First Visit Back To Campus

I had to travel back to the college for a presentation of the Workforce Preparedness Inventory (WPI) to the Board of Trustees during their annual strategic planning retreat (Covered in the next post). The trip allowed me to not only talk to my peers face-to-face about how they felt about my work situation.
All of my peers commented their only negative comment would be the phone calls that are sometimes dropped due to bandwidth. Otherwise, most said they could not tell the difference from me working off-site. During my trip down, I reflected on the communication pattern discussed in my post Keeping in Touch - Is there anybody out there? where there are different levels of courteousness based on the communication medium.

What I have noticed are these levels, ranked from highest to lowest, of inter-personal communication and the corresponding attributes, benefits, and complications.

Face-to-Face
Attributes: Participants are in close physical proximity to one another. Offers the best opportunity for communication because they must survive the encounter (get out of the room) with each other’s ego intact.

Benefits: Participants are very aware of the other’s body language, mood, and attention.

Complications: The physical meeting has a separate layer of thinking where the individual is trying to maintain decorum appropriate for the conversation. This monitoring may alter the conversation in order to ease or expedite the end of the meeting (i.e. make it out of the room).

Phone Conversation
Attributes: Much like a face-to-face meeting, but facilitated over the telephone.

Benefits: Location of the conversation can be in a neutral or more comfortable location for both participants.

Complications: Participants are less formal and congenial. Without body or environmental langue to assist in the conversation, some context or meaning may be lost. Because the reaction cannot be measured, there is also less attention to framing the conversation towards more positive “feeling” reactions. Participants are less personable.

Email/Memo Correspondence
Attributes: Written communication via email or physical means.

Benefits: Email- Instant delivery of message. Memo and Email- Clear communication of reason for communiqué. Reader can interpret the message and respond accordingly.

Complications: Communication is one sided. Sender does not have to have any concern for recipient’s response to reading the message. Messages can be ignored or not opened. Messages can be short and quickly written; therefore lacking in the proper format for concern over the contextual interpretation of the message.

Instant Messaging
Attributes: Quick, information specific conversations using a messaging client of some type.

Benefits: Quick communication from almost any location with a variety of devices.

Complications: Instant messaging has an anagram language not know to everyone. This format also is the most impersonal form due to the quick nature of the conversation, which may or may not be performed during other work or social events.

Of course, none of this is backed up by any research; these are just my observations on the different forms of communication available in the workplace.