Take your worst business relationship offline

Do you have any regrettable business relationships? You know, the up and down type of relationship that you wish was better? Maybe it is a Customer who is beating you up over a string of delivery issues (many outside of your control). Maybe it is a colleague that you are going back and forth with over small details on a big project. Maybe it is one of your own reports that is growing increasingly combative with you.

I'll make a prediction: You are probably relating in the dark over email.

What I mean is that many of your regrettable relationships lack an essential component to the day to day communications: Accurately decoded intentions. Dr. Albert Mehrabian has studied how humans decode your intentions for most of his career. Dr. Albert Merhabian (UC Berkely) studied communications for decades and published some of his key findings in his landmark book, Mixed Messages. He suggested with data that people often decode your intentions for them (friend or foe, coach or dictator) based on various communication stimuli. In fact, he concluded that 55% of our intentions are decoded by others visually (face, body language), 38% through auditory means (tone of voice) and only 7% verbally. That's why email is such a poor medium to convey emotions.

Over email, I have no earthly idea what you intend. This is especially true in the pithy thumbwritten world of Blackberry. It wouldn't be surprising that you and I can get cross-ways in the up and down world of business. Stuff happens. If we are 100% over email, bad stuff happens to relationships when day to day stuff happens.

Recommended action: Identify three relationships that could be going better in your business life. Pick the one that is the most online (conducted over email) and take it offline to phone calls or face to face meetings for the next week. Do this regardless of geography or time zone differences. Many times these differences forced you into the asynchronous passive aggressive low communication world of email in the first place. Now its time to raise your head out of the sand and communcate that they are your Customer, your team mate and a stakeholder. Believe me, you'll see a dramatic improvement in those relationships on the average. You might save you thumbs too.

Check out an advance copy of The Dirty Dozen Rules Of Email Etiquette audio CD as an exclusive part of my Whole Enchilada development program.

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Comments

[Recruiting Animal]

Tim, thanks for your extended reply. I'll concede that there is a world of difference between email and phone.

However, Annie from Fortune, who triggered my rant, did not make the distinction between email and phone but simply regurgitated the 7% figure as do many others.

The posting I referred you to was on my old blog, The Canadian Headhunter. And exactly three years ago I had a note there about you too. Just a quote however. No rant . But I liked the Lovecat term so I spoke about it often.

I'll comment on your current remarks on Recruiting Bloggers and The Recruiting Animal (my current blogs).

PS: Since you are giving out blogging advice, I'll commend you for jumping into the fray here and say that you are wrong in making it your general policy not to do so.

Blogs are often promoted as being a conversation. But if the person who started the conversation refuses to respond directly to respectable comments what kind of conversation is that? It's more like a fight.

Regards.

[Tim Sanders]

I usually don't jump into comments on my own blog, but I wanted to respond to Recruiting Animal. First of all, you are correct in saying the Dr. Mehrabian's study has been misapplied to the concept of public speaking. People have done the 90% of life is nonverbal out of context move with his data to sell their swine. I don't like to see such generalizations myself.

I contacted Dr. Mehrabian when I was writing The Likeability Factor and he indicated the limited nature of the study in assessing communication effectiveness. Any great researcher, especially often quoted, will qualify the context and applicability to any single experiment. As with any landmark study, it is a particular situation at a particular point in time.

Intuitively, we know that an email is often misunderstand and makes others very upset for no good reason other than our laziness and lack of email etiquette -- and if it were over the phone we'd know differntly. This is grounded in data from corporate and university research.

He also points out that a host of studies have confirmed that non verbal and tone of voice are multiples more effective in conveying intentions. His study was the first, and many since have suggested that when you upgrade the channel (from email to phone, from phone to face-to-face) you improve the quality of communicated intentions.

I believe you when you say you can assess over the phone. I looked at your posts and what you do and I believe that with your experience, voice is enough to assess fit and value added. That's to my point. Email wouldn't be enough for you. If you were only reading their resume and exchanging emails, you'd be batting blind. I make no bones against tone of voice (the 38% piece) as a great way of successfully decoding another person's intention. I'm just suggesting that if you have an email only relationship that could be going better, at least pick up the phone.

Dr. Mehrabian (as well as Dr. Phil) would probably agree.

Thanks for the input and keep on bringing in LIKEABLE talent. As I said a few posts ago, we gotta stop hiring TOs!

[Recruiting Animal]

Tim, that 7% stuff is nonsense and we all know it implicitly. I'm a recruiter and I know from experience that you can get a pretty good idea about candidates over the phone.

I wrote about it here quoting David Teten.

"Mehrabian himself said, that these statistics are not relevant except in the very narrow confines of a similar situation.

"His study only addressed the very narrow situation in which a listener is analyzing a speaker's general attitude (positive, negative, or neutral) when there is no prior acquaintance and no prior context for their discussion."