When was the last time you picked up the phone to address an important matter with a colleague? Voice-to-voice and face-to-face interactions are becoming less and less common, but there are certain circumstances where they should be your default.
Email is a quick, easy, convenient way to communicate.
It has made our lives so much easier in a lot of ways, especially for professionals and entrepreneurs.
It helps increase productivity simply by saving the time that other methods of communication require, and it improves our self-management process by providing us with a record of our interactions, reminders, and other important details.
However, problems can arise when we use email to communicate on sensitive matters or complicated topics.
Email is a two dimensional tool.
What I mean by that is, you cannot convey certain nuances related to emotion, intent, tonality and minute details (among other things) with written communication.
Communication is challenging enough as it is, without taking away some of these specific qualities that are inherently lacking in email correspondences. We’ve all experienced having something get blown out of proportion because of misperception or miscommunication.
It’s no fun to find yourself in the middle of a conflict just because someone has misinterpreted your meaning or intention in an email message.
So to keep situations like this to a minimum, I recommend picking up the phone when you have to communicate with someone on a sensitive or complicated matter.
You will actually be surprised how pleased someone is to hear your voice instead of receiving an email. And you will avoid the unnecessary time and energy that might otherwise be spent rectifying a situation or repairing the damage that has been done by a misinterpreted or misunderstood written message.
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