Every time we communicate with another person – by whatever means – it is an opportunity. Opportunity to do what? An opportunity to demonstrate our professionalism; our knowledge; our rapport building skills; our commercial bandwidth; our empathy; our personality; our warmth?
There are so many communication mediums open to us today: The telephone is still with us – but we don’t seem to be using it so much, preferring to hide behind recorded messages – Skype, our cell phones, video-conferencing, and of course email. But it seems to me that whenever an increasing number of people use any form of text to communicate, they have lost the ability to, well, communicate properly.
The truncated, abbreviated, cell text style of messaging has now found its way into email, and we are witnessing briefer and curter messages than ever. Is bluntness the new cool?
Example: Last week I received this message. “Send me your training brochure” That was it.
I responded: “Hello, many thanks for your request. Unfortunately, I only received part of your message. I think the whole message should have read:
“Hi,
Please send me your training brochure (although I am not sure which brochure you need)
Many Thanks
And of course I received a very apologetic note describing how they had been too busy to include the “niceties.” Actually, the additional time it took to add the niceties was exactly 5 seconds!!
I think we all accept that without the ability to add inflection or tone to our emails, it is very easy for our messages to be misinterpreted, but that doesn’t mean we cannot convey warmth and personality? And what happened to courtesy?
Some of the most successful and important people I know do this effortlessly because they still retain a sense of modesty and humility. Whereas some of the most self-important and less successful people I know, do not. This is because they are mainly concerned with “self”
So you might consider having a look at all the messages you sent last week or last month and decide what do convey about you as a person?