Say what?

I’ll bet you have heard this expression (or something like it): It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

For instance, let’s say that you know an individual that you’ve worked with for many years. You know this person – we’ll call him “Bruce” - well enough to realize that, outside of work, you’d never hang out with him. In fact, you know Bruce well enough to think “wow – Bruce is kinda annoying.” So Bruce tells you at the water-cooler that he’s interviewing for a different job and asks for a letter of recommendation from you. You hesitate … you don’t really like Bruce, after all, but you have a chance to help him to leave, right? But you want to keep your integrity intact. How do you do this?

Well it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. You write the following email:
I can honestly say that no one could do this task quite like Bruce.
Bruce’s contributions to the department have made a significant impact
and his absence will be deeply felt. I have no doubt I will read of the
accomplishments of Bruce in no time at all.

There – now that wasn’t so hard right? After all, you were telling the truth. A blow-hard like Bruce will, no doubt, be sending you emails of all the fabulousness that he’s done in his new job so you will read of his accomplishments. Bruce gets his letter and glows with pride and you don’t have any lost sleep.

Communicating effectively is 99.62% about tone and facial clues and .38% about actual verbage. Don’t believe me? Well you would if you could hear and watch me rattle off those statistics. I’ve been involved in more miscommunications over the past three years simply because the person on the other end of the computer (and that’s important so we’ll come back to that) was in the wrong frame of mind and read what I didn't write.

How does this happen? Well easy – there are more ways to e-communicate than ever – text messages, chat rooms, group boards, email, instant messaging – and each time you write literally ANYTHING in these modes, the receiver reads, in their heads, what you’ve written, but IN THEIR OWN TONE. (I don’t mean to “yell”, sorry.)

The thing is that some of these are very instant types of communications – so when I write “*omg*" in a chat room, that could read as “the cat just meowed and it was funny” to someone or “the house is on fire” to someone else. It really depends on what their circumstances are when they’re reading it. Even “*sigh*”, a commonly used term in chats, can be VERY loaded when read. Is that “*sigh*, I’m bored” or is it more of a “*sigh* WhatEVER! I’m tired of trying to explain myself and you're probably too dumb to get it anyway” or “*sigh*, I’m checking to see if you’re still there”?

Hell, even something like “you’re welcome” can be the most misleading thing to read at the wrong moment. When read in a good mood, “you’re welcome” means that you’re being thanked for a job appreciated. Not in a good mood? That “you’re welcome” just became “you coulda thanked me, you useless prick. Next time just figure it out for yourself, loser.” This is how online flames are ignited.

Anyway, I’m sure that anyone could have figured this out. You’re welcome.