Picture this: You’re at your desk thinking about how to present a new idea to Steve. You’ve thought through the pros and cons of your idea, and you need Steve’s buy-in so you can move forward.
Hmm, why not send an email or text that details your thinking? Wouldn’t that give Steve the big picture as you see it, and also give him time to digest all this before he responds?
That sure sounds like a good way to proceed, except for a couple of facts:
1. In person is 34 times more effective than email or text!
2. Non-verbal cues carry power. Researcher, Vanessa K. Bohns, (Cornell University) explains: “We found the nonverbal cues requesters conveyed during a face-to-face interaction made all the difference in how people viewed the legitimacy of their requests, but requesters were oblivious to this fact
.
“…It is often more convenient and comfortable to use text-based communication than to approach someone in-person, but if you overestimate the effectiveness of such media, you may regularly—and unknowingly—choose inferior means of influence.”
3.
Your voice is most powerful. Nick Epley (University of Chicago) explains: “When you’re trying to convey the quality of your mind…your best ally may be your own voice…Although some people may assume that their ideas and intellect would come across much better in written form, it turns out that using your voice can make you sound smarter.
Your voice is a tool that has been honed over the course of human evolution to communicate what’s on your mind to others. Without even thinking about it, you naturally flood your listener with cues to your thinking through subtle modulations in tone, pace, volume, and pitch. The listener, attuned to those modulations, naturally decodes these cues.
There you have it:
We’re better in person than in writing.
In Todays post Covid how you persuade management that face to face is better than the more “affordable” Teams-Zoom- Webex platforms. I cringe when I go into meetings with cameras off and you can tell people are multitasking and not completely engaged i.e a question askedand no immediate response