I was thinking today about a situation I experienced recently that I hope others could learn from. A very close friend of mine sends me an email, out of the blue, completely contradicting what several months of planning and discussing had been laying the foundation towards and decides to instantly scrap our plans and go a different direction on his own.
My first mistake, maybe because it was late in the evening...I don't know, was in firing back an email pointing out the irrational and short-sighted way he tends to make decisions. This then followed, regardless of how hard I tried to keep it polite, a rain of emails and texts that decended from politeness to insulting.
I've read that upwards of 90% of communication is non-verbal so I should have know better. Meaning that setting, tone and body language play a bigger role in what we say than the specific words we use. In our technology driven society where we can so easily send an email or text message there is a greater chance that the recipient will ony receive 10% of our message as intended. That's a lot of risk in being misunderstood!!
What's the point here? If you've got something important to share that needs to be taken the right way and the person you're communicating with matters enough to you to get it right the first time, talk to them face-to-face. If that's not possible (hello, Skype!) then give them a phone call but realize you're still missing out on about 50% of the body language conveyance. Save social media, emails and texts for non-confrontational topics and information sharing. Your relationships will stand a better chance of thriving and you'll have less self-induced conflict to deal with.
My first mistake, maybe because it was late in the evening...I don't know, was in firing back an email pointing out the irrational and short-sighted way he tends to make decisions. This then followed, regardless of how hard I tried to keep it polite, a rain of emails and texts that decended from politeness to insulting.
I've read that upwards of 90% of communication is non-verbal so I should have know better. Meaning that setting, tone and body language play a bigger role in what we say than the specific words we use. In our technology driven society where we can so easily send an email or text message there is a greater chance that the recipient will ony receive 10% of our message as intended. That's a lot of risk in being misunderstood!!
What's the point here? If you've got something important to share that needs to be taken the right way and the person you're communicating with matters enough to you to get it right the first time, talk to them face-to-face. If that's not possible (hello, Skype!) then give them a phone call but realize you're still missing out on about 50% of the body language conveyance. Save social media, emails and texts for non-confrontational topics and information sharing. Your relationships will stand a better chance of thriving and you'll have less self-induced conflict to deal with.
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