Radek Zaleski on LinkedIn: #remote #workenvironment #stressmanagement | 29 comments

Remote work is stressful. Pandemic is stressful. It is too easy to get tied up in some kind of spat, that escalates quickly. Venting on Slack is just too easy.

How to avoid it? Here are my tips, based on 5 years observations of Slack dramas.

1. When something goes wrong we get emotional. And we pass those emotions, while texting, to our coworkers. They respond to us with same emotions. We start endless back and worth, mindless, short messaging, sniping and snarking at each other. That rarely solves anything. Stop, get a deep breath. Focus on problem, not person. Delete each “you” and replace it with “we” or “our team”. After you rewrite your messages, start again with clear definition of challenge you want to solve. Emotions will go down for sure.
2. In fast growth, fast paced organisations there will be always problems - new ones, but also old ones. It can be very frustrating, and it is easy to dent such emotions on new people. Don’t do it. Detach issues from the person who is causing them. Before you start typing angry responses to someones stupid question or before you add snarky reaction emoji - pause and reflect what kind of response or reaction could solve the problem and limit emotional damage.
3. When things go south and you are in the middle of full feeding Slack war - stop texting and call. Text communicator mess with our minds, it is very easy to start project things, like bad intentions, on others. And because we don’t see their faces, but we only re-read their snarky text replies in our mind, we de-humanize them. Video calls can be tiring, but at least you will be able to see emotions of your co-worker and emphasise with them.
4. If call did not help - close Slack. In conflict our brains tend to look for simplest solution - usually it is about destroying the enemy. This won’t do in professional environment. Open notebook and write down a timeline of what happened and why you think things need to change. Focus on facts, but also describe your feelings. Give half an hour, take a look again, write down your expectations. Turn Slack on and post long form text. You will be amazed how different conversation will look like.