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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
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.
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 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
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.
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!
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.
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
Interesting. I'm a college student and do some free-lance web design for grad students with my extra time. On two different projects, I've been introduced to my client by e-mail, discussed what they need the site to do, negotiated a price, delivered the finished product all by e-mail. In one case, I picked up the check in person - meeting my client for the first time. In the other case the client sent a check through campus mail and I never met them in person.
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.
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)
I don't mean to disparage what you're doing. I'm a freelancer myself and I love to see people going for it on their own, so good on you and I wish you continued success. But keep in mind you're doing web work for grad students. That's pretty different from doing development for a large corporation, law firm, nonprofit, or otherwise churning business entity.
I may be dealing with a generation gap in a sense - most of the people I provide services to are a good bit older than I am. But even if they do use email all the time, have blackberries/treos, etc. they still want face-time or at least phone time to initiate most things, especially if it's large scale. Sometimes small projects get done over email, but it's almost always repeat or add-on work. This might be different if I was working for a person who grew up with or puts more clout in the technology.
vk.
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.
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
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.
first, note that there are lots and lots of cases where the person you're communicating with will explicitly be trying to gauge your ability to respond to those sorts of issues. job interviews are the most obvious, but it also comes up in vendor selection, especially in situations where you're likely to have only one (or very few) people you're working with, rather than a faceless company. all sorts of partnership arrangements, too. i imagine it's less of an issue for purchasing decisions.
also, keep in mind that the person you're communicating with will almost certainly have questions you haven't anticipated, regardless of how well thought out your message is or the form it's presented in. if they can ask the questions and get a response interactively, that round of communication ends with them feeling mostly satisfied; if they have to wait for a response to email, that uncertainty has the opportunity to sit and fester in their mind. they spend more time associating you with a feeling of uncertainty than satisfaction.
lots of people are really bad at forming their questions back to you electronically, too. ever gotten questions back to email in-line when the question's answered later on in the document? or had someone miss a point because they have to take information from two different parts of your document together? all those things are much easier to resolve quickly in an interactive session for the recipient of the communication.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
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.
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
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.
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