Nothing Compares to Face to Face Communication!

I was recently in Egypt for work. We had an agenda of planned meetings as well as social time with colleagues too. This could have been done by phone / video conferencing but on this occasion there were a number of people my colleague hadn't met and we both thought it would make sense to visit in person.

Arriving in an office is always an excitement for me these days as I work remotely so the thought of 'water cooler' chat in the office kitchen makes me chuckle as this just doesn't happen at home.

My Egyptian colleague and I did a quick introductory tour of the office to meet people then we settled down in an office and went through a number of discussions / meetings etc ..... We work together and talk over the phone during the week but to meet with her in her environment and learn about how she interpreted the role was spectacular. Business in Egypt is a very different machine to the UK and EMEA. In addition, my colleagues are working all hours in the day and night there is no cut off time to stop calling people either.

The relationships grown from the visit whether during time in the office , meals out together as a team or visiting tourist places made me see that nothing can compare to a face to face meeting. You get to learn so much more about people and how they work in their own environments. It also gave me the opportunity to earn a bit of (very basic!) Arabic too which proved useful during my visit. Alhamdulillah!

Today's tech undoubtedly has made the world a lot smaller and the idea of picking up the phone or logging onto a WebEx / Skype is natural in business today . However, meeting people face to face and understanding their working culture is invaluable for building great relationships with people. Whilst I am one of the first to advocate tech I stand by my thoughts of face to face communication - there's no comparison in my opinion......