DarqByte

I know I haven’t talked much about my college courses for my MBA, save to say I’m doing well. Well… Here’s one for you. Communication. In-person.

Some of you know my disdain for getting into a long-term discussion using text messages. Laura certainly knows. Well, for those of you that don’t, here’s the scoop: I prefer to use text messages for short communications and not for longer-term discussions. There you have it. If you need to use more than a couple text messages to communicate with me, then I’d generally prefer a more effective form of communication, such as a phone call or even an email. Or, my favorite: in-person communication!

By the way, this goes for stuff like game score updates… If I’m not watching the Titans game and you are, I’d prefer to not get a text message every couple of minutes saying the Titans have the ball back or just got an interception. It doesn’t really do me any good. If I’m not watching it, then there’s a really, really good reason I’m not. Likely I’m busy, probably with schoolwork, so I may not want to be distracted all of the time. Besides, if I’m not watching the game, I can wait until after the game to read a full recap, rather than get up-to-the-minute updates anyway.

Not ranting here. Just communicating. Via a blog post. See, this is something that would likely be better said in-person! But I can’t disseminate this kind of thing to everybody that reads me blog in-person. And if I could, it would be very time consuming and just not an effective use of my time.

See, this is one thing I’m trying to get at. Effective use of time. It isn’t an effective use of my time to send multiple text messages to have an extended conversation. I have to unlock my phone, read your message and type out a reply. And 99 times out of 100, I don’t keep my phone in-hand, unlocked and in SMS to get your next reply and to respond back. I lock it and put it down, going back to whatever I was doing (probably at work, actually). So it’s time consuming for me to hold such long discussions over text.

But I don’t want to focus on text messaging here. I want to focus on all forms of communication. People are really bad for choosing the wrong medium for communication. Text messages is one example, but email is another. If you need to email me something really important that needs to be addressed right away, then that’s not the right form of communication. You should probably call me, as that is a more immediate form of communication.

Really, people need to choose the most appropriate form of communication, and usually electronic forms don’t convey everything necessary. For instance, I get emails from people I work with on various subjects. Sometimes these emails are really long and they’re only to me. You know how long it takes to type up a long email? Or, for example, how long it takes to type up this blog post? Awhile. Time would almost assuredly have been saved if we talked in-person, because we could have had back and forth and speaking is faster than typing, and listening to the spoken word is faster than reading it.

See what I’m getting at here? Effective and appropriate forms of communication. So let’s address phone communication. Should I just call my coworker rather than talk to them in-person if they are available to talk in-person? No, probably not. Because by calling them, they cannot have that physical interaction. They can’t see my facial expressions and I can’t use hand gestures. That really, really adds to communication. Additionally, being on my work phone locks me down to my desk and in my seat, and takes a hand away, so I’m limited in what I can do.

So why did I mention my MBA program? Communication is a topic we recently covered in my Organizational Behavior class. It was very interesting to me and really solidified my position on in-person and more immediate communication. I’ve felt for years that communication via text message was ineffective save for short messages and conversations. I’ve always preferred to talk in-person here at work rather than other IM or on the phone. Loads and loads of research, according to my class, suggests that I’m on the right path. Boo-yah!

There’s just so much that can be lost in translation over electronic forms of communication. We might be shorter or more succinct in email, so not as much information might be passed. You cannot see the body movements when talking on the phone, so you might not get as much context.

There’s this thing called the “human moment.” It happens when two people communicate and occupy the same space to do so. Really, I won’t explain it here, but go read this article (it’s a PDF). It’s a very informative article that explains why it is so important to communicate with someone in-person. I totally agree with it.

So there you have it. Not sure what else to say at this point, because I’m sure you get my point. Or do you? Would this point have been conveyed more properly on the phone, or in-person? Just imagine me trying to explain all of this to you via text message, or even via Twitter!! Although this post is linked on Twitter, but imagine my trying to type the whole thing out in 140-character bursts on Twitter… [shudders]

On another note… I didn’t look down at my keyboard very much while typing this post, I noticed. And I still don’t use the home row. :p