Are You Minding Your Tech Communication Language?
? Daniel Burrus
Technology Futurist Keynote Speaker, Business Strategist and Disruptive Innovation Expert
Even though you may find yourself sitting only twelve feet away from your colleague, it often feels much safer to hide behind your monitor and communicate through one of the myriads of ways that modern technology now allows. Whether it be the office instant messaging system, email, Slack or even good old fashioned text messages, how we interact and make ourselves understood is increasingly becoming a social minefield.
To make ourselves heard, we are expected to be clear and concise to get straight to the point in any electronic form of communication. Considering how we are forever competing against the many distractions and time stealers that rule people’s lives, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised at just how quickly our language seems to be evolving.
Every character is now analyzed for hidden meaning by the recipient and even the way you sign-off your emails reveals more about us than we often realize. For example, we all know someone who finishes their emails with just an initial and yet I’m still not entirely sure if this makes the author appear mysterious or just plain old lazy.
Our problems stem from the fact that digital tools remove all of the tell-tale signs we take for granted when communicating with each other with no apparent intonation or visible gestures to help us along. The additional absences of eye gaze, pauses or facial expressions also make it incredibly difficult to judge the nature in which a communication was intended.
Even an exclamation point can indicate passive aggressive behavior and yet alternatively can also add some much-needed sincerity to a message, so it's no wonder that so many colleagues misunderstand each other in the workplace that often leads to the infamous clash of personalities that frequent nearly every organization across the world.
The lack of social cues has seen many take matters into their own hands and one of the many reasons that the ‘smiley face’ now appears on countless emails to defuse a passive-aggressive email to a colleague.
Some have argued that our digital lifestyle is encouraging bilingual communication that completely changes depending on what device we have nearby. More and more people are comfortable with writing eloquent corporate business emails from their work computer, only to interact via text-speak or even just emoji’s when switching back to their phone.
Could our busy digital lives where we consume information faster than ever before be contributing to the decline of the written word? We are so used to scanning through content online and retrieving only the information that we deem useful that we are becoming frustrated with long emails and resorting to a few lines that completely abscond with any niceties such as “hope you had a nice weekend” and often doesn't even finish with a name.
We have witnessed text messages become shorter and shorter to the point where even abbreviated words have been replaced by Emojis and wonder if it's time to exercise an element of caution before we return to just grunting rather than debating with each other. However, if we can communicate through fewer words and fully understand each other with fewer words, is this such a bad thing?
Although the more traditional amongst us will struggle to take anyone serious in business that dare to use emoticons in the workplace. The truth is that they do solve a problem that waffling on for 800 words cannot, by merely helping to convey tone in a written message of communication.
Our use of the dreaded corporate or text speak can be equally as confusing to the recipient until we throw in a few icons to lighten the mood. All of these methods illustrate a form of digital bilingual languages that we have adapted to without even realizing.
As more millennials continue to enter the workplace the question if emoji’s or smiley faces are acceptable in business will be increasingly debated. Meanwhile, the added awareness of the diverse form of communications used on many platforms in an office might be an indicator that its time to solve predictable future problems and introduce guidelines to avoid any confusion from employees or clients, so that we can all curb those bad habits we have amassed by jumping from device to device.
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?2016 Burrus Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.
Daniel Burrus is also the creator of The Anticipatory Organization? Learning System, a training process for executives and their teams to develop the skills to accurately foresee and take critical actions before disruption strikes.
Transformational Leader | Partner | Advisor | Board Member - Consulting for Good, Business Growth Strategy & Scale, Operational Effectiveness, Digital Transformation, Responsible AI, Intersection of Biz, Tech & Humanity
8 年Thanks for sharing, Daniel. I agree that technology allows people to "hide" behind their communication device of choice...and for people that you don't know very well it can be difficult to understand the intent behind the message. That said I often read messages (texts, emails, etc.) in the "author's voice" (literally hearing it as if the author was speaking to me) and therefore know how to interpret the overall spirit of the communication. Another trick is not to over analyze the message and ask for clarification if something is not quite clear.
Self employed @ Local Biz to Web
8 年Humans are not very good at self-development, the "Ideal human image" has been like a slow train coming. Here are some good quotes from a good read. "I’ve just written a few sentences that would seem beyond objection, at least to anyone except a trained philosopher. Indeed, the sentences appear to exemplify what I’ll term the classical virtues. The statements are true— it really is January, I am actually seated in my study, etc. I refer to paintings by artists like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas, works of art that are widely considered to be beautiful. And I have cited the goals of my literary exercise— to discuss pivotal issues thoughtfully and to offer sound educational recommendations— both of which undertakings are widely considered to be good"... ... From a quite different angle— a technological one— the new digital media have ushered in a chaotic state of affairs. Thanks to their predominance, we encounter a mélange of claims and counterclaims; an unparalleled mixture of creations, constantly being revised; and an ethical landscape that is unregulated, confusing, indeed largely unexamined. How .... Why should we care about the true, the beautiful, and the good? And why do we care? Why, indeed, do I care, so deeply? Such caring is fundamental to our condition as human beings, and has been so for thousands of years. Early humans displayed Machiavellian intelligence: They deceived one another through words or deeds, acts that are possible only if one person believes that a fellow member of the species does not ..... To have access to what the first person believes to be true. Such humans also decorated themselves, their graves, and, most dramatically, the interior walls of caves where they practiced rites— surely dawning (and perhaps crowning) manifestations of beauty. And even as statues were erected to commemorate human and divine heroes, swift and brutal punishments awaited those who blatantly violated the norms of the group— those who committed deeds deemed villainous. Indeed, since the dawn of history, every known civilization has developed a conception of which statements are true and which are false; which experiences are considered to be beautiful, ugly, or banal; and which human actions and relationships are deemed good, compromised, or frankly evil. Gardner, Howard (2012-11-06). Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter (p. 4). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
SEO at Longyin Group
8 年I don't agree with you
Paralegal Support and Business Development at S & T Support, LLC
8 年I am also concerned with a new generation that will not know how to interact with each other face to face, as so much time is spent communicating through devices.