The Art of Electronic Relationships
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he's also written monthly columns for Municipal World and Computing Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
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When you’re one desk over from a colleague, or just a building or two away from a client, it’s not too difficult to form a personal relationship; Lunch, coffee, idle chat at the water cooler, and face to face meetings of all stripes. However, things change drastically when you can’t meet with someone from year to year, if at all. How do you add the personal touch to a professional relationship – and more importantly? Why is a personal component in even the most professional of relationships desirable?
Combine the advances in modern communication with the trend of globalization and we end up in numerous situations where we might never meet and in some cases never even talk to each other. Effective communication depends a great deal on subtle non verbal cues as well as our deliberate verbal signals. Even if we don’t consider ourselves as experts in ‘body language’ the unconscious gestures, natural posture and eye contact displayed in a face to face exchange, often tell us more than the words we’re exchanging.
Computer based communications strip away an information channel we depend on more that we realize. Just think back to any exchange of heated e-mails. How much of the mis-communication was generated by nothing more than an absence of that lost channel. If we’ve used e-mail for any length of time we’ve learnt not to use any amount of ‘sarcasm’. Without body language to provide the additional cue of “I’m just kidding!” we know that sarcasm in an e-mail is dangerous, if not career limiting.
The modern working environment challenges us to work globally with our contacts both geographically displaced and time shifted over multiple time zones – but often working on the same project and deadlines. How many disagreements or misunderstandings are caused by nothing more than you’re working with someone minutes from heading to bed while you’re still wiping the sleep from your eyes?
Until a viable and inexpensive global teleportation system is invented, travel costs will continue to preclude the opportunity to meet face to face on a regular basis. With teams often based in multiple countries it is often impractical to travel even if we could afford it. So how do we overcome this communication handicap? How do we inject our humanity into the electronics of communication?
While it is our experience that nothing can surpass the value of the face to face meeting; by exercising some modern ‘social graces’ we can fill the communication gaps with some ‘social grease’ with the intent of building effective relationships.
What is a ‘personal’ relationship? It is more than just knowing that Jim is based in Boulder, Helsinki or Mumbai; it requires a steady accumulation of contextual background information to transform Jim from an e-mail ID and glowing text on a screen to a human being with a physical existence comparable to our own. What do you know about the person behind the screen? What are their interests, hobbies, concerns? How well a relationship works is directly proportional to how much trust we have in each other – to build that trust, we need to know more about each other than just how well we type.
How much ‘small talk’ do we inject into our professional communications? In real life, in a ‘normal’ conversation, ‘small talk’ is a natural and necessary component of how we interact. There’s no reason why we can’t add a reasonable amount of ‘small talk’ to these long distance conversations. If, because of our global relationship, we are limited to electronic communication then a rethink of “business only” is required if we want to create personal relationships and a usable level of trust. In a water cooler conversation we accept the value of making ‘business’ secondary if discussed at all, yet we seem have written a rule thay chat and email is for business only. Of course ’idle chat’ has to be done in moderation but a Monday morning “How was your weekend golf game?” in a chat window can do wonders for building rapport.
If our intent is to make the other person behind the text more ‘real’ to us, then we have to make a conscious effort to put part of ourselves into our conversations. If, by the very nature of the medium, it strips away the cues of body language then adding new cues as a substitute isn’t that radical an idea. ‘Emoticons’, that collection of shorthand techniques to communicate the cues lost when we lost body language were not created by a government project, they arose naturally out of the human need to say ‘Hey! There’s a person typing this!”
There’s nothing professionally wrong in using emoticons (in moderation) during a chat to express our non verbal communication especially if we’re making an attempt at humor. Emoticons are frowned upon by some, but they can temper the tone of a message and emphasize a crucial point.
Fortunately, while the distances involve preclude traveling to meet each other, electronic communications is so inexpensive we can effectively consider it free. Nor does it all have to be text on the screen, VOIP allows us to converse whenever we have the urge. All we need to do is foster that urge. There’s a person pushing those pixels and electrons at you, get to know them.
© 2007, Peter de Jager & Peter Rodger
Peter Rodger - is a Project Manager for IBM with project team members in Canada, USA, Australia and Europe.
Peter de Jager - is a keynote speaker focused on management issues, with special attention to issues relating to change management.
You can contact him at pdejager@technobility.com
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