Avoiding Miscommunication in a Digital World

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2018

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nick Morgan, a communications expert and speaking coach, says that while email, texting, and Slack might seem like they make communication easier, they actually make things less efficient. When we are bombarded with too many messages a day, he argues, humans are likely to fill in the gaps with negative information or assume the worst about the intent of a coworker's email. He offers up a few tips and tricks for how we can bring the benefits of face-to-face communication back into the digital workplace. Morgan is the author of the book, "Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World."

Transcript

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0:00.0	When leadership advice feels like buzzwords and platitudes, it's time to get real.
0:05.9	HPR's podcast Coaching Real Leaders brings you behind closed doors as Muriel Wilkins coaches anonymous
0:11.9	leaders through raw honest career questions
0:14.6	that we all face.
0:15.9	Listen and follow coaching real leaders for free
0:18.3	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review.
0:37.0	I'm Sarah Green-Hermichael. We all know that between emails, texts, Slack and more, the way we communicate with
0:50.2	our coworkers has changed enormously. That's brought benefits like the ability to
0:55.0	work remotely or on teams spread across the globe, the ability to have things in writing
0:59.7	versus forgetting what we said in a phone call, and the ability to send thousands of messages every day.
1:05.5	We tend to think of these new forms of communication
1:08.1	as incredibly efficient, but they also often
1:11.0	cause more problems than they solve.
1:13.6	Says Nick Morgan.
1:14.7	Actually a face-to-face meeting is very efficient
1:18.1	in one important sense, that is we humans care
1:21.9	about each other's intent.
1:23.6	Intent is very hard to convey except face to face
1:27.4	where it's easy and effortless.
1:29.2	We've evolved for millennia to be able to understand each other's intent quickly and
1:34.9	effectively face-to-face and so think of that as a different kind of efficiency.
1:39.8	Nick Morgan is a speaking coach and an expert in communication and he has some tricks and tips on how we can make up for some of the deficiencies that come along with high-tech communication.
	...

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