How to Behave When You Join a New Slack
When I joined Slack in the workplace at Fusion Media Group, Lifehacker’s parent company, I was energized. I published too much, got involved in conversations, was embarrassed in private channels. Don’t be like me! But also don’t be the funky yellowtail. Here’s how to get comfortable with the new Slack without embarrassment.
We’ll start with a three-step process from New York Times reporter Mike Isaac:
Introduce yourself
This means sending a message through the most general or introductory channel, but it also means downloading an avatar and filling out your profile. Help people learn about you and they will become more open and friendly.
If it’s a Slack company, please include your real information here! Our own Slack is full of standard checkered avatars; some users have not even added their names or titles. For several months, a colleague replaced his face with Donald Trump’s ass. This is so stupid and bad.
“The main thing that scares me,” says Jezebel writer Ashley Reese, “is that I ‘met’ a lot of new people through Slack during the week I was here, but I have no fucking clue. what most of them look like. ” So, for Ashley’s sake, upload your face.
Be quiet
In wise words on the Internet, hide .
- Don’t mess around on “serious” channels.
- Don’t try to participate in every conversation. Don’t ask people to clarify every joke.
- Don’t say anything controversial if no one asked your opinion.
- Don’t spam the / giphy command.
- And don’t use @here or @channel unless you’re bleeding.
You don’t need to be silent; Obviously, if this is a stretch job you cannot remain silent. Just get it wrong on the conservative side. Later, we will tell you some horror stories about what happens when you don’t.
Listen
While you are busy and not talking, try listening as well!
- Monitor the tone and frequency of people’s messages. Note which channels are for idle chatter and which are for work or announcements only.
- Check who is present on each channel.
- See how people use these features: who says something in five lines, and who writes one big paragraph? Who uses a lot of exclamation marks and who just says “of course”? Do people use themes and emoji reactions? Do people say thank you?
- Explore. Find your own name. Then look for any topic that people have strong opinions on. (Even if you’re not a beginner, this is a good way to gauge how your own strong opinion will be received.)
- Check who can read what! Click the three-dot icon in the upper right corner, click Workspace Directory, then click Administrator Accounts from the drop-down list. Different roles have different read and write abilities, and the person running your Slack can change those abilities. Read Slack’s guide to complex role-playing systems . Administrators can deactivate people accounts, change people’s display names, and even delete their posts.
Join some social channels
You don’t have to sit shivering in the corner. Find several social channels. Click the Channels heading in the left pane to view all public channels. Ask your boss or colleagues for advice in person. And ask people you trust about which private channels are worth joining. (In our workplace, the dog channel is public and the cat channel is private.)
“It’s rewarding to be on one or two non-work-related channels,” says AV Club Executive Editor Laura M. Browning. “Be proactive enough to let people know your name. When I first went to GMG to meet people, all the women said, “Oh yes! I got your name from the women-at-gmg channel. “
Include a few small and specific channels. Again, read before you write too much, but find a couple of channels where people are acting stupid and friendly so you can step in without fear of breaking the rules.
Read a little channel backlog before you decide to join. It’s embarrassing to join a channel that isn’t quite right for you and then quit a few minutes later, leaving a little gray notification of your temporary presence.
Start publishing
If you’ve followed all the other steps, this part will be much easier. First, imitate the general tone of other people. The better you get to know an existing Slack stream, the better you will be able to complete tasks, communicate, and ultimately make your mark.
Support other people’s contributions; confirm important messages; facilitate brainstorming sessions. I guess the business language for this is “be a team player.” Try not to use Slack like Twitter.
People DM
Spend less time on large channels and more time on one-on-one conversations. It may sound strange, more intimidating, but you are less likely to screw up because in real life you are talking one-on-one all the time. (Whereas in real life, you probably don’t shout often at a room filled with 200 people.)
Browning, who is really great on Slack, gives another tip: “Feel free to post people you don’t know on DM just to say hello. It sounds incredibly strange at first, but it makes face-to-face meetings so much better. “
Compliment people for their work, send them interesting links, ask for advice. Don’t bother someone all the time, but reach out even if you’re scared. It’s also a great way to show appreciation for a joke or review without clogging up the feed.
Do not worry about it
You will still be doing something uncomfortable. And you will survive. Many of my FMG colleagues got scared when they first joined Slack, especially if they made a mistake early on.
Lifehacker food and drink editor Claire Lower embarrassed herself early on, “When I first joined Lifehacker Slack, I tried to be cocky about something, but I used the wrong thing / them. It was humiliating and everyone fucked me up. “
So did Victor Jeffries, who takes all of FMG’s headshots and runs our events, and would like to be considered the “guy with no job title”: “Literally the first thing I put into Slack was basically a tip … Less than 10 seconds later, Katie Weaver responded with a link to a story that Gawker wrote over a year ago about what I thought was new. It took me MONTHS before I said anything on Slack again. “
Like Deadspin Editor-in-Chief Megan Greenwell: “On my second day at Deadspin Slack, everyone was talking about dogs, and someone mentioned someone named“ Biff ”with ties to Laura Wagner. So I intelligently told Laura that it was great that she had a dog named Biff. It turns out that this is her twin sister! Her sister’s name is Beth, but for reasons I still don’t understand, everyone in Deadspin calls her Beef?!? Since then I have been very reluctant to comment on Slack. “
Some colleagues misused @here or @channel shortly after joining, sometimes in the middle of the night. “The worst thing about office work right now,” says Jalopnik writer Justin Westbrook, “is that I have to face everyone I’ve ever embarrassed in front of on Slack.” Danielle Steinberg, Senior Producer at Gizmodo, io9 and Earther, recalled, “Oh my God, when you’re new to Slack and you @, this is the room and everyone pounces on you like mad dogs.”
But you know what, we all survived, we are still here, and if everyone hates us, then they are silent about it. So if you’re chatting on the wrong channel, or seriously answering a joke, or interrupting the conversation, it’s okay, it’s okay, things could be much worse. If the consequences remain within Slack and don’t lead to being fired, demoted, or called into someone’s office, just take that as a learning moment and get back to work.