Learning to communicate in the digital age is one of the challenges that managers face today. In face-to-face communication we understand much more of what is said through body language – how fast someone talks, how loudly, their intonation and choice of words – than just what is actually said. Most of this level of communication is lost in emails.
I was running an in-house management workshop recently when the team complained about the ”tone” of their boss” emails. “He’s so rude and abrupt,” they said. “He doesn’t even use our names or say ”Hi” – he just goes straight into his demands.”
When I spoke to the boss to find out how he saw the situation, he told me how fantastic email was as it enabled him to communicate quickly and effectively with his team and saved him so much time… Oops!
Has this happened to you yet? It is quite common for a misunderstanding to be caused by an email being misinterpreted and upsetting the person who received it.
Learning to communicate in the digital age is one of the challenges that managers face today. In face-to-face communication we understand much more of what is said through body language – how fast someone talks, how loudly, their intonation and choice of words – than just what is actually said. Most of this level of communication is lost in emails.
As Peter Drucker, a recognised expert in organisational management, says, “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
Misreading messages
When we write down what we want to say, all the clues from our voice such as tone, volume and emphasis are lost. The meaning of the words may be clear but the reader will often misunderstand the attitude or emphasis intended.
Try this little exercise. Read this sentence out loud, each time placing the emphasis on a different word: “I didn’t say he couldn’t communicate.” Go on, try it!
What happened? The change of emphasis changed the meaning every time, didn’t it? So if you read this message in an email what would it mean to you? It would depend on your relationship with the person who sent it and what meaning you choose to read in their words.
Early in my marriage my husband (a lawyer) and I would have major misunderstandings. I would say to him in exasperation, “Don’t listen to what I say, but how I say it!” He would respond, “How can you call yourself a communications expert when what you say and what you mean are two totally different things!” And he had a good point – nonetheless I would gallantly argue that he took my words too literally while everyone else understood the true essence of my communication. (He didn’t go for that either!)
In conversation we tend to listen more to the intent than to the words themselves. There are many ways of saying one thing and meaning another – irony, sarcasm and figures of speech, for example. Joking is a kind of irony that has both rapport-building and defensive outcomes. The rapport benefit lies in the pleasure of shared laughter as well as in having matching senses of humour. The defensive benefit is being able to retreat by saying, “I was only joking” if a comment seems to backfire!
Putting it in writing
It wasn’t until I started to use email as a form of communication that I understood how easy it is to put your own interpretation on a message. Did you know, for example, that the 500 most common words in the English language have over 14,000 definitions? No wonder we have so much confusion and misunderstanding.
A colleague expressed it well. He reminisced that in the ”old days”, you had plenty of time to reflect on what you wrote. You would dictate your letter, then it was typed up and returned to you as a draft, giving you time to clarify your thoughts so that your re-drafted response was more appropriate.
Many times I have quickly typed back my response to an email, hit the ”reply all” button and then wished I hadn’t. Has that happened to you? I’m now putting most of my replies into the ”send later” box – just in case!
Maybe we need to develop signs and symbols to represent the intended meaning in our written words. People are starting to do this with email faces, for example : ) is a smiling face on its side. So has the use of bold, underline and exclamation marks! But are we getting lazy and using email when we really should pick up the phone or just walk around the corner to the next office and speak to the person?
Too many options
Today we have too many methods of communication. How best should I contact you? Do I ring you at home or the office? Leave a message on an answering machine, voicemail or with a paging service? How about sending a fax? I could send you an email (although I’d have to be careful how I worded it!) or write a letter.
Words. They are powerful so you must choose them carefully. Remember to organise your thoughts before you write, and decide which words best communicate the message you want to send – before you hit the ”reply” button.
