Through the Looking Glass

Successful organizations are fuelled by a seamless flow of communication among their employees. There has been no dearth of communication channels even before the pandemic. But what has changed is the way people are using them during and post-pandemic.

There is a sea of difference between how they were used in an office setup as opposed to how they are being used in a remote work setup. If Face is the index of mind in the real world then communication channels are the index of mind in the virtual world. Following is a funny take on the patterns that I have been observing while interacting with people through these communication channels.

?The Illusionist

The preferred communication channel of Illusionists is email. If any of you had a tough time understanding Christopher Nolan's Inception, perhaps you should consider taking a look at the illusionist's emails.

At the outset, the email will look well-organized and instructive. So far so good. In addition to that, there will be a video embedded in the email. And when you open the video, it will have the sender typing the same email (that you are reading) while explaining the context of the email. Which is quite useful. But, if you think about it in another dimension, you find that there is a video in the email, the video has the email, the video talks about the email's context, and the email's context has the video. Still with me?

The Night Hawk

Is he a man? Is he a machine? No, he is a Night Hawk. To put it simply, these are midnight vigilantes and a product of the work-from-home culture. No matter how many emails or messages you send during the day, you will receive exactly a single response during the night.

Most of the time it will not have the details that you might have requested or hoped to receive. Your only choice is to send out a follow-up message and look out there hoping for better dawn. It's this group of people who makes some of us yearn to get back to the office.

The Wild Wild Westerner

This lot are trigger happy. Their preferred mode of communication is the telephone. At the drop of the hat, with lightning speed, they unlock their phones to call you. The fact that you might be on a planned time off or dying on a sick bed is of no significance.

They have this itch to shoot out the latest happenings which some might consider as mere bar talk. In their perspective, it could be as important as a duel between couple of team members regarding their work, or sharing their thoughtful opinion about a smoking problem that was discussed in the call that just got over.

The Strict Officer

This group justifies the subscription paid for the chat or collaboration tool in an organization. They typically are straight talkers and keep the communication to the point. You can see them create a sick leave request in the system even before they inform you about it.

They are very prompt in setting their status in the tools. For instance, they set an out-of-office status at sharp 6 pm on a Friday until Monday morning. Sometimes you might even see an ooo on weekday evenings. While this is perfectly fine, we only wish that the running applications check this status before deciding to crash.

The Just-in-timer

For all practical purposes, they are non-existent, making you wonder whether they are still in employment. You always see them offline/inactive in the collaboration tools. You don’t see them wishing anyone on their special occasions or participating in any organizational activities.

But the minute you send them a message related to work they spring into action and efficiently work to get the job done. Once it is complete you won't hear anything back from them until the next time. You won't be far off if you wonder whether they have reached the zen mode, shunning all proactive pursuits for work assignments and unnecessary communication.

The Puzzler

These are generally people in managerial positions who consider themselves trendsetters and are an enigma to others. They use their persuasive skills to rally everyone to adopt a particular communication channel (or for that matter other tools). They are passionate about it and advocate for it enthusiastically.

By the time the rest of the team members reluctantly fall in line and get the hang of it, the Puzzler would have already moved on to the next best thing abandoning the last one. In this way, they keep the people around them guessing.

The Questioner

I admire the most, hands down. They build an inquisitive aura around them to project a knowledgeable visage. In any meeting that they attend they have to ask a question no matter what.

You can try but you can never put them on the spot. For anything that they have been asked they deftly turn that around with another question. So if you have to ask them a question you better be ready to answer.

The Fire-and-Forgetter

I wouldn't blame you if you are already imagining the Ukrainian army deploying the fire-and-forget missiles against their invaders. You are almost right with that analogy except that the people who fire and forget here are the people expecting some help or assistance from the receiver.

Their chosen mode of communication is typically email and in some cases Whatsapp. They send a request and expect the results without any further communication. They tend to ignore the fact that the receiver might need some clarification or additional information as collateral damage.

The Big Brother

These are people who promptly switch off their read notice settings in their Whatsapp. They might read the messages immediately but they will not respond to them taking pleasure in keeping the sender waiting.

But true to their nature, they look for all possible ways to figure out whether their own messages were read by others. For example, even in email providers like Gmail, which doesn’t provide read receipts, they come up with novel ways to get that.

Have you come across people with such communication styles in your organizations? Have you observed other interesting communication styles? Would you like to share??