🙂🗣️👑 Are Emojis the language of leadership? 🙂🗣️👑

It’s World Emoji Day, another yearly opportunity to reflect on the historic journey and powerful impact of these colourful, ‘iconic’ signs and symbols. Created over 20 years ago by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita, emojis have quickly evolved to become a fundamental part of our socialisation and communication. 

We already know emojis have opened up a more human way of communicating that almost all of us use every day. But do they hold the same effective and expressive power in the business world? 

Using our recent COVID-19 Report for reference, we looked at the leadership behaviours and capabilities currently driving the best results at pace. With this in mind, here are our ideas on the role emojis can play in effective – and visual – leadership communication.

🥑 The Avocado Leader

When it comes to driving engagement and motivation in your people, our report highlighted the valuable role of the ‘Avocado Leader’ (hard on the inside and soft on the outside). In particular, this soft exterior – a combination of warmth, approachability and connectedness – was identified by respondents as a core behaviour for good leadership.

This is great news for leaders using emojis in communications with their teams. According to last year's Emoji Trend Report, 81% of respondents suggested that emoji users seemed more friendly and approachable. Furthermore, within the workplace, nearly 80% said using an emoji increased likeability, while 63% said using emojis positively impacts credibility.

💎 Crystal clarity

As a leader, delivering your message with clarity is essential for effective and efficient communication. This clarity is also key to being decisive at pace, another core skill identified in our research. And as advancing technology – and now a global crisis – leads to an increasing reliance on non-verbal communications, emojis can help add tone, clarity and expression to what’s written. 

As Deakin University’s Dr Adam Brown states, emojis ‘generate an emotive sensory experience’ that ‘helps us get around issues of tone and intention that can be misconstrued when all the recipient relies on is the written word.’ Essentially, emojis help us fill in the expressive gaps that would otherwise come to life through eye contact, intonation and physical gestures, allowing for greater emotional response and better storytelling abilities.

🎭 Show some empathy

Of all the desirable leadership behaviours identified in our research, the most important was empathy – showing emotional vulnerability and demonstrating care for team members. This was further reinforced in our recent Catalyst Conversations Live event with NSW Commissioner of Resilience Shane Fitzsimmons, who identified care as an indispensable leadership capability. Again, when communicating non-verbally, emojis help us to bridge that gap and better connect with the person we’re addressing. As Linguistics Professor Vyvyan Evans puts it, using emojis “allows us to influence the way our text is interpreted and better express our emotional selves”. 

🧠 It’s not the emoji, it’s how you use it

Whilst emojis can provide us with a useful shorthand and help build an emotional connection, leaders looking to make the most of their communications need to be careful how they use them. 

🧩 Emojis’ role is not to act as a replacement for language, but rather a compliment to it.

🙃 In fact, an overreliance on emojis could have the opposite of your intended effect, leading to communication breakdowns 🤐, impersonal dialogue 😶 and a perception of unprofessionalism 🤡.

📖 Effective storytelling is not just about your choice of words, but how you use them for maximum effect. 

🛠️ With this in mind, leaders should focus first on the behaviours and capabilities they need to thrive, and then consider the role emojis can play in bringing them to life 🏗️ effectively and with greater impact. 

The trick is not to think about what the right emojis can do for you, but think about what you can do with the right emojis.

You can find more insights in our report, COVID-19: Crisis or Catalyst. If you’d like to talk more about building the right leadership and communication capabilities in your organisation, get in touch with us at hello@weareunity.com