Getting my beauty sleep between emails
The ubiquity of email and our reliance on the web as an information source is well ingrained in our lives. We have little tolerance for slow servers and are easily frustrated when we can’t just hit ‘send’ with instant results. I recently had ample opportunity to sit and reflect on the speed of communication and how it’s changed so much in our lives. It was the change in rooms, however, that helped me change my point of view.
It’s been a long time since I connected to the internet via dial-up. I’m used to instantaneous page-turns and seamless navigation between websites. A recent stay in a hotel had me reminiscing about the halcyon days of dial-up while waiting for web pages to load at glacial speed. I gave up on my email after counting to 27-one thousand– I just don’t have the patience to wait minutes for my email to come in.
The gracious hotel staff understood the difficulties and quickly assigned me to a new room. The thick adobe-style walls of the charming architecture were the problem; beautiful to look at but hopeless for transmitting wireless internet. My room was too far from the router for the wireless signal to reach my computer.
I happily packed my things and moved in exchange for the convenience of getting emails and browsing the web at what I consider ‘normal’ speeds. As promised,
in my new room emails appeared in seconds and I was able to access information without taking a nap between page turns.
The experience made me wonder where else in our lives are we located too far from the router, slowing down information and frustrating others when messages don’t get through. What thick walls have we built, that might look attractive and meet ‘design’ guidelines, but actually hinder our relationships by filtering our intended meaning?
Where might you be too far from the sources of information that help you effectively manage your responsibilities and relationships?
IDEAS YOU CAN USE
- Get up close and personal: Giving and receiving direct feedback is one of the most difficult things to do well. We substitute with triangle conversations, complaining about the behavior of others in the hope that the listener will deliver our message for us. “Someone should tell Rebecca to refill the printer with paper after she uses it – she always leaves it empty.” Anonymous feedback is how we tell our colleagues what we like and don’t like about their performance despite our professed values of transparency. The real truth is we would all be better off if we had open, honest and direct conversations about the impact of our behavior on others, rather than relying on complied results from 360° evaluations. As Susan Scott explains in her marvellous book Fierce Leadership, “anonymous feedback rarely creates real or lasting impetus for change.” By learning to give specific feedback in the moment we not only help others to improve their performance, we also inspire them by acknowledging all the wonderful things they do effectively, encouraging them to grow and develop.
- Understand the real reality: As we become further removed from the source, the messages inevitably get modified, losing their meaning and their impact. In some instances we try to soften the blow, sandwiching our real message in between upbeat sound bites – the so-called feedback sandwich. In other conversations we hang so many verbal ornaments on our message the tree falls over under the weight of the metaphors and niceties. We need to get in the habit of describing our reality and then invite others to tell us about their reality while we listen attentively. With an understanding of both perspectives the solutions created will be based on what’s really going on and are more likely to be successful.
- Build relationships, personally. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that because we live in ‘always-on’ era, email is becoming as outdated as the snail-mail it replaced. Facebook and Twitter are changing the way we communicate by posting updates in real time, eliminating the need to wait for messages to be transmitted. While I don’t think email is going to disappear anytime soon, I believe we should send fewer emails and take more opportunities to speak to each other in person or at the very least via phone. The impersonal nature of email and the propensity to misconstrue the meaning and intent of email messages is well known. Despite awareness that email is a thin medium with almost no ability to transmit emotion, an essential component for effective communication, it’s become the default method in business. The only way to create effective relationships is through personal interaction; relationships are at the heart of leadership, organizational performance and human connectivity.
What walls should you eliminate to deepen relationships and communicate more effectively?
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