Communication is something we need to survive and thrive in our business and personal worlds. With the advancement of technology, ironically, our society has lost its ability to effectively communicate, and it seems more and more people want to eliminate face-to-face communication and, instead, use e-mail and text messaging.
And, it doesn’t look like future generations will communicate better.
As a communication major in college, with a focus in media studies, one of the first things I learned is that face-to-face communication is the most effective.
Communication 101 tells us that the more personal interaction you have with your clients, i.e. face-to-face meetings, the better you’ll do in business.
From face-to-face, the forms of communication get less effective on the spectrum.
If you can’t get a face-to-face meeting, the next best thing is a phone conversation.
Text and e-mail communication fall last on the spectrum – taking out the personal connection altogether leads to less effectiveness.
That’s not to say we should never use e-mail or text messaging in business. Those forms are great for quick messages or to convey information, but not for forming business relationships.
Face-to-face meetings take more time – you have to travel to the meeting destination, and quite possibly, you can get caught up in conversation at the restaurant or office.
But the time it takes is worth it, if you can build a sustaining business relationship.
I’m a strong advocate of our new editorial employees meeting their main contacts in face-to-face meetings. That way, their contacts can connect their names with their faces and know exactly who is calling when they need to request an interview or documents.
Other employees of our business also are encouraged to meet their contacts in person – again, it’s better to do business with someone when you know exactly who that person is.
It’s interesting to observe how people communicate. One thing I love to do is people-watch; it doesn’t matter if I’m in a restaurant, a park or at the airport.
I’ll often see older generations engaged in conversation, while younger generations, namely teens and younger, have their eyes affixed to their cell phones or tablets. Engaging them in conversation sometimes is like engaging the wall behind them. Most of the time, the technological gadgets have kids’ full attention, and that type of fixation on technology will not serve them well when they have to get out into the real world.
With increased technology also comes a dumbing down of our society.
The use of calculators, which actually started before my high school days, has minimized our need to learn math. A calculator never should be substituted for the knowledge we need to be successful in life.
When I was in school, we had to show how we got to our final answer. It wasn’t the calculator you used; it was the No. 2 pencil with the eraser.
Using calculators isn’t necessarily bad, as it helps people who aren’t math wizards ensure they have the correct answer. But it should never substitute learning math skills.
I’d been told that teaching cursive writing has been eliminated from the local school district, because kids use computers to do all of their typing.
A quick call last week debunked that rumor. Cursive writing is part of the third-grade curriculum, and all students in the Cherokee County School System learn how to write in that style.
That’s a good thing! It would be a shame for kids to not even know how to sign their name, in cursive, when they get to adulthood.
Computers and phones should be used to enhance our world, not replace the knowledge and skills we need to excel.
The signs of our dependence on technology are showing today and only can get worse if we don’t do something about it.
Kids as young as 4 and 5 are getting technological gadgets for gifts, and tweens and teens are using their unlimited text messaging on mom and dad’s family plan to talk to their friends.
I heard on the radio a discussion about how it’s common practice for a boy to ask a girl on a date via text message.
Well, times they are a changing.
In my parents’ time, a boy courted a girl, but not before he met her parents and got their blessing.
In my time, things weren’t as strict, but a boy had to at least meet my parents before I was allowed to go on a date with him.
It was all done face-to-face in my parents’ home.
Nowadays, kids converse via text message and talk in person at school, but it could be weeks of “dating” before mom and dad ever meet the boy or girl.
Text messaging and e-mail are taking too much control over how we live our lives. Call me an old fogey, but I’d rather talk to someone over coffee or on the phone than hold an entire conversation on text messaging or something like iChat.
The younger adult generations already are showing signs of diminished interpersonal communication skills and if we don’t do something about it, things will continue to get less and less personal as time goes on.
We need to make the extra effort to interact with our business contacts and personal friends face-to-face and limit our kids’ use of technology for communication.
Because we don’t want to end up with a society that stays indoors, in our cubicles and in front of our computer screens.
