No Links were listed yet. Go ahead and share!
Hi, I am Edward Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics. And I am going to tell you why Email starts fights. It happens all the time, it starts out as a simple bit of information, it turns first into a discussion and then an argument, finally our inbox is full of Emails back and forth and no one knows what is going on. It is not an accident.
In late 1960s, a man named Doctor Albert Mehrabian did a study of how he communicate. He concluded there are three different areas of communication where information is passed on. The first is words. These are the words we use. The second is tone or the sound of our voice. And the third is visual queues like how our face looks and how we are moving our body. Now, Doctor Mehrabian concluded in his research that the distribution information looked like this. The visual queues represent 55% of the information that gets transferred. The tone queues represent 38% of the information and the words represent only 7% of the overall message.
Now since then, other people have argued over those exact percentages but the message is the same. Think about a presentation you have seen that was memorable and good. You probably remember the overall message, that is the whole pie. You probably remember how the person looked, how they moved, what their energy was like, that is the visual on the tone. But I bet you could not write the script of exactly what they said. You do not remember the exact words. It is the smallest part of the information. That is the problem with email. Email is all about the words. Let’s say I sent you this Email. The words are I did not say you have an attitude problem, what exactly do I mean? Is it I did not say you have an attitude problem, somebody else said it. Is it I did not say you have an attitude problem, I met your co-worker or is it I did not say you have an attitude problem, I meant you have a communication problem. The words are not enough to communicate the message and that is the problem with Email. This is a terrible message to send in an Email because it is not clear what I mean.
What do you do about this? Well, the answer is simple, you use Email only when you should if you are talking about facts, if you are talking about data. When is the meeting? What are the directions to get there? What is our agenda? What is the new policy? Excellent for Email but draw the line there. When you get into emotional content, when you get into sensitive issues do not let Email be your answer, stop it here and switch back over to in person or on the phone. Remember if you get on the phone, you pick up tone again. You have picked up 38% of the information. If you can get to the person in person, you get this 55% back as well. Do not make the mistake of using only 7% of the information only in Email to solve a complex issue, it will not work and your Email will start a fight.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services