On communication

Communication is an issue for teams and organisations; as a topic of concern it gets raised in most of the sessions I do with project and business leadership teams.

I have a theory on communication which goes something like this:

In our current form humans have been on the planet for 195,000 years. Writing was invented circa 3000 BC, so about 5000 years ago. The telephone has been around for 140 years, Email about 20 years and text about 10. So for the vast majority of our existence as a species we have communicated by means other than those we are attempting to use now. I wasn’t around 10,000 years ago though I imagine communication was face to face.

My theory is … we are not sufficiently evolved to effectively communicate by written word and especially not texts. I’m constantly amazed by how Emails get so misunderstood and I regularly hear ‘it was perfectly clear to me when I wrote it’.

Personally, while I enjoy writing, my limited skill and vocabulary and the inherent difficulties with language makes it a real challenge to fully express myself through words alone – even now I’m wondering if this is coming across to you.

How many times have you misread someone’s intent or attitude in an Email or wondered where ‘he’ is coming from. Here is a real example. Contractors PM gets an Email from client’s representative and towards the end there is a question. PM reacts angrily to the question, shows it to his commercial manager and they both go to their director. A planner, three QSs, the PM and commercial manager are mobilised over the weekend to produce a report and on Monday the PM sends a six page Email back to the client’s rep. A spiral of correspondence ensues and I get a call three weeks later. Eventually I get the parties in a room and after a while the PM says “it’s all because you accused us of …..” Gobsmacked, the client’s rep says “I only asked the question cos I wanted to know …. I can’t believe we have ended up here, I am sorry if I have caused trouble, I really didn’t mean to”. It happens, no doubt you can think of examples.

So, what’s going on here with the communication?

Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer on the understanding of communications since the 1960s, found that:

7% of the spoken message, as far as feelings and attitudes is concerned, is received through the words

38% through tone of voice and

55% through body language, the majority of which from eye contact.

There is no body language, eye contact or voice intonation except for capitals (shouting) in an Email, so I am left guessing as to how the writer feels and their underlying attitude. And I nearly always guess wrong. Reliant on the words alone 93% of the written message may be lost or misinterpreted. Ninety three percent, no wonder lack of communication is an issue!

Is there a simple answer? I don’t think so, though it would help if we could get face to face for the really important stuff or at least talk on the phone. What do you think, let’s confirm time and date by text, OK?