Effective communication in an online world
If there’s a single development that most defines our life since the onset of the pandemic, it’s arguably an increased reliance on non-face-to-face communication.
In some ways remote communication can actually be helpful from the point of view of giving us more time to reflect on correspondence and a greater opportunity to think everything through before composing a response. Written communication can also be helpful in leaving a written record, which means that it can be useful in work situations when we need to refer back to advice that someone has given us. Additionally, many of us feel like we’re more ‘ourselves’ in written rather than spoken communication and writing can be easier if we use a non-native language for work purposes or might otherwise face barriers to communication.
However, remote correspondence can also bring its own challenges. An article written by the BBC mentions two key challenges that are likely to be familiar to most of us by this stage: delayed feedback, and reduced social presence. Not receiving an instant response to a message as we would with face-to-face communication means that it is much more difficult to see how a particular message has ‘landed’ and what the person’s reaction to it has been. Reduced social presence refers to the fact that online communication tends to feel less personal than in-person interactions, which according to the BBC article can lead to a lowering of inhibitions that lead to sending hostile responses or so-called ‘flaming’.
Over and above this, remote correspondence also brings the well-known problem of a lack of contextual hints that come from in-person communication. In real-life situations, we take a lot of our social cues from people’s facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, which is a lot more difficult to interpret in writing. Added to this is the fact that in many cases a lot of us now correspond with people whom we have never met personally, such as work colleagues working in other countries, which means that we don’t have the same base level of knowledge on the person to give us context on how they might react to things.
These days most of us are likely to maintain at least some of our communication online, whether that’s in the form of work or social correspondence or both, and at this point we have probably all faced misunderstandings relating to remote communication. In the rest of our article, we’ll be throwing out a few tips on how to maximise success and minimise misunderstandings when managing non-face-to-face interactions.
Don’t be afraid to ask for clarity
A lot of the time it’s easy to assume the worst when we receive a stern-sounding communication but sometimes the sender is genuinely unaware that their message could have intimidated the other person. If you think you might have misunderstood the tone or content of something, it can be worth sending a follow-up message or even asking to follow up through a different communication channel, such as a phone call.
You can also consider seeking a second opinion from other people. If appropriate, ask somebody else whether they think the tone of a message that you have received is critical. Research has shown that the direct recipients of emails tend to interpret their tone as being more negative or critical than bystanders who were not the target of the message. Similarly, if you have doubts about anything that you have written it can be worth asking another person to check how it might be interpreted.
Remember that online correspondence is forever
If you say something out loud in the heat of the moment then you can apologise and try to do better the next time, but any kind of written correspondence leaves a permanent record, and this is something to be particularly mindful of in group situations, such as group chats or company-wide Teams or Slack threads. Remember that if you write something hostile then the other person will have a record of that forever. We all have our moments of weakness, particularly if we feel emotionally pressured, but always try to ensure you don’t leave a permanent record of anything that doesn’t reflect the best of you.
Be especially careful in group chats or public forums and remember that work communications are often less private than you think
Thinking in terms of purely social interactions, it should go without saying that no conflict is ever sensibly resolved through the medium of group chats and that you should go out of your way to avoid trying to settle any kind of disagreements with individual people through public channels. If you need to clear the air with somebody then it is far better to try to resolve the situation one-on-one, ideally in person if possible. One of the problems of mass online communication is that it tends to bring out the performer in all of us, which probably goes some way towards explaining how people get heavily invested in social media pile-ons and other unhelpful and harmful forms of communication. But always try to take a step back and remember that what felt like a pithy comment in the moment might come back to haunt you.
If you’re writing on a work chat channel, even a public one with multiple members, never write anything that you wouldn’t want third parties outside of your organisation seeing and try to limit your discussion of controversial topics, particularly when they aren’t work-related. And the same is arguably true of one-on-one direct messages with colleagues, which according to a different article by the BBC are not necessarily always as private as we think. We all like to complain about work and part of the advantage of having colleagues is the fact that they give us the opportunity to sound off to a trusted, non-judgemental audience that is facing the same kinds of situations as us. But if you can then it’s often better and healthier to sound off to your friends or colleagues over a coffee rather than in a more traceable format. The same goes for social conversations in group chats, particularly if there’s any possibility of conversations being screenshotted or forwarded. Remember that sometimes political or other controversial discussions can get really heated even among friends and that it’s not necessarily good to have to live with a permanent recollection of a conversation that got out of hand.
Be concise and consider the other person’s time
It’s good to capture something of your own personality in emails and other written correspondence, but if you feel there’s any room for misinterpretation, particularly if you’re corresponding in your non-native language or with someone from a different language background to yours, try to write your ideas out clearly and concisely, and in general try to be mindful of not taking too up too much of the other person’s time.
And with that we round off our article on online communication! We hope that these tips have been helpful in navigating the tricky terrain of managing communication misunderstandings, but if you have any more ideas on avoiding mishaps then we’re happy to read them.
Happy writing and translating, and see you again for next month’s updates.
Sources
BBC
The bias that makes innocent emails seem offensive
BBC
Are your work messages as private as you think?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20210813-are-your-work-messages-as-private-as-you-think
Scientific American
The psychological toll of rude emails
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychological-toll-of-rude-e-mails
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