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Communication is a wonderful thing and the use of language, how we emphasise words, the tone we use, and what our body says, can make it very impactful.

Last week a couple of friends of mine were travelling by taxi in London and the cab driver passed a cyclist, who thought had hadn’t been given enough room. 

The cab driver stopped at the nearby traffic lights and the cyclist stopped along side the cab to have a chat, through the open window. He explained, to the cabbie, that he should have allowed more space when he passed.

As you can imagine they disagreed and the conversation ended with the cyclist saying “Have a nice day” Neither of them wanted to get abusive so the cab driver responded with “NO, YOU HAVE A NICE DAY” This went on for a few seconds with both of them getting louder each time, to the amusement of my friends! 

What a great example of the words not matching the rest of the message.  I do think that they were actually saying something else to each other and I can imagine them sticking two fingers up whilst they were saying “NO, YOU HAVE A NICE DAY!”

That’s the beauty of face to face communication because the content, on it’s own,  doesn’t always tell the true story or give the right message. Getting the whole picture can be so much more telling.

This is why (as we know so well) emails shouldn’t be relied on to convey complex or important messages, without a follow-up of some sort. How many times have you read an email and thought “How rude!” only to find out they didn’t mean it the way you read it?

We all know that the over reliance on emails is common in most businesses across the world. I have experienced people, sitting ‘spitting distance’ away from each other, communicating using emails like they were having a conversation. How mad is that? Why not talk? 

Have we lost the art of conversation and are we heavily dependant on technology to ‘speak’ for us? Sometimes it’s really easy to use emails, to hide behind, when we feel nervous about the message, but what did we use to do before technology got us here?

This week I challenge you to ask yourself these questions, before you press ‘send’

  • Do you need to send the email?
  • Can you speak to the person instead?
  • Will the right message get through using email?
  • Can you speak to the person instead?

I am going to spent more time speaking to people this week, just to see if it makes a difference. If someone emails me I may just call them instead of answering the email with an email….(depending on the message – I’m not completely mad!)

Remember what ever you do – Have a nice day!

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