Communication Culture
by Karl Plesz
One aspect of work that has always fascinated me is how everyone has a unique take on communications channels and which ones they prefer versus which ones they don’t like. These days, work communications can employ email, phone, texting, messaging apps like Jabber or Teams, threaded posts like Teams or Slack and finally, face-to-face conversations.
I remember when a new boss joined our team and most of my emails went unanswered. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well. I was having a chat with him in his office one day and asked, “What is your preferred communications channel?” He smiled and said, “You’re probably not getting answers to emails you send me, are you?” We had a chuckle before he explained that email is the absolute worst way to try and reach him, because as the Director, he gets hit with potentially hundreds of messages a day, and he hasn’t found a way to manage them all. He told me that text was the best way to reach him, especially if I needed an answer in a timely manner.
The more I spoke to colleagues at work, the more I saw just how different they all were about this topic. I don’t like email very much, because my nature expects an answer in a reasonable amount of time, and I end up disappointed most of the time. At least with email there is a record of the conversation. Calling on the phone is great, when the person I’m calling is free and by their phone. I hate leaving voicemail – it feels just like another email to me. The various chat options are good, but in the company where I work, the population is divided into three groups, those who use Jabber (a Cisco phone system add-on), those who use Teams, and those who use neither, because they’re not ‘chatters’. Very few of my colleagues use text as a channel, because very few of them have work phones, and people take a stand against using their personal phone for work.
My favourite channel is also the most social. Face-to-face conversations. I love being able to see a person when we’re conversing. The words, the tone, the body language, the facial expressions, the context that is difficult to convey electronically. Never mind that it is a great way to practice active listening, where you’re fully focused on the other person and not thinking about your response.
Do you know what your preferred channels are? How about the preferred channels of your peers? Have your communications methods evolved over the years? In my workplace, there are small groups of entrepreneurial people who, once they discovered Teams, moved all of their collaboration and communication onto that platform. This significantly reduced email inbox traffic internally. But other groups gave the Teams culture a try with mixed or no success. Here’s hoping you find a combination of channels that works for you.
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