Slashdot Mirror
Communicating Persuasively, Email or Face-to-Face?
Jeremy Dean writes "Our intuitive understanding is that face-to-face communication is the most persuasive. In reality, of course, it's not always possible to meet in person, so email wins out. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Persuasion research has uncovered fascinating effects: that men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Women, however, may respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more 'relationship-minded'. But is this finding just a gender stereotype?"
ask the Airline industry, we invent all these ways to communicate over vast distances, VOIP, Telephone, IM, Email etc etc and people are flying to meet each other more than ever
Try not to overthink this. Of course people can be persuaded via email, you just need to get to know them first before-hand. Legit (non-spam) email marketing is a huge business.
The more technologyically-friendly one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more details-oriented one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more "frat boy and golf games" on is, the harder it is, typically, to persuade them over email.
I am, therefore you think.
Can't we do science without worrying about whether we're hurting someone's feelings? This is just getting ridiculous.
My blog
Many years ago the game industry did some research on internet based communications. For online gaming purposes.
Overall they found that communication can more easily degenerate into flames over the internet than into being productive as opposed to face to face communication.
Ultimately each mode of communication has its upside and down side and side effects.
Just look at the whole "buy Vi4gr4" section of the "email industry". The spammers seem to be doing ok persuading others into buying their stuff.
When I am writing something personal, I always end up over analyzing everything I write. I sit, rewrite, write it again, delete it all write again and it just seems to never end so it sounds "perfect."
At least for my personal life I like face to face because I am forced to be more "genuine" and say what pops into my head.
A reference, on Slashdot?! You must be new here.
A lot of the art of persuasion requires the persuader to apply some form of pressure (usually non-physical) onto their intended victim. This makes the victim cave-in to remove the pressure. Email just doesn't have that kind of "presence" (see todays Dilbert) it's just too easy to ignore it.
The best you can do is have an overwhelming reason why your request must be complied with - and to CC the email to your victim's boss.
On the other side, email is a great leveller. People who would not normally speak up for themselves can be quite eloquent and demonstrate sharp insights when they have time to compose their messsage, and aren't shot-down/cut-out by people with louder voices or fewer social qualms
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Kathy Sierra (creator of the Head First book series) has a great blog and discovered some things about Face-to-face at SXSW this year and made a post about it.
I know it's old fashioned tech, but it seems to work OK. As a slashpoll this article has remarkably few options.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Since I am an avid Slashdot reader, I haven't ventured out of the basement for many years.
I have learned how to write a persuasive email, and I usually follow it up with a phone call as well.
Overall they found that communication can more easily degenerate into flames over the internet than into being productive as opposed to face to face communication.
STFU and go back to screwing your dog, noob!!1!11 LOL
I guess Guadagno and Cialdini were more interested in the way email compares to face to face stuff, but it seems odd not to consider the telephone as an aspect of this study. The telephone offers a sort of sense of 'oneness' and familiarity with the voice, while still masking subtle cues that might otherwise lead to competitive or uncooperative behavior.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
But is this finding just a gender stereotype?
Yes. This is, to be more specific, just another example of the phenomenon that people will research anything which will press peoples' buttons. Whether it is valuable research or not. Who gives these people grants?
My cat fetches; will someone give me a grant? I want to find out whether he is a dog.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
This is my personal email axiom.
Nothing Ever Happens Over Email.
There has to be some kind of interactive contact. Phone is okay. Face to face is best. But in my experience and those with whom I work, nothing is ever initiated, negotiated, and settled over email. Trying to do so kills potential projects. Switching over to phone or face-to-face always increases the chance of success.
vk.
I telecommute to a company six hundred miles away, and persuasion by email is impossible.
I send proposal after proposal, request for comment after request, but most of my coworkers -- which are located in the same facility -- see non-customer emails as the lowest priorities, and consider them pretty much ignorable.
My boss (non pointy haired, but not much better) included.
And I'm a pretty persuasive writer (maybe not this message).
But if it doesn't get read, it doesn't get responded to.
So at least once a month, I have to commute to what has become my least favorite airport in the US, just to get a face-to-face decision or committment.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Examine the link in the parent's Amazon link and you'll see "opera-20". "-20" in Amazon links indicates a referral ID.
Never email in Anger or frustration.
The person who is reading the email should feel the puckering of your lips from any distance!
The submission and blog entry pose the question, but don't really answer it:
* How is "oneness" measured and quantified?
* How is suasion measured and quantified?
* Scatter plot of the two for the different modes (email, face-to-face) for different gender combinations? Perhaps, with statistical measures (e.g., regression figures)?
* Subject selection protocol and any caveats?
Maybe write back when the paper is actually published.
Also, there's still one better way. Leaving a comment on their MySpace. Should persuade anyone.
o hai
If a chick came up to me in real life and said, "HEY BABY CUM CHECK OUT MY WEBCAM," I'd definitely be more persuaded. However, I don't think anybody could convince me that I need to enlarge 4 to 6 cm. My penis is just fine right now.
Media have characteristics. Messages have characteristics. It is best they work in harmony.
For a concrete example, I usually avoid communicating a complex controversial idea verbally. It's too confrontational and recepients may miss key points or react too early and get themselves locking into an unnecessarily contrary position. Beter they read and react in private, then calm down before replying.
In person is very good for using body language when sincerity or other emotions are important components of the message. Phone is not quite as good, but often a very workable intermediate.
But I certainly don't consider in-person to be any sort of "gold standard" in communications. Too many different messages.
...that you can't communicate effectively unless you can get an entire point across without interruption. If I need to actually persuade someone, nothing makes more sense than email. With verbal communication, the listener can butt-in whenever they feel like it, and do many things to ultimately conceal my point.
It'd depend more on the person trying to do the persuading. Who hasn't met someone who in person has great charisma but writes emails like "so dude u shd totally do it it rocks!!!!" Who hasn't met someone who in person fumbles around with speech full of "ums" and "uhs", but writes clear, concise and persuasive emails?
The cake is a pie
What do you do if you suck at persuasion face to face? Or simply talking, for that matter? When I write an email I'm able to think about what I say before I say it and rearrange things after the fact if it comes out wrong. Can't do that in conversation, you have to get it right the first time, and know exactly where you're going and how you're going to get there before you start. Been trying for years, but simply can't. What then? In my opinion a good email would be better than a bad face to face impression.
*sigh*
How many times are we going to rediscover the T/F difference. Most men are T, most women are F.
I'm beginning tpo believe that the Atlantians did exist, and ha technology far superior to ou own. But, they got old, and everyone ignored them, and now we just make up stories.
Have you read my journal today?
Face to face time is certainly important, but I'm always amazed at how differently people remember conversations, and how quickly people forget key parts of those conversations. Without some sort of record, it's hard to pin people down on what actually transpired. Email is less personal, but at least you have a written record.
For important things, you always have to follow up the conversation with an email just to keep things straight. (unless you're in politics, then you should never use email so you won't get caught in your lies)
I hear ya there, and used to feel like I was in the same boat. Practice makes perfect though -- the more f2f time you get, the more refined your skills become.
I am, therefore you think.
it's face/face communication that wins almost every time.
Sales pitches and closing a deal is easiest in person. Next on the phone. Almost never via email exclusively - but does happen.
When you're trying to sell something, be it an idea or a product, most of the time the person you're selling the idea or concept to could get something that will work from anyone. What you're selling is confidence that you will be able to deliver, implement, whatever. It's much easier to communicate genuine confidence in skills, product or ability with other cues besides words - be it voice inflection, posture, facial expression, etc.
No rocket science here.
..don't panic
e-mail persuasion works the best when there is a doom feasibility of hardcopy communication. Hard, as in "or do you want me to come to your cubicle hole and feed you your own balls?".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Too true, at least in my case. I find email to be a life saver, allowing me to communicate with people which would have been otherwise impossible because i absolutely suck at any verbal form of communication.
Or just write a plain letter. It works, it's personal and people take it to heart. There's nothing like getting up one morning and finding a note in your letter box from an old friend, nothing.
Mod this guy waaaay up... the key to getting better working with people is NOT to hide behind a computer. If persuasion is your goal, the guy going face-to-face will always beat out the guy exclusively using email. That is why the world still has salesmen.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Similarly, I used to wonder why people travel to expensive training courses when you can get all the same information from a book - which is usually better organized and from a more authoritative source, anyways. But I've realized, many people simply do not, and will not, sit down and master the information in a book to save their lives. Even successful people. You have to sit them in a room with minimal distractions and engage them face to face.
The hierarchy of effective communication goes something like this:
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
...with halitosis.
It is all too easy to get entangled in a email flamewar on some list. Only rarely your opponent will not only give in, but be persuaded that your point of view is the right one. The trick is to avoid those situations alltogether. Or unsubscribe :)
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I don't understand the need to type everything as a stereotype, especially when it comes to gender equality. Nature shaped man and woman into two different things. Why is it automatically a stereotype and "bad" when research comes out that says men communicate better via e-mail, and women face-to-face? No one is saying it applies to all men, or all women, nor are they saying that people cannot transcend their natural tendencies.
You'll see similar over-reactions to studies that say men are better at math. No one will actually debate the study, it's just a bunch of people stomping their feet like children saying "I'M AS GOOD AT MATH THAN YOU, MR. MAN!" No one is saying you aren't, the study just found that overall, men were better at math. That doesn't make women inferior, that makes them different, that's all. Yet when studies work out the difference of parenting, for instance, between the genders, you'll see women commenting that "Well, obviously we're better at parenting!" I realize that the genders haven't been on an equal playing field for long, but some people (on both sides) aren't exactly making it easy.
It's not gender discrimination or stereotyping issue unless the information is used for nefarious purposes, such as firing a woman from a 10-year career as an accountant because the HR director read that women were worse off at math when compared to men. Grow some balls, or something.
The real thing is you are probably asking people for things that will cost them and not give back much except to the corporation via your projects. They're busy, so will ignore you if they can. But it's amazing what you can accomplish if you let others take the credit for it.
So at least once a month, I have to commute to what has become my least favorite airport in the US, just to get a face-to-face decision or committment.
Like I said in a post above, if you find yourself having to persuade management constantly to make decisions in order to do your job, then it is usually a management problem. Usually they have given you responsibility without authority to act on those responsibilities (usually your management has the reverse in those instances... authority without responsibility) so you can't work independently without having to do a powerpoint presentation for every task.
Usually, this may stem from management not trusting you or their apathy towards what you do outweighs the effort to put in a system in place to have some sort of oversight. And if they aren't responding to your emails then chances are they are just are too apathetic towards what you do which is not the fault of email, but rather management....
Which ironically the only way to resolve is to persuade them to be less so.
I could be horribly wrong about your situation in particular, but I wouldn't blame email as the core problem.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
At the point of gun. Works for government.
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Face to face is when you can use your personality and the intimacy of the situation of influence the discussion. The converse is true; you can use your personal presence to intimidate the other party as well.
Email, on the other hand, can be used when the other person might think your you have something to hide, "if they saw your face" or if you want to bury some facts deep within a dense bit a email. The converse is also true, if you are not particularly intimidating in person, you might have a better chance of coming off that way via email. Also if you don't have a winning personality, you can over come that through a well written email.
When considering F2F vs. Email think about the following as well. Face to face, you have to think on your feet and "roll w/ the punches" while emails can be much more crafted, thought-out, and cogent.
One other consideration is for someone like me who is dyslexic, I often come across much better in person, while in email, even with spelling checkers and grammar checkers, I can mistype, misspell and so forth. In person I can use more advanced vocabulary, while in email I have to use far simpler works that I can spell easily.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Or more accurately, the decisionmakers don't understand the material well enough to use technical discussions as a mechanism for trust-building and/or don't trust their own technical specialists' judgement.
A man might be more easily persueded by another man over e-mail, but nothing can beat the viscerally persuasive power of a woman with a low cut top and short skirt.
personally i prefer email for most things where i can just paste a url into the message body to reference something. it is not so easy to do this in speech.
for brain storming sessions, the personal touch is often greater.
Why UNIX?
Sometime back on /. I read the following priority
1. Meet face to face
2. Phone
3. Mail
4. Email
Slashdot = Sarcasm
I use email for anything where you need a document trail, and for communications that can lead to a resolution in one or two rounds of messages. I use phone calls, IM, a handwritten note, leaving documents on someone's chair, or face-to-face for anything else. "Anything else" includes most things that matter. For example, giving feedback via email is generally not optimal.
The ancient Greeks taught their ambitious young men (not women, those were even more sexist times than we're in now) logic and rhetoric. Both were necessary in order to be effective. I learned to be more persuasive and more effective at emotionally engaging with my coworkers and customers because people are not solely motivated by logic when making decisions. Even people who regard themselves as entirely rational. There were far too many times when technically correct decisions were stymied by other concerns that were emotional in origin. It's one thing to know the right thing to do. It's entirely another thing to convince other people that it's right. People are judging you all the time, and part of what they're judging is your conviction, your confidence, your sense of urgency, their impression of your ability to make something happen, and whether you're such a pain in the ass that they don't want to deal with you even if you do get things done. In business (as opposed to peer-reviewed journals) all those things matter, and initiatives fail if the chemistry is wrong. Even in peer-reviewed journals, reviewers are responsive to the reputation of the authors and social interactions influence review outcomes.
So sometimes you need to use irrational means to achieve rational ends. And that's because we are not machines, we're social. We need to engage on more than just the level of logic, even though we're in a business where logical decision-making is necessary.
It's also worth keeping in mind that people work, think and interact differently, so email might work well for one person but face-to-face is the best way to interact with someone else. These simplistic "works for men, not for women" conclusions are too shallow to be actionable.
The principle I follow is to over-communicate, never to rely on a single communication channel when communicating anything important, and to learn what works best for different people.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
well if you suck at talking you fail at life. good job j00 pH41L
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991118
read the next 2 strips as well.
i am not funny! i am informative!
Depends on what the basis of your persuasion is.
If you are basing your argument or position on facts, data, or logic,
then email is plaintext straightforward.
OTOH if you are trying to sway, persuade, or con someone
about a political, managerial, personal, emotional, or bullshit issue
then Face-To-Face is the only way to go.
Email is too open to misinterpretation of intent without
the additional audio & visual cues for correct context.
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
As per my other posting on a thread about Second Life real estate, only face to face allows for true understanding and use of our 5 natural senses. Email or other 'written' communication should then be used for confirmation of specific information, such as contracts, events planning, meetings etc! Common sense really!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Yeah, sure.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
One of the pitfalls of making comparison such as between email to face to face meetings is that in real life situations, people do not look at average values, but marginal values. Average values are useless when you are dealing with complex relationships.
If you are deciding to email somebody or to make a meeting, you don't ask "is it better on average to email or to have a meeting." You ask "at this point am I better off sending an email or having a meeting."
Suppose you've just spent a week locked in a conference room with the other person filling up flip charts, chances are you are more likely to opt for email in your next communication. If you've been shooting emails back and forth about a proposal for a month, chances are you're ready to to have a face to face.
Likewise email and face to face meetings have different costs; therefore there are different thresholds of utility you must anticipate before you'd undertake an email vs. a meeting. If a friend says, you really should talk to Mr. X about something or other, chances are you're going to consider the following options (in order of how important the subject is): email, phone call, meeting.
What is helpful is to understand how people behave differently in different media. That's not a simple story either. Maybe its true that emails don't trigger men's competive instincts as readiliy as meetings. Suppose it is. Well, it's also true that the perceived cost of aggressive responses are less in email and blog: in other words its safer to engate in a flame war over email than a shouting match in person. However, the value of prevailing is perceived as lower (if we believe the hypothesis).
Diminishing values apply to communication as much as anything else. Imagine a world of "optimum" communication where every communication opportunity was exploited when its marginal value was greater than its marginal cost. Eventually a balance between email and meetings would be reached that would have very little direct relationship to their relative "average" value.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Young Beaver - We make two puffs. All is well.
Chief Grey Eagle - But smoke rise in three puff mean danger.
Young Beaver - Yes. But I use blanket with two hole over half moon cut for last.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
I've actually done some research in this field as a communications major. Electronic communication is, at least currently, an inferior means of persuasion. It boils down to the fact that email has less of a context than verbal communication. Tone, pitch, pace, etc. all have a huge impact on the perception and thus persuasiveness of a communicative message. This is the reason guys are easier to persuade in email, they care more about the content than the context. This also extends to American culture, Americans (insert stupid American joke here) are more likely to be persuaded by email because they place a premium on content over context. Ultimately face-to-face still wins over electronic because the manipulation of context allows for a more malleable message. Oh and Cialdini has a habit of being full of crap.
I finally wrestled a stalled contract to the ground, using the record of email follow-ups that proved our agreement to each and every point. This was a high-level contract with numerous lawyers "playing dirty" or, as my frustrated lawyer finally put it, "They are not negotiating in good faith."
In this negotiation, every F2F was friendly, persuasive, and seemingly effective. Yet the only way to finish the deal, was through arm-twisting made possible by email.
The stress took a few years off my life!
If your emails aren't getting through, how about the telephone or IM? It gives you all the forced-response-time of face-to-face
without the actual face. I wonder how we would all fare with fully integrated video/voice communication as standard for every
employee? How much more of an advantage would real face-to-face time still have then?
Sorry, I'm not familiar with the "f2f" protocol. Can you provide a link to the specifications?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
After a while in college, and several required communications classes, I came to the conclusion that communications is what you major in if:
- You're not smart enough to be an English major, and
- You're not practical/creative enough to be a business/marketing (both of which are also a bit on the bunk side, hence why they get no capitals in my world) major, and
- You're lazy and don't want to do real college level work, and
- You know that you're not very intelligent, but you really want to sound like it (see: half the posts in this topic, they spend 5 paragraphs trying to sound intelligent, but all they really succeed in doing is talking out of their asses for 5 paragraphs).
And the best part, for being people that are such great communicators, they get very pissed when you tell them that their major/degree is crap and they really don't know how to respond to the smash mouth policies or the good old fashioned logic you learn in other disciplines that you use to kindly point out why it is crap. If they can't take Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle out of context and apply them to some dumb point they're trying (and usually failing) to make, they don't know what to do.But I guess they do serve some purpose, they bring everyone else together. Political Science, History, English, Math, Physics, Engineering, Economics, and all other big boy majors all enjoy a good harping on the crap that is communications. Here's to you, the great unifiers, the commtards...
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
of course, most of those expensive training courses suck, but that's an entirely separate issue.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
... that people are very, very capable when it comes to ignoring the written word. You can send someone a reasonably sized, carefully worded, well thought-out block of text trying to explain something, trying to convey your goodwill, or whatever, and they will simply skim it, or not read it at all. You have no way of knowing if they looked at it or, if they read it, if they've understood it without asking futher questions with more emails, which may also get ignored. In a face-to-face conversation, it's usually somewhat easy to tell if someone is listening to you (and usually fairly quickly, at that), or if they've not understood something you've said.
Presenting your entire point doesn't work if the other person isn't paying attention or misunderstands something. Honestly, though, that's a problem for both media--only it's usually more obvious face-to-face.
While I do believe you can avoid the competiton part by using email, I do not agree that it's more persuasive. If you talk to someone with whom you have a competitive relationship then you need to take advantage of that. Let the other person "win" the competition (with his consious mind) as you persuade him (subconsiously). Of course this is more manipulation than it is persuasion so Cialdini still has a valid point.
Btw - If you're into persuasion you need to read Cialdinis other works. He has some great insights into the matter.
It depends on who you are trying to communicate to.
Like the parent post, I find email or text easier to than face to face communication. So, if you want to sell your idea / product to me, then well written technical documentation will get a much better reception than a talkative salesman. In fact, a sales talk from someone in a suit is the best way to put me off.
And the salescritters getting on the planes, as far as I can see, all happen to be hotties (M and F) in suits. These people are very successful in f2f encounters and persuasion and always have been. Good for them. Myself, I'm in the same boat as parent post and GP post. I'm a full-blown nerd (as in "news for nerds"), and any manager who thinks I can transform into a glad-handing, tall, handsome, fit jock who can smoothly small-talk about The Game is mistaken. OTOH, I think I do pretty good email for what I have to say.
/. articles detailing "what's wrong" with the nerds in the organization: They're socially retarded; they don't "speak English" well enough, blah blah blah. Enough.
Let people do what they do best, and find the right people for the right task. This is beginning to sound like another of those
most of my coworkers -- which are located in the same facility -- see non-customer emails as the lowest priorities, and consider them pretty much ignorable.
I don't telecommute, but I've experienced the same kind of thing. Especially if the message is trying to convince someone to do something, it's very easy for them just to avoid replying.
I think people also tend to be unwilling to make a final decision via e-mail. They seem to need face time in order to believe that everyone is really on board. I think part of the reason people are often so unwilling to finalize any decision via e-mail is that in any e-mail discussion involving more than two people, there is probably at least one person who is pretending to be involved, but isn't actually participating actively enough to understand what's going on. If you make a decision, that person will suddenly come out of the woodwork and complain, even though they didn't bother to participate while the discussion was going on.
People seem to have this irrational belief that sitting in meetings will result in good decisions. Then they show up to meetings without having done their homework, spend an hour saying things they could have said beforehand in a memo or e-mail, and then make a rushed decision in the last five minutes because everybody has to go.
Another part of the equation is "occupational spam." If you give people access to a big organization's e-mail list, they'll send out broadcast e-mails about anything they feel like, even if it's not important and relevant to most of the people on the list. Because of that, important e-mail is lost in the flood of crap. I don't use the e-mail address provided by the college where I teach, and one of the reasons is that I don't want to get all the occupational spam.
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I've been researching this issue myself and I concluded that the solution is not to let somebody push you towards a quick answer. Things done/said in haste are usually not well-planned. What email does is that it gives you that ability to take your time and think things over; you can do the same in a real discussion by not replying if you don't have an answer. Tell them that you don't know yet, tell them that you need some extra time, but don't talk out of
Many people know this and use this against us - the trick is to force someone provide a quick answer to a question. The person who answers focuses on providing a fast solution, rather than providing an optimal solution - this is where we lose. I also have to add that those who generate the questions that are 'designed' to knock us down are people who carefully plan their attack. In conversations they can bring up non-essential things that you will waste your CPU cycles on, while they think about their next 'hit'.
Another idea is that you are afraid that the person you're having a conversation with will laugh at you (in the worst case) if you tell them you can't provide an immediate answer. But fear that not, any reasonable human being is understanding and only someone unpolite and ignorant will have something against your taking your time. Personally, I never push people towards making decisions in a rush, I admire those who are not afraid to tell me that they are 'not ready' yet, and I try to avoid those who consciously use this technique as an 'offensive weapon'.
The saddest poem
Your chaotic paragraphs might be one contributor.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Depending on the structure and wording of the sentences and paragraphs, different readers can draw different conclusions about the author. I know I have read articles and short stories in which I drew a particular conclusion about the author's ideas, only to later find I was mistaken. The mistake was not made by poor wording or ambiguity on the authors part. Instead, it was largely made by my choice of what written things I placed the most importance. If I feel strongly about a certain topic, I am more likely to place a lot of emphasis on a sentence in the paragraph that deals with that topic than I will on a topic on which I am neutral. If I place more emphasis on an idea than the author does, I am more likely to draw a misconceived conclusion about the views and points the author is trying to convey.
You need to schedule follow up teleconferences to discuss the proposals and get on the phone and call them. You can even setup conferences so that is dials out to the other participants.
If at the teleconference you find out people aren't reading your proposals find out when they can have them reviewed, and schedule another teleconference.
If you continue to suffer the noncooperation, especially from your boss, find another job because you obviously aren't needed where you are.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
That's what she said.
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... because I have speech and hearing impediments. Verbal communication is much worse for me because of my disabilities. However, I am much better in communications via e-mails, chat, forums, IMs, and anything else that doesn't require verbal communications (can't do braille).
:(
I also face the same problem with people ignoring my e-mails, IMs, chats, etc. I have to follow-up often to remind them.
Are there any other best tips to improve their responses?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You are absolutely right, but with a few exceptions, the man at the top is usually of the face-to-face variety. Nerds rarely end up being the final word in big purchases - which is probably the root of why corporations tend to be so f'd up... things like a sales visit can mean more than the well-crafted presentation from the resident geek.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
These are actual emails I receive, daily, from the users at a telecom for which I work."Via DHCP or whatever." Thanks.That was the whole email. In its entirety.I swear to you I did not add a single exclamation point to that. Also, if you can tell me how "does not work" and "otherwise works fine" fit together, I'm listening."Pls" turn off your caps lock and learn to spell.This was the response to a salesguy from my company telling the customer that the VoIP phone plugs into a router, not the modem jack on his Mac. I really wish I was making this one up.
You'll notice a pattern to these, as well. Specifically, people who have fairly severe problems, but don't tell anyone for days at a time, then dash off a barely-coherent, OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE message into the ether. This is what passes for proper business correspondance these days, and to these people, blithering about a problem days, weeks, or even months after the fact is a perfectly rational way to behave.
These are people who will go on and on about how successful they are with their little mortgage broker jobs or what-have-you. These are men AND women who read and write at the sixth-grade level.
Email fails to communicate -- not because of the medium, but because of the mouth-breathers who use it.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
I think you are right - it is (IMHO) impossible for a person to completely morph themselves from an introverted nerd into a smooth-talking socialite. However, it is important to be as good at verbal communication as possible. In my experience, many of the decision makers in the world are verbal communicators, so it often doesn't matter how well-written an email is - they won't even read the whole thing.
:)
I have run into higher-ups who say, "Take everything you just said and put it into an email for me." They are pretty rare, though their existence means that you ideally need to master both verbal and written communication
As an aside - I once sat next to one of our salesmen on a United trip out to San Francisco... he somehow managed to get us First-Class meals even though we were seated in coach, and he wound up with the stewardess's phone number. I can't help but idolize him just a little bit...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
email is best to document a conversation
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Posting to cancel my mod of offtopic rather than insightful. Too easy to do with the AJAX mod system.
When I won a contract to teach in a Country SA town, I was quick to seek -temporary- accommocation on-line. (BTW, the contract was for 4 weeks:
...in the negative:
...I have to say the the University has no obligation to you as a non student,
."
...was PREMATURE termination of my r
"sorry it has taken a while to get back to you.
The powers that be have been doing some decision making, and I have
had to wait on their advice. As a result there has been a rent
increase of $5.00 per week."
I wondered if that rent rise was just for those who - like me (eMail-
from a gMail.com adr) - dropped the hint that they're coming from
overseas; but, when I compared 2 versions of the Lease - one in the
-massive- rule- book that all new residents receive with their key,
and one on loose sheets - there was a $5 / week difference.
They'd been slow to update the rule-book's copy, which still showed
rent of $80 / week.
After moving in, I learned that "everybody else" was provided with
fast Internet service including (in my "unit" or building):
- next door neighbour: a local Taxi Driver, who'd lived & driving taxi
while here... for 2 years! (No teenager, by any measure, he was a
very large male in his 50's.)
- another neighbour: a radiographer, who'd lived & was doing radiography
work in the town for 1 year, while paying -less- rent than the taxi
driver! (She was quite an attractive woman in her mid-20's, I'd guess.)
- an employee of the Uni, there for several years (another 20-something person, from India).
As the only person I knew to be living there who -wasn't- getting fast
(or any, for that matter) Internet via UniSA's network (for which there
were working RJ-45 ports, in all the rooms, including mine), I began a
negotiation to see if I could get the Internet switched on, like the
rest of my neighbours... again, negotiating -entirely- via eMail...
Unfortunately, the answer came back
"Internet access through the University system is available to UniSA students only.
You can have dial up internet with whatever provider you wish to follow up with.
and in fact, I am pushing our policies by having you here at all.
But as I have explained to you previously, given that this is a short
term arrangement, I always try to help out where I can.
However, there will be some things available to our University
students that are not available to you as a non student."
Later, after I reminded my contact of a Taxi Driver, a Radiographer,
et al., who were all provided fast Internet access by UniSA, & asked
why not me (I even offered to trade away my access to the Village's
Beach Volley Ball, Basketball & BBQ area, if it would get UniSA to
provide fast Internet, for the price of any bandwidth I might then
consume... like the others' deal), I got:
"The situation with UniSA system access remains the same.
The University has software licence agreement which specifies who can
be given access to our system.
You do not fall into any of those categories and cannot be given access.
When you initially contacted me I advised you that accommodation in
your circumstances would only be available on a short term basis.
I remind you of the need to ensure you make other arrangements and
vacate the University accommodation as soon as you can.
Please be aware that we will not extend our accommodation arrangement
with you beyond
( was near the -middle- of the school Term, that I'd referred to
our earlier eMails; so, apparently, my "reward" for negotiating -
[entirely by eMail] for Internet equity...
Yes, I have realized that a number of people far up the hierarchy are borderline illiterate. I think it is a shame that people are allowed to succeed in a highly technical field when they lack written communication skills. We really do not benefit from having significant aspects of our scientific and technological knowledge passed by word of mouth. These parasites bring their book-fearing mentality into an organization and corrupt the work processes to allow even more illiterates in the door.
Even worse, for all their illiteracy I find that they are often not that skilled at communicating verbally either. Nothing offends me more than the mucky muck who insists that I take business travel to sit in front of him (or her) and spoon feed knowledge that I should have been able to write in an email or at least explain over the phone. They cannot be bothered to read prepared information nor to even formulate their questions such that appropriate "lesson plans" can be developed.
When I write an email I'm able to think about what I say before I say it and rearrange things after the fact if it comes out wrong. Can't do that in conversation, you have to get it right the first time, and know exactly where you're going and how you're going to get there before you start. Been trying for years, but simply can't. What then?
F 8&index=blended&link_code=qs&field-keywords=skill% 20with%20people
The answer to "What then?" is : learn. You say you've tried, but I suspect you have made the same mistake I did for a long time, which is to assume that you should just somehow know how to deal with people by yourself. The reality is that it is a learned skill, most easily pick up by learning from someone who is already good at it. Books can be a great resource.
Practising is of little value if you don't first have an idea of what specific skill it is you are trying to practice.
As for being prepared, this is also a skill, and quite easy, eg:
1. Start the conversation by letting them know that it's not conclusive. You could say something like "I've got some thoughts on [subject], I'd like to get your input on while I'm still thinking about it....", this gives you an out when they say something you don't expect.
2. When they say something you don't expect "I've never looked at it that way, I'll think it over and get back to you"
3. If they push for a quick desicion "Honestly, what you've said seems pretty important, I think it deserves more consideration than I've got time for right now, I'll get back to you"
You can easily develop a few "standard responses" that allow you time to think and take the pressure off. I'm sure you get the idea.
I recommend this book, Skill with People http://www.amazon.com/s/102-6152705-7396905?ie=UT
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
> men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies
C M&coll=&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618
- 3%20guest.html
Which is profoundly contradicted by research on flaming:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=967562&dl=A
http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/readers/full-text/15
The lack of "media richness" in email makes its intent easier to mistake. Males tend to jump to conclusions because the tend to try to problem-solve everything (especially when the problem is figuring out if they've been attacked), while females tend to either give it the benefit of the doubt or ignore it.
In TFA, the authors start from a hypothesis which includes an operational definition nobody else uses, and they go on to support what amounts to a supposition. A great deal of communications studies in both gender communication and computer mediated communication is entirely ignored. I've studied both, taught both, and published in the latter. It's a gender stereotype when you draw the conclusion, right or wrong, without considering objective data. TFA ignores masses of objective data. Therefore I submit that their conclusion is precisely the thing they claim to be trying to study.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
While I'll aggree that persuading people _can_ go a long way, if you have that talent, I'd also like to say that most people are better off not even trying.
It's sorta like being funny. Most people think they're hilarious, and that their "cat pooping" video on YouTube, or their "haha, watch me pretend to be a teenage japanese girl" IRC log, is the greatest barrel of laughs in recorded history. Most aren't actually, and their "funny" stuff actually range anywhere from "more boring than watching paint dry" to "bloody stupid."
The same goes for persuasion or motivation. There are a lot of managers who think they're some persuasion ace and that their motivational meetings surely get everyone all psyched up and ready to charge at any problem like the Japanese charged at machinegun nests in WW2. Dilbert's PHB probably thinks that too. In reality, the majority aren't. For some, well, they just illustrate the dictum that when you try too hard to make an impression, that's the impression you make: of trying too hard. Those are the lucky ones, actually. For others, their persuasion attempts or motivational meetings just leave everyone with a sensation ranging from "bored out of my skull" to "the boss is doing ego masturbation in public again" to "I wonder if this is a good time to post my resume on Monster." That bad.
There are people who are good at that kind of thing, but most are definitely not. They just read in some management book that you have to motivate the team by doing this and that. (E.g., holding team-building meetings.) But they have no talent or inclination to do it right. It's like reading somewhere that you should go and write a SF novel: if you don't have the talent, don't expect it to be a success.
And, btw, be aware that anything that happens on the victims'... err... employees' own free time, raises the difficulty dramatically. Team building meetings where you're supposed to sacrifice your own evening for it, well, the boss damn better be a _brilliant_ motivational ace for it to work. Most should not even try, because the result _will_ be a "wtf, the boss stole yet another of my meetings for his own verbal masturbation exercise" disaster. Far from getting someone to appreciate the team more, they tend to have more of a "god, why do I even stay here?" effect.
Of course, very few are lucky to have the input that their clever speech was really a morale disaster. And even fewer are smart enough to not silence the messenger, when they do get the input. So most seem to go through their life with people smiling and nodding and putting a pretense of having bought the deception, and never learn that they'd actually be better off holding their mouth shut.
And for the constructive part, my own impression is that rather than trying to be persuasive, when in doubt, it's better to be just open and fair. You don't have to persuade people as hard to do X, if they know why it has to be done like that. If the boss is privy to information you're not, well, it's often more motivational to just tell you that information than try to snow you with motivational bullshit. (Even if it's something like, true case, "I'm sorry, guys, we had to underestimate the time for this project because we can't afford to lose that customer without going bankrupt." Knowing you can trust someone to be honest like that is worth a lot.) Trust is a very motivating thing. Being fair is another very motivating thing. Knowing that your extra work will at least be noticed, and won't be trumped by favoritsm and nepotism, is motivating enough. Of course words are cheap: noticing that the boss is saying one thing, and then giving special privileges and rewards to his drinking buddy Wally tends to ruin the whole thing.
And if that is the case, pretty much even email works just as well. If people know they can trust you to openly answer any questions and that you _will_ notice the extra effort, well, you don't need to spend much time persuading or motivating them.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing you of anything. Maybe you _are_ good at motivating people in person. Kudos and more power to you in that case. Most people aren't. They'd be better served by creating an environment where they don't even have to even try (and miserably fail).
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There is no law saying you can't think about what you are going to say, before you start talking to someone. Think about the point you want to make, think about reasons supporting your decision, and think about possible detractions for your decision and responses to them. This is something you should do, whenever you need to make a case.
And if someone comes in to see you to talk about something important, just pretend that the phone rang, and you will get back to them later.
I've observed the same phenomenon from two other perspectives:
1.) Working at a foreign branch of a US-based company. Many employees of US companies think that because they work at the "mother ship" they can dictate the way the foreign branch works without the responsibility of making sure the necessary resources and know-how are available to achieve their demands. So you get this "you have to use technology X for your project because we sell technology X", but when you write to ask about some detail of technology X, it'll take two weeks to get an incomplete answer.
2.) Working with a particular person who telecommutes. If he doesn't feel like answering, or doesn't have time for me, he just won't answer. I never find out why, unless I escalate, which is just something I can't be doing all the time.
At the same time, I've also had positive experiences working with people in other overseas branches, or in the main branch. Mostly, it's a matter of luck to get people who have the right mindset and communication skills. My personal opinion is that, as globalization increases, that skill set will become an important work-skill.
There's a few people in my organization that face-to-face or telephone, though the thought is nauseating, in the end is probably better. I've found myself wordsmithing emails on some occasions for over an hour, each sentence generating fifty potential misinterpretations and some exponential number of horrifyingly tedious imaginary follow-ups. The adrenaline-surge knee-jerk first response in person would probably be every bit as valid and might be reduced to a simple hand gesture, which would save everyone involved a great deal of time.
"Overall they found that communication can more easily degenerate into flames over the internet than into being productive as opposed to face to face communication."
True but the truth is, in real life many internet flamers are horrible people underneath their real world persona's and what we see on the internet is just a reflection of their inner barbaric impulses. That is the truth. Many people in "Face to face" society live in a society largely based on bullshitting, lying to others, and getting others to agree with your lies or dominant perspective regardless of its merits (even if you don't recognize them as such), social prejudice and self denial. Don't believe me? Go hang around any social setting, you will see many people as dumb apes following social protocols like robots. Also many sites the internet just exacerbate evolutionary animal prejudices embedded genetically in human beings that are free to be expressed without fear of physical harm, the truth is people really do mean what they say on the net, you get to see the true core of many human beings and a lot of them are just horrible creatures.
Well, the problem is that some people put disproportionate effort into presenting prejudice and stereotypes as somehow hard science. The British went to great lengths to "prove" that the Irish are somehow tiny-brained sub-humans, Nazi Germany produced _tons_ of pseudo-science as to why the Aryan race are super-humans and why Jews and Slavs are sub-humans, etc. All the way back to ancieng Greece, you have people who devoted time, energy and papyrus to "proving" that some people are so sub-human and unable to even take care of themselves, that they really simply belong as slaves. (You can see the same theme being reused as late as the 19'th century southern USA to argue that blacks are mentally no more developped than children, and need a white master to take care of them.)
Not just race, btw. You can see the same about some gender stereotypes: read some medieval texts about, say, witchcraft, and be delighted by such mysogynism as that women are inherently weak, evil, stupid, driven by animalistic instincts/hormones, etc, and they inherently can't say "no" when the devil offers to fuck them in exchange for some powers. All presented as the purest hard fact, and beyond any reasonable doubt.
The fact that someone dresses it in pseudo-science garb doesn't necessarily make it science. All the above mentioned examples were dressed as distorted science too. Ranging from biased samples to outright lies.
E.g., racists in the southern USA cheerfully presented education-biased "IQ tests" pitting the poorest uneducated blacks against the finest handpicked whites, to show that objectively blacks are naturally stupid. Too bad that when the same test compared an average black from the North to an average white from the south, the black actually ended up smarter. The test was just that bad and meaningless.
E.g., those who argued that the Irish are sub-human Neanderthals also pretended to have lots of cranial measurements, proving it beyond any doubt that the Irish just don't have the brain size to be human. Too bad it was false and made up. Etc.
So of course, the question still remains "is this science valid", but science that supposedly incidentally confirms stereotypes should at the very least be more thoroughly scrutinized. And if there are a _ton_ of factors that are conveniently not even mentioned, "is this yet another guy just trying to justify his favourite pre-conception?" is a very valid question to ask.
Or to put it less diplomatically: we simply have entirely too many idiots spending time and spewing bullshit to justify some racist or sexist bias. They don't need more encouragement. It's not being PC, it's just being already sick and tired. It was maybe interesting the first time around, but the 100'th time someone uses bad "science" to justify their being a racist or sexist dick, just isn't funny any more.
Yes, they might still theoretically be right, and noone will suppress them for political corectness or anything. But they damn better have some bullet-proof evidence this time. It damn better not be the same collection of fallacies that's been done to death before. For several thousand years straight.
It's if you will, like the boy who cried wolf. After someone cried wolf 1000 times, you start being, understandably, skeptical. You might even ask him to prove that he even understands what a wolf is or looks like.
_Additionally_ we live in an age of science by PR. There's a lot of bullshit pseudo-science written by PR agencies and signed by some "Dr." or "Prof." that just sells his name for money. Its role isn't to enlighten you to how nature or society work, but to drum up interest in some product someone is selling, or just to promote a frame of mind or habit, or to cause a certain reaction. E.g., you have studies "showing" that cocoa is good for you, paid for by Mars. You have studies showing that the perfect month for a vacation is
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.