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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I Like to talk about communication channels and why I want to talk about them.
Because today we are in such a hurry to communicate that many times we do not use the proper communication channel. And I saw this, and it's super sad when we saw these ultra large tech companies doing the layoffs, and they are dismissing people by email or even by blocking their carts when they go to work.
And this is not at all the best way because we need to understand that on the other hand, it's not just chipped in the other side; it's a human being, and communication is a human process. So when you say something, when you write something, when you draw something, you need to understand that on the other side, there is someone.
That has thoughts, has feelings, and may perceive your communication differently. And this is why Richard Daft and Robert Lengel created in the eighties; look, it was not last year, but in the eighties, what is called the MRC.
Or media richness, theory, and richness. It has nothing to do with the amount of money you spend on communication, but richness is related to the quantity of Information that you are providing and in different means that will help.People on the other side understand better.
So let me use the richer media you can use. It's the face to face when you are talking to someone face to face. There is the voice. There is the tone of the voice, your face, the movement of your arms, you know, the movement of your cheeks, your eyes all of this is part of the communication. It can show how sincere you are. It can show how concerned you are or not. Then going a little bit down, there is the video conference. And the video conference, you have the benefits of, I would say, this visual, of course, with not the full scale of the face to face, but at least you see other people. Then you go to the telephone, and the telephone you have the voice and the tone of voice but no visual. Have you seen how challenging sometimes when you are in a video conference, and the other side does not open the camera?
It's strange, right? Why? Because you lost the richness of seeing the other side. Then after that, you have this WhatsApp messages, a messenger, and SMS.
And even using emojis. Right? The heart, the smile. Why do they exist? They want to transform your text into something that is a little bit richer than normal text. But of course, it's not the same as face to face. And then you go to email letter and even down to a.
Bulk email, for example, is a generic email that is a very poor channel. And when I say from face-to-face to bulk email and I say, Oh, this is much better than this one.
You may ask me, So why do we still send emails. Why don't we do only face to face? Because when you use face to face, it takes time. It requires immediate action. It requires that you and the other side be present at the same time in the same place to decide on the same topic. So it's something that is really very expensive, I would say. So you need to use this kind of channel, then you have something that is truly remarkable and that involves humans perception. It involves, for example, it's for me; this is my personal value. It's unacceptable that you lay off or dismiss. Someone without talking to him or to her face-to-face, because it's so important that the person that is losing the job understands what is behind that and it will help him or her to reconstruct his or her life. When you don't do that, there is a high risk that you will not have an enemy, but you will have someone that will always say bad things about the company. And then you spend a lot of money on an advertisement when you see people just saying very bad things about you know if we go down to an email, email, it's excellent when you need to register something when you need to document something.
Because face to face, it's very hard for you to document, for example. Of course, I can't say, Oh, do you mind if I record our face to face conversation? Yes, you can do that.
But first, it's not common, and second, it's not very comfortable. Right? You don't dismiss someone asking him or her to stay in front of a camera because it's a personal thing most of the time. What do you do? You use combined media. You use the face to face to explain, and then you send him or her a document that he or she will sign. You know, with all the agreements and this and why this is so important because, in the project environment, we will face all sorts of challenges when we think about the communication process. And we need to be smart and capable of understanding when face-to-face is required and when a zap or a WhatsApp will not solve the problem. And maybe it will generate a much bigger problem that will cost you a fortune and a lot of time. Just to fix how many times you said something to your loved one and she or he understood wrongly how many. And imagine that is someone that you see pretty much every day. Imagine when you have someone that is on the other side of the planet working with you on a project that does not know you, has never seen you and comes from a different culture. If you do not enrich your communication channel, there is a massive chance that communication will not work properly. Think about that always because one of the key attributes of a successful project is your ability to communicate well. Okay, I hope you enjoy this podcast, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
