Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

A very good friend of mine and a well-respected leader Online… suggested to me in an email today … that written communication can be as or more effective than 'face-to-face' communication. The email read … “ I actually 'hear' your voice when I read your messages.”  Those words got me thinking about whether Online can be as effective as face to face. I was also reminded of a few people who received pink slips through email after 20 or more years of working for a firm, that suddenly downsized without much notice…. Ask them if email beats face-to-face… and you’d get an earful. Quite reasonably so….. But how can online tone be deciphered?

Have you found that you can distinguish if an on-liner is angry or animated… hopeful or at their wit’s end… clear about a topic discussed,  or as confused as jaybird asked to take college entrance exams? Do you know and feel known Online?

What does online tone look like to you? Some claim they need to see body language and hear a lilt in another person’s voice. Others counter that tone is the body language of any online communicator, and to a trained online eye… the nuances of every message comes with a clarion call clarity. I’ve noticed that the more I communicate Online, the more I see tone that shows deeper meanings many come to call “reading between the lines” of words used. Have you noticed that too?

It makes sense when you come to realize that the brain stores information picked up through what we do during the day. That means that the more we communicate Online, the more we store information about the tone, textures, and cadence of that communication. We also learn to recognize what works well – through messages of generous people who thank us for an idea we offered…. We also see what fails the grade… when people respond to our two-bits online in total confusion....

Have you ever considered how building keen tone skills could boost any online courses you take. Many Online employees and leaders I teach, tell me that Online communication offers even more success than they found in brick and mortar college classes. Interestingly, these success stories tend to come from people who develop excellent tactics to improve their own online tone. So often I have been inspired by Online learners who generously overlook another person's poor tone, while they continue to improve and model excellence in their own. Those message seem to etch their messages in golden pathways for the future of Online tone....

Can you imagine a nation that developed Online tone that surpassed our face-to-face communications. Think of profitable possibilities for buisness and for our communities.... It seems to me that online is catching on as the communication of choice for many in buisness. Does that increase or decrease our efficiency as communicators, as you see it?