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Are we about to lose our ability to connect as human beings?
In any people orientated and customer facing business, communication is the key to motivating staff and delivering a good customer experience. A new generation however has been brought up in a world of e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking websites. Debra Stevens, Director of Sold Out Trainers, a leading company in the creation of training programmes that fit the prevailing cultures and specific requirements of corporate and international companies, explores whether important verbal communication skills and the subtleties of intonation and body language are being lost for ever in a world of digital communications. As a new generation move into positions of responsibility in the workplace, be that internally or externally facing, there is a significant change underway in how communications are being handled. It wasn’t many years ago that face-to-face meetings and telephone calls were the norm. Picking up the telephone, or indeed walking down the corridor to see someone, was the way business was most effectively conducted. In this process, it was often not what was said, but how it is said. Passion, enthusiasm, friendship, warmth or empathy is delivered through verbal or face-to-face contact. This is when an office becomes alive to the sound of people moving around, phones ringing and conversations. Today, walk around many organisations, even in those areas that are customer facing, and instead of that interaction by phone or people moving around, you are more likely to just hear the clatter of keyboards as everyone responds to their daily avalanche of e-mails, often numbering many hundred per day. Jane Hapgood, Training Manager at Betfair, a leading online technology organisation, has her personal view: “Some form of e-mail communication does tend to be our first port of call. There are clearly pluses and minuses with this, but it does tend to create an atmosphere that lacks the “buzz” of a company where people interact in person. They don’t walk the floor and so consequently people often don’t know who is sat on the same floor as them, let alone on other floors.” In organisations where e-mail is highly prevalent, many people simply don’t develop the confidence and social skills to build effective relationships, influence, negotiate and network effectively. This may not always be obvious at the more junior levels where they may find that they can be equally efficient or successful, however as those people progress to more senior roles and take on the management of people, need to leverage support and get buy-in to ideas, it can become a significant hindrance. It is now not unusual to find people at relatively senior levels who lack basic presentation and influencing skills. Think about how much ground can be gained in negotiations with a well timed smile or a glance. To add to these problems, e-mail also increases the likelihood of conflicts through misunderstandings as styles are not easy to adapt when you can’t hear or see the recipient and gain feedback through a conversation. Although well thought out words can convey meaning and expression, the immediacy of the e-mail medium and the pressure to respond quickly inevitably leads to either a loss of tone or expression or a mis-interpretation. Equally the ease of copying all and sundry leads to overload as mail boxes fill up during the day, increasing the pressure further still to deliver a curt reply. Worse still, the explosion in mobile e-mail solutions means that people are glued to their devices when they should be participating in a meeting and actively listening to the discussions taking place. Pearson, is one company that has started developing a “protocol” for the way people use e-mail to address some of these issues. Training Manager Andrea Cusden, explains: “The protocol ensures that when we use e-mail we do it in the most effective way. There is a clear tendency to send e-mails to the world-and-his-wife and to be unclear about the purpose of an e-mail or whether it requires action. We are developing guidelines that ensure: the subject is always clear
it is sent to a relevant audience
appropriate language is used both in content and depth for the audience
actions, ownerships and timelines are clearly stated and if more than two responses are needed, maybe think about another communication method.”
Of course, in many cases, people are operating under increasing workloads as organisations try to deliver more using fewer resources and the use of e-mail can deliver efficiency gains as communications can take place 24 hours a day 7 days a week, criss-crossing time lines around the world. Jim Gaffney, Training Officer at Stena Line, explains: “If you take our environment where we need to communicate with ship and shore personnel who may work shifts then e-mailing is probably the best way. However, I think we are all guilty of asking for comments back via e-mail rather than asking a recipient to give a call when free. The question is does it save time? Well I don’t think so because we waste that much time sending messages back and forth to get to the point rather than talking and building relationships.” It is not surprising to find that organisations are now becoming increasingly concerned about how an over reliance on e-mail is isolating their staff and creating a growing lack of inter-personal communication skills. Such organisations are turning to established training companies to create programmes that will enable them to re-establish a culture of inter-personal skills but without losing the benefits that e-mail communications can deliver to an organisation. As Jane Hapgood of Betfair goes on to explain: “Much of the training we are now putting on in our company is basic level courses around assertiveness, influencing, negotiation, communication styles, presentation skills and managing people. This is partly a reflection that we are relatively young company (average of 30) and a technology company where many of the roles naturally lend themselves to e-communications. But we also know that we must build the inter-personal skills in our young staff now so that they are ready for more senior and management roles in a few years time.” Technology certainly has its place, but maybe the time has come when we have to ask ourselves, are we about to lose our ability to connect as human beings? And just as importantly do we enjoy that connection or in fact have we become afraid to communicate feelings alongside the fact? Successful companies have realised that having contact when we communicate with others carries benefits that far outweigh the immediacy of e-mail. They are now initiating a more experiential style of training that wakes people up, stops them hiding, pushes them outside their comfort zones and imparts passion, enthusiasm and maybe even a little fear back into their day. These programmes employ highly trained actors that allow participants to explore their feelings and to understand and re-learn the impact of their actions on others – whether positive or negative –as well as the skill of giving and receiving feedback, something that can only be done effectively through close contact.
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Contributor's Note
People learn by doing. Put your hand in the fire and you will certainly know from the experience that it burns, Ouch!
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