Speaker 1: Have you ever sent an email or a text message
Speaker 1: and your tone has been completely misinterpreted. Maybe you were
Speaker 1: really brief because you were in a hurry and the
Speaker 1: person on the receiving end thought you're being a bit rude.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps you've been on the receiving end of some
Speaker 1: abrupt sounding messages and worried that the other person was
Speaker 1: angry with you. As someone who thinks a lot about efficiency,
Speaker 1: my emails can be pretty short. But it's not because
Speaker 1: I'm not a nice person. It's just because I'm probably
Speaker 1: trying to power through my inbox and not putting enough
Speaker 1: thought into the tone of my responses. And my friends
Speaker 1: would sometimes say the same is true of my text messaging.
Speaker 1: But what if I told you there was a way
Speaker 1: of being really efficient with your email and messaging but
Speaker 1: also injecting a lot of personality or at very least
Speaker 1: the intended tone that you're going for. Well there is,
Speaker 1: and today I'm going to share this little rick with you.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this
Speaker 1: is how I work a show about how to help
Speaker 1: you do your best work. At my consultancy Inventium, we
Speaker 1: default to asynchronous communication. Now, if you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: this term, asynchronous communication basically means non live communication, so
Speaker 1: that might be email or instant messenger, Slack, or maybe
Speaker 1: collaborating via Google Docs for example. And this is as
Speaker 1: opposed to defaulting to synchronous communication, which is live communication
Speaker 1: like meetings and phone calls. But sometimes when you're communicating asynchronously,
Speaker 1: it can take a long time to write a response
Speaker 1: to something via email or SMS or on Slack. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, I'll try to be funny or inject
Speaker 1: some human and tone can unfortunately, and jokes can unfortunately
Speaker 1: be lost or misinterpreted very easily via the written form.
Speaker 1: And another thing is I will be quite brief in
Speaker 1: my asynchronous responses, and briefness can be interpreted as being
Speaker 1: abrupt or cold. That is not ideal because I want
Speaker 1: to come across with warmth. So how do I get
Speaker 1: that warmth across while remaining asynchronous and relatively efficient in
Speaker 1: how I communicate? Well, what I do is I rely
Speaker 1: heavily on audio messages. So an audio message is where
Speaker 1: you basically record yourself talking out your response. There are
Speaker 1: several situations where I really lean into audio messages. So firstly,
Speaker 1: when someone on my team emails me wanting feedback on something.
Speaker 1: It might be feedback on some client work that they've done,
Speaker 1: or feedback on a problem that they're trying to solve,
Speaker 1: or on an idea that they've had, and I find
Speaker 1: it's so much more efficient to just record an audio message,
Speaker 1: and importantly, tone doesn't get lost, which is really important
Speaker 1: when giving feedback to someone or about something. Your communication
Speaker 1: becomes so much richer because using audio communication, it's quite
Speaker 1: easy to communicate emotion just through using your voice. Now,
Speaker 1: another time I use audio messages is when a journalist
Speaker 1: wants me to comment on a story. So probably every
Speaker 1: second or third day, I'd get a request from someone
Speaker 1: in the media wanting me to comment on a piece
Speaker 1: that they're working on, and they'll often send me through questions,
Speaker 1: and if we're not doing a phone interview or video
Speaker 1: interview or TV interview, I will often be asked to
Speaker 1: email through responses, which is actually quite time consuming because
Speaker 1: not only does it involve thinking, it involves writing and
Speaker 1: editing my responses to make sure that they make sense
Speaker 1: in the written form. So what I now do is
Speaker 1: I de to an audio message where I'll record myself
Speaker 1: talking out the responses, and I find that to be
Speaker 1: a far more efficient way to respond and help journalists
Speaker 1: with stories and meet tight deadlines quickly. Now I also
Speaker 1: use it in my social life. So when I've got
Speaker 1: something to say to a friend that doesn't warrant a
Speaker 1: phone call but it would be a really long SMS,
Speaker 1: I'll send an audio message, which I found to be
Speaker 1: really useful, and I think my friends find relatively novel
Speaker 1: and fun. I think, and also I even use audio
Speaker 1: messages in my dating life. So for single listeners out
Speaker 1: there that happen to be on Bumble, Bumble has a
Speaker 1: really cool feature where you can record audio messages as
Speaker 1: your response as opposed to texting or typing out your response.
Speaker 1: And again I found it such a good way to
Speaker 1: communicate with people. Obviously, phone in face to face is
Speaker 1: better I've been in those early early days, And when
Speaker 1: I receive audio messages back from people on the app,
Speaker 1: I find that I can in fers and really use
Speaker 1: things just by that person's audio message that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to get from just the written form.
Speaker 1: Now let's get into the nitty gritty of how this
Speaker 1: works in practice when it comes to work communication. So
Speaker 1: for longer audio messages, let's just say someone's asked me
Speaker 1: to give feedback on an idea, I will often gather
Speaker 1: my thoughts and make some brief notes in ever note,
Speaker 1: and then when I'm recording the audio messages, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to those points just so I'm not wasting the other
Speaker 1: person's time and being a bit waftly or not getting
Speaker 1: straight to the point. But I find for shorter messages,
Speaker 1: I will generally just speak off the cuff, and I
Speaker 1: find that that is quite adequate. Now, technology wise, I've
Speaker 1: got an iPhone, and if I'm communicating with another iPhone user,
Speaker 1: it's really easy. My iPhone just lets me hold down
Speaker 1: a little microphone icon in the messaging app, and I
Speaker 1: hold that down, I talk out my audio message, and
Speaker 1: then I hit send after I've recorded the message. But
Speaker 1: when I'm communicating to people on Android devices or I
Speaker 1: need a workaround. So what I do is I record
Speaker 1: the audio message using the Voice Memos app, and then
Speaker 1: I share that audio recording using SMS or WhatsApp. And
Speaker 1: the other workaround is that I just communicate directly using
Speaker 1: WhatsApp now. Not surprisingly, research from the University of California
Speaker 1: found that social connectedness or bonding is stronger between friends
Speaker 1: who communicate via audio message rather than instant messenger. The
Speaker 1: research also suggested that video communication takes this up another
Speaker 1: notch if you want to get even more fancy and
Speaker 1: record video messages. So this week, why not try sending
Speaker 1: or replying to someone via an audio message and see
Speaker 1: what kind of response it gets. I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: how you go if you are looking for more tips
Speaker 1: to improve the way that you work. I write a
Speaker 1: short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've
Speaker 1: discovered that helped me work better, which range from interesting
Speaker 1: research findings through to gadgets that I'm loving. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how
Speaker 1: I Work dot Co. How I Work is produced by
Speaker 1: inventing them with production support from Dead Set Studios, and
Speaker 1: thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix
Speaker 1: for every episode and makes everything sound so much better
Speaker 1: than it would have otherwise. See you next time.