You Just Don't Get It!
By Michael Amerson
Communication can be challenging in Peace Corps and a common complaint among PCVs is that there is poor communication between volunteers and staff. We rely heavily on email and SMS to communicate with each other. This inevitably leads to miscommunication between people. We can, however, take steps to improve our communication.
Reliance on email causes miscommunication because it lacks all of the metadata that comes along with other forms of communication that we are biologically adapted to use. Face-to-face communication, for example, is information rich. Email is not. When speaking to another person within the same room, you are able to read body language, hear pitch, and adapt your own language and tone to the cues that you are picking up from the other person. Email lacks all of these qualities.
Furthermore, a Syracuse University study found that people tend to misinterpret positive emails as neutral and neutral emails as negative. Without all of the cues that come with voice and body language, we can miss the tone that was intended by the author.
So what can we do to improve our own email communication? After all, we can’t all write with the power of the late Maya Angelo. Here are a few tips for making sure your contacts don’t misread your emails:
These tips can’t solve all of our communication problems, but they can get us well on our way to common ground and better understanding. Remember to stay positive and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
Reliance on email causes miscommunication because it lacks all of the metadata that comes along with other forms of communication that we are biologically adapted to use. Face-to-face communication, for example, is information rich. Email is not. When speaking to another person within the same room, you are able to read body language, hear pitch, and adapt your own language and tone to the cues that you are picking up from the other person. Email lacks all of these qualities.
Furthermore, a Syracuse University study found that people tend to misinterpret positive emails as neutral and neutral emails as negative. Without all of the cues that come with voice and body language, we can miss the tone that was intended by the author.
So what can we do to improve our own email communication? After all, we can’t all write with the power of the late Maya Angelo. Here are a few tips for making sure your contacts don’t misread your emails:
- Don’t be in a hurry to hit send. Reread your message. Don’t look only for grammar and spelling mistakes. Does your message make sense? Is there any information that is not necessary? Sometimes a quick read through can save you from coming across in a way that you did not intend.
- Put yourself in their shoes. When rereading your email, read it as if you are the person who will be receiving it, seeing it for the first time. How does it sound? You may catch some things that you otherwise may have thought were fine.
- Avoid chat speak. If you need to include emoticons or “lol” at the end of a sentence to get the message across, then the sentence should probably be omitted. While these tools are fun to use with your friends on social media, they lack the power of real body language and can be easily misread.
- When all else fails, call them! Some messages just can’t be conveyed in an email. When that is the case, it’s a good idea to pick up the phone.
These tips can’t solve all of our communication problems, but they can get us well on our way to common ground and better understanding. Remember to stay positive and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.