Some span considerable distances. Others bridge across different languages and cultures.
Some of my better clients are people I’ve never met in person and probably won’t.
The same may be said of many people I call my friend.
Some are strictly electronic. Some, I couldn’t even tell you if the person I’m communicating with is young or old. And in one notable case, I wasn’t sure if the person was male or female.
Dogs and cats have their own web pages with thousands of followers.
The earth turns very much the same way it always has, it’s just everything else about this big blue ball that has changed, and keeps changing.
And it seems that part of this change is that our communication is really pretty poor. Considering that we have microwaves that cook our dinner in seconds, cars that get us vast distances in no time (not to mention planes) and all the other “time saving” conveniences afforded to modern man, it should seem like we would all have nothing but time on our hands. Time to communicate.
But it seems that we don’t.
So what that often means is…
Things don’t get explained.
Things don’t get double checked.
People don’t exchange pleasantries.
We are now communicating in shorthand.
We look for the easy way out.
We want somebody we can blame.
We don’t have time to look for the truth.
We take the convenient road.
We prefer to believe a good lie.
We’d rather reject somebody on the basis of a few cosmetic differences, than instead look at the things we may have in common.
We’d rather hold other cultures up to the light of scrutiny by comparing their culture to ours, instead of taking the effort to try to see things from their perspective.
We over commit, under execute and make excuses.
We hope our problems will go away if we simply ignore them for long enough.
We turn to others to bail us out of our jams.
We don’t say please or thank you.
We take things for granted.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a good list for doing some soul searching, but the interesting thing to me is that I don’t see a lot of this list in the people that I chose to surround me. I see it in general society, which makes the list believable and relevant because it HAS to affect us in some way.
Oh, there are times when I take things for granted – and every time I do, I pay the price.
And I must force myself to spend more time on the phone – for both business and pleasure. When it comes to business calls, I am still hoping that someone will send a detailed follow-up message in email because I have lost the fine art of taking legible long hand notes.
One thing I do notice is the misunderstandings that crop up because of the electronic “voice.” The shorthand. It is very easy to miss the point – and not just because you don’t hear the “tone.” Many times, it is simply that we are reading too quickly, or trying to read between the lines and we end up on parallel tracks – and it takes a panic to get the train back on the right track.
Connie,
Thanks so much for your response.
I tend to think that most of my friends and those I surround myself with also don’t seem to fit too heavily in this list. That list of course, usually having me at the top. But then I did some real sole searching and I was indeed able to find numerous instances of poor communication on my part, the parts of others around me , and many of the consequences I speak of.
One of my “smarter” clients, whose main job is to double check my accuracy, actually sent me a script to record a month ago that was some sort of tester script the company uses for purposes of matching writing styles and tone. I spent 5 1/2 hours recording and editing it and then got her email a day later. Well, she’s usually pretty dead on, so maybe that’s unfair
Another client tends to send me scripts that have grammatical errors, problems with logic and many other issues. There’s often tons of back and forth going on before I can get the script recorded and back to them.
Somebody sent me a rather nasty email about a situation and then I clearly indicated that I had addressed it in the email they were responding to. I could actually see it below thier reply. Their response was to say that I shouldn’t have “buried” something so important.
But there are plenty of times where I am the guilty party.
I’ve also realized that my tone online doesn’t always have to be abrasive to be effective. And I’m learning, little by little that sometimes my best communication comes after I’ve typed something and then decide to hit the delete key.
I marvel at how people were always able to get a hold of me, especially if it was an emergency back in the days before computers, cell phones and dare I even say, answering machines. Well, yes I was awfully young then.
MY posts tend to often preach to the choir. But in this case, I think the choir can actually improve their singing.
Taking things for granted is one of my biggest pet peeves. But you’re right J.S., it’s all around us. Like Connie I try to choose companions who aren’t terminally afflicted with it! But no doubt, I have to check myself regularly, as there are definitely times when mundane things can get under my skin and I forget my philosophy.
Overall it seems to me though that if I care about something, it’s worth doing right. I try never to multitask while addressing such things. Multitasking may be the biggest cause of diminishing returns on time spent that I can think of, but it’s easy not to realize that when you feel “busy”. I’d rather focus and feel accomplished than work and not even remember half of what I did, which is how multitasking tends to affect me.
Anyway, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one out there who thinks this way.
I agree JS. It seems we have more ways than ever to communicate, yet it feels like we’re saying less & less.
Interesting observations in what is a social / psychological minefield J.S. In my view, ‘fast’ technology has chipped away at the etiquette (or traditions) of human communication. It is often quick, instant and brutal – and contaminated with some of the failures you’ve highlighted.
What it comes down to really is how much each person in a relationship – real or electronic – makes themselves accountable to that relationship…
do we take time to do research or check facts?
do we check that something is properly explained…and understood?
do we commit to provide meaningful status updates?
are we inclusive of the client’s views and opinions in a conversation?
do we take responsibility for our actions, and their consequences?
I’ve often wondered if its just a generation thing. I read an article in the UK Telegraph yest about Britons having become more dishonest in everyday life over the last decade. It was based on results of a survey, and how answers were compared to the same type of survey 10 years ago. The conclusion was that we are in moral decline.
I think we are – and I think it ties in with taking things for granted in relationships. Getting out my crystal ball I think we’ll see an about-turn in a decade or two’s time, as a consensus make a stand against mediocrity by being more proactively accountable in their own relationships
Thanks for the very thoughtful answers. I think there are numerous factors that tend to be contributing to varied aspects of societal decline. Not the least of which has been major differences in how business is structured and how corporations tend to interact with their workers. Perhaps a lot can also be contributed to the dysfunctional household becoming the new “norm”.
It will be interesting to see how Moore’s Law (computing power doubles every 18 months) will play a part in all of this over the next 10 years or so. Considering this one aspect of life alone, it’s safe to say that life should function considerably different in another decade. Many consider this next decade may bring about mass changes that would have as much impact as experienced in the entire 20th century.
Whether this increases communication, openness, and collaboration, as well as opportunities for mankind, will remain to be seen. It’s interesting though that so many technical innovations tend to have the effect of making man redundant.