The communication challenge - What to think about when the physical distance between people increases.

Communication is all about getting information from one person to another. Communication can be defined as "the process or act of exchanging, expressing or conveying information and ideas through writing, speaking and gesturing."

Communication is sometimes hard and challenging. Even more so in these times when communication by text and video has increased and the physical meeting and even verbal communication by phone is on the decline. So what defines good, effective communication?

It happens when the correct purpose of the message is sent and understood. A person with effective communication skills can get their message across without misunderstanding which reduces the likelihood for mistakes and conflict.

Important Communication Techniques

• Smile:?A smile that is genuine and warm shows interest and enthusiasm, while a smile that is forced or contrived can seem rude, arrogant or even creepy.
• Enthusiasm:?When you sprinkle your conversation with well-timed enthusiasm, you elude a sense of fun and incite interest in your conversation partner. Also, enthusiasm and happiness is contagious! Soon, they’ll be getting just as excited about your topic as you are.
• Sense Of Humor:?Humor gets the point across quickly and effectively, and is an excellent communication tool to have in your pocket. The more you use humor in conversation, the more comfortable you will be with it. By having a great sense of humor, you also invite others to laugh with you which increases trust and looking to you to be a leader.
• Empathy:?Develop an understanding and compassion for the person you are speaking with. This will help you to effectively communicate your message in ways that they can best understand.
• Open And Honest:?Being open means revealing the truth and be honest. If you can be open and honest, the other person is more likely to be as well. It's also one of the key elements to build trust. If the person you communicate with think that you are lying they will not trust you.
• Speak As Equals:?Showing that you play on the same team is a very effective communication technique. As you speak, make sure to use words such as “we” and “us.” Do not distance yourself from the person you communicate with in any way. There is nothing worse than a person who thinks they are better than others.

There are of course many different ways we communicate with each other. Some intended some are unfortunately not.

"The?7–38–55 rule?is a concept concerning the communication of emotions. The rule states that 7 percent of meaning is communicated through spoken word, 38 percent through tone of voice, and 55 percent through body language."

• Verbal Communication: Verbal communication that is usually done to inform, persuade, discuss, or express ideas. Historically done in physical person but as of a few years back it's also quite common to do this remote.
• Nonverbal Communication: Nonverbal communication is the type of communication that you usually can’t hear. This can be body language, facial expressions, pauses, or eye contact. This is better done in person. Often harder to catch nonverbal communication on a small screen where you just see half of the person you are talking to. But fortunately it's definitely not completely lost.
• Written Communication: The third main type of communication is written communication. Usually, written information is communicated to others by email, text, notes, or letters. Due to remote work and also due to the popularity of tools such as Slack, SMS, Messenger etc. this has become even more important and also one of the most challenging one if you do not consider phone or remote meetings where people have turned off their video.

So what do we do when much of our communication has moved from the personal meeting towards remote video meetings, texting in slack and commenting on pull requests?

When it comes to Slack, Messenger, SMS and also Virtual Meetings, a common denominator that applies to all is the?tone,?as it applies to both written and voice communication. How you sound to others is a crucial aspect of the conversation. As discussed earlier, it reflects?38%?of the message in face-to-face communication. Even an emphasis on a specific word could make a great deal of difference in our conversation.

As an example on how tone can change how your interpretation. Try to say these phrases out loud with an emphasis on different words each time. Hopefully, you can see how the tone changes the interpretation differently of what’s being said even though they’re the same words.

• I love my dog.
• I?LOVE?my dog.
• I love?MY?dog.
• I?love my dog.
• I love my?DOG.

This way of emphasis on a specific word is really difficult to do in written communication. CAPTION is rarely appreciated for instance but there are still ways to create different tones depending on how you want to communicate in writing

For example, your boss sent you a Slack message that said, “Do you have a minute to talk?” you might think, “Oh no, what’s wrong?” If she rephrased it as, “Got time to chat real quick?” you might be less alarmed. There isn’t a negative force lurking in the background. That contrast is because of tone.

When it comes to body language it is as you recall a really important part when it comes to communication. Since body language stands for around 55% on how we communicate emotions it may be a good thing to think about.

During a video meeting first and fore most YOUR CAMERA SHOULD BE TURNED ON! The upper part of your body should be visible. If you are sitting down, sit straight up with a confident posture and use your?facial expressions?and your?gestures?to describe appropriately, and emphasize your points. Give feedback and support by nodding or just a simple thumb up or thumb down. Only that little non-verbal body cues helps a lot to connect with the people that you are communicating with.

Maintaining an appropriate?eye-contact?is just as much as, if not even more important. Make an active/engaging eye-contact and balance looking at the faces of the others, looking into the camera lens (so that others can see your eyes). Try and appear self-assured, positive, and happy.

Especially, put a smile on your voice, and make sure your smile reaches your eyes. As the science speaks, smiling boosts some important body hormones such as?serotonin?(happiness chemical) and?dopamine(pleasure/need chemical) so not only makes your smile others smile and makes communication easier and more positive. It makes you and others feel happiness together.

Do NOT multitask during meetings. All of the above is meaningless if you are in the meeting but in your mind you are somewhere else doing something other than focusing on what the point of the meeting is. All though there are way too many unnecessary meetings that should have been a mail or a slack post instead and that's one of the reasons people tend to do other things during meetings.

Fun fact: Multitasking can be as detrimental to your mental health as not sleeping5, and that reason alone should make you think about whether you should multitask at all, let alone in a meeting.

When you book a meeting please take a minute and reflect on if the meeting is nessassary and if the people that are invited needs to be there. Ask yourself "This could have been an email"

So what about body language? Unfortunate body language is totally lost over the phone so let's leave it at that. However body language can nowadays be achieved quite easily over text with the use of emojis.

Considering how many of us use online communication tools for work, it’s no surprise that emojis have penetrated our work lives as well —?77% of people used emojis at work in 2020.

Your company culture will likely determine how appropriate the use of emojis are in the workplace. Emojis can form a great way to build positive relationships between colleagues. Studies have shown that emotion is a core component of engagement and team building.

In addition, as studies have shown that people mentally respond the same way to a face emoji as they do to a human face.

Emojis give employees a powerful ability to connect with co-workers and communicate efficiently. They may catch on quicker with a young start up company versus a Fortune 500 corporate firm, but can still be a valuable communication tool. Follow these tips to help you make sure you are using Emojis properly:

• Be conscious of where and when others use emojis
• Emojis may be acceptable for instant messages, but may not be for corporate e-mails
• Know your audience and who you are talking to
• Try not to overuse emojis in a sentence

The use of Conventional comments

When it comes communication in writing that may need to be more formalized and where emojis maybe not feel natural, maybe activities such as Code reviews / Peer reviews: Conventional Comments is a good approach and is a standard for formatting comments of any kind of review/feedback process. There exists multiple plugins and such to make it easier for you to structure your textual comments in a nice way.

Or even add labels that also prompt the reviewer to give more?actionable?comments. Labeling comments saves?hours?of under-communication and misunderstandings.

Conventional comments I find to be a good practice. writing comments that are too terse or too open to interpretation is not a good thing and if it could be avoided it would be great. Having to choose a label for the comment may make you think more about what you are actually "saying" - e.g. is it a?nitpick, a?question?or a?suggestion? The upside of conventional comments are:

• The intention of our comment is clear
• The separation between the?topic?of the comment and the?example?and/or?reasoning?of the comment is very clear and straight
• The author knows what they should prioritize because our comments are well-labeled

So to try to come to a conclusion when it comes to the topic of communication. It's hard. Even more so if you think about how many things you need to think about. Who is your audience, the context of things, the format to be used. But it's and exiting area and I will probably continue to read up on this more and maybe I will add my new findings in this article as time goes. But until then...