Respond with a GIF

How you can hack a basic psychology technique in your business to improve how you communicate!

 I recently shared Think in a Pitch Deck. This week I wanted to share how responding with a GIF helps promote great working relationships, build trust and also create a smooth running business. For those who don’t know, a GIF is a series of images without sound that are looped. Like this…

Here is how I use GIF’s to supercharge our teams communication…

Ideate

Humans, for all of our complexities, are relatively speaking, quite similar. 

This principle that we are actually closer to one another than further apart can be quite comforting but it also provides us with a new way of looking at how we work with others. Instead of asking ourselves “How can I improve communication within my team?”, we can instead ask ourselves “how can I improve my communication overall? What would I want from my boss to enable me to communicate better at work?”. 

Answering one or both of the second line of questioning will help you to answer the first question. Luckily, there is a huge resource available online, in text books or courses via psychology with “quick tricks” to support this, and I wanted to share my favourite today.

Iterate
Despite the pronunciation of GIF still being up for debate (is it “jif” or “gif”? You decide!). It’s something I have done with my team regularly since creating my business. They do say a picture speaks a thousand words, well a GIF in my opinion speaks far more! Responding to your team with GIF humanises you. It shows emotion beyond that of a text message, in a bitesize chunk, normally with a sprinkling of good old British humour. 

We use Slack and WhatsApp to communicate with each other and clients. Both platforms offer the ability to respond with a GIF, and it’s something we now actively do as a team and even with our clients! 

Implement

🧠Have you tried responding with a GIF at work?
🧠What is your favourite GIF? I’d love to see!