Complete Communication Redux
Communication between us as humans happens on many levels. There are, of course, the words that we say and use. And most of us know that every exchange we have with other humans is also made up of various forms of nonverbal communication, things such as eye contact, facial expression, body language, tone. There’s even our ‘gut feel’ and ‘felt sense’ of the other. Those nonverbal forms are what carried the day before and during the formation of language for us as a species. There still super important.
All of those give us the most accurate picture, hopefully, of what they’re saying, what it means, and how truthful it is.
We use all of these ways to communicate to test and retest the veracity of the words that they’re using and to see if they are congruent. In our listening to them, we subconsciously process their words and their non-verbal express to see if they are congruent. We check and recheck for alignment.
Are their eyes telling us the same truth or a different truth than their words? What about their tone? What truth is it telling us? What do we ‘feel’ as they’re speaking to us? What’s their body language saying? Does it match everything else? Their facial expression.
We subconsciously check and cross compare all of their ‘communication’ to see what’s true. And what’s not.
When someone is speaking to us, we use all of their communication avenues to get the best picture we can of what they’re saying, what it means, and how truthful are they being with us. When we sense there is no congruence or alignment between all of those communication modalities, we tend to believe the nonverbal’s as the truth rather than the verbal. Much the same as when we see someone is incongruent between their words and their actions, we tilt towards their actions as the real truth, not their words.
In either case, trust goes down. Suspicion goes up. Fear creeps up.
That’s been a protecting mechanism in our species since the time we began to form tribes and clan and mobs. It helps us ensure that those that are being untruthful with us…don’t take advantage of us.
Over the past year we’ve all lived through a worldwide pandemic and lockdown, and for most but essential workers, working from home (WFH). Many of our relationships with family members, peers, friends, and others have shifted to video only. We had to learn strange sounding words like Zoom, FaceTime, Hang Out and figure out how to not only do our jobs primarily over Zoom and Slack, but also to stay in touch with the folks we care about, even though they might live just across the way.
It’s been close to a year since many been able to be in the presence of all those people, from work and in life. Communication with them has deteriorated on many levels. It had to.
While the wonders of video chat enable us to stay in touch with folks, work and life, all over the world, it’s an incomplete form of communication at best. In person we get total communication and meaning, real meaning of the communication, from words and non-verbal aspects. With video we can still get some idea of their tone, but their facial expression and eye contact is skewed from them staring at one or more monitors, one camera or another. Their tone has been shifted by microphones, speakers, and shitty internet connections. Body language is hard to get from a picture of them on your screen that’s usually from the chest up only. Felt sense and vibration are non-existent over video.
All the cues we would normally to determine truth, veracity, character, emotional honesty? Gone. We’re left with words, whatever they are, and some tone. This pretty much guarantees miscues, misinterpretation, and misunderstanding. We are forced to lean even more heavily into what their words are saying to us and what we think they mean without the benefit of all the additional ‘info’ that we would normally use to verify and trust what they’re saying.
Our caveman brain is not built for this. And yes, we’re still using that caveman brain to a large degree. Especially subconsciously.
It seems pretty certain to me at this point that the world is not going to go back to business as usual after we have this current bug mostly under control. Business as usual has been forever disrupted. The ease of working from home, working remotely, organizing meetings and trainings without anyone heading to the airport…we’re not going to want to give that up.
Some organizations are and have been questioning if they can still do their business, whatever it is, pretty effectively with everyone WFH…why do they even need office space anymore?
That means that many of our relationships, including a lot of our work relationships, will continue to happen mostly over Zoom. That’s not good. Nor bad. That’s simply what is.
If we are going to avoid the lost time and expense with misunderstandings, assumptions, miscues, etc., we will have to develop ways of having more complete communication but now over video calls.
We will have to figure out how can we substitute all of those old nonverbal means of communicating with others with new additions to words and tone to give us a much better indication of what that person is saying and what they mean. Is that even possible?
Does it mean we use more words? Does it mean we talk about our feelings more? Do we rely on technology in some form to help us augment communication once more? I know sure I know the answer to these questions. I’m not sure anyone does. Yet. We will have to brainstorm and heartstorm and techstorm and then try different combinations and see what gets us closer to real communication again.
If we don’t find a way to bring the rest of those communication avenues back on board in some form or find adequate substitutes. we’re setting ourselves up for a future full of misinterpretation and miscues and misunderstanding. That’s not good for business. That’s not good for families. That’s not good for any of our relationships in or outside of work. Whether we like it or not, the task of find new ways to have complete communication with others is staring us in the face. Don’t blink.
