Sure, you can cultivate greatness without collaboration. While writing poetry as a team might be fun, this is a one-person job. Also, a lot of other activities are not team activities. And that’s fine.
Team collaboration can be a metric on which you benchmark productivity. Yet, we should not confuse regular productivity with synergized productivity. In synergized productivity, the overall result is greater than the sum of inputs. Work has a final result of a value superior to the elements of work. For example, a Tesla S is greater than the sum of its parts. Yet, people could be very productive producing the parts. In this case, there is no added value, no synergy.
Photo by Indian Yogi (Yogi Madhav) on Unsplash
Interruptions at work are inevitable, but how do they really affect us? While most people are concerned about their effects on productivity, the real danger comes from the stress they cause. Good news is that you can protect your health and well-being from unwanted, stress-inducing interruptions by simply implementing the following system.
My coworkers and I rely on instant communication apps to give and receive feedback, keep ourselves up to date with the projects we’re working on, and talk to friends and family. As useful as IM apps are, they can be overwhelming sometimes. Over time, we learned a few tricks on how to avoid distractions when using IM apps so I thought we’d share them here, on our blog.
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You probably noticed it too; there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to turning unproductive teams into highly productive ones. Fortunately, “teams” have been the subject of near-constant study in recent years so we have a lot of data we can use to improve our performance. Take a look at what I found to be working.
Synergy can be of massive help if you know how to use it. For that, we want to share with you this infographic that summarizes 11 ways in which you can put yourself into hyper-productive mode by guarding your time, procrastinating wisely, working in groups, and others alike.
Image Credit: Veri Ivanova (Unsplash.com)
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Let’s face it. We’ve all turned into a population of zombies thanks to our pesky smartphones. Whether it’s texting, tweeting, scrolling through Facebook or playing Candy Crush Saga, we somehow always find ourselves fiddling with our handheld devices on the go. That’s why they’re portable, right? Not quite.
New research suggests that smartphones – along with their versatile functions – are changing the way we walk on the street. It’s not invisible to the naked eye, granted. But apparently we do it so often that it’s beginning to change how we behave. So Bath University (UK) A&M University (TX, USA) went and conducted a joint study to take a closer look at the implications of texting and walking.