Getting a team to gel means opening lines of communication with everybody. I have my own preferred ways to communicate, but they don't work for everybody, so I've had to adapt. For example, it came as a bit of a shock to me when my boss told me that many of my coworkers were using IM to ask each other quick questions. I hate IM, but it works for them.
As you might guess, I like email. I work best in long-form written English. It's precise, and it leaves a record, but it also creates a certain distance and formality. The telephone is far more immediate and intimate, but it's easy to forget to ask an important question. (I keep lists to remind me.) On the other hand, the improvisational nature of a phone call can help you think of things that might never have occurred to you in the linear, boundaried process of answering an email. And of course face-to-face gives you the chance to add tactile cues, like the dozens of touchy-feely prototypes I keep around my office.
The eight or so most important members of my team are spread across Europe, Asia, and the U.S.; many of them have English as a second language. I can't afford to put additional obstacles in the way of our teamwork, like asking them to email when they prefer talking on the phone because it takes them forever to translate. Having realized this, and adjusted myself to their preferences, I find we're getting better traction than ever.
There have been occurrences in my life where email (prior to the rise of texting) did not convey what either I or another sender wanted it to. The lack of emotion is sometimes troublesome.
ReplyDeleteIn one instance I had emailed a friend about a bad incident which had happened to me. I was exhaustive in my story telling. Her reply to me was "how unfortunate for you". I reread this reply numerous times and could only understand it to be sarcastic. However, face to face, when she verbally said it, the sentence seemed sympathetic.
I just read an article about the "over use" of the exclamation point. The punctuation mark didn't even exist in the 1800's (it had to be made on a type writer as: ;/, and was rarely used). With the rise of email and texting we have become exclamation point abusers, simply because our texts don't convey enough emotion!!! Of course then we have emoticons, which I really hate. Part of the problem is that we don't take the time to use our written language to display the emotion we wish to convey, in our rush rush world!!! (e.g.)
Did you know that the punctuation mark ?! is called the "interrobang"? I'm not sure why, but I once read a history of its adoption.
ReplyDeleteI've written many posts here about all the bandwidth lost when communication goes from face-to-face to phone to writing to texting. So we're definitely on the same page there. It is really tough to convey tone without body language, facial expressions, pitch, volume, speed, and all the rest of it. Emoticons seem like a step in the right direction, but they feel like picking a relationship status from a drop-down menu: not very nuanced.
On a side note, I was shocked recently to discover that I've written 55,000 words in my private journal since 2008. Clearly, I blather. Bringing terseness to the craft of writing is one of the reasons I blog.