Comments on: Be VERY Careful Using Social Media

By: Steve Borsch

Steve Borsch — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:16:31 +0000

Thanks Grant.

An old mentor of mine taught me something absolutely invaluable…especially when it comes to communicating with folks that worked for me in various past adventures. After carefully and clearly explaining something to someone (especially if it was tough, critical feedback) he would ALWAYS ask them to do one thing:

“OK…what did you hear me say? Can you tell me what you heard me say so we can make certain we’re on the same page?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’d observe people respond by completely and totally missing the essence of what he was trying to get across!

Using this approach has done so much for me as a leader, a coach, a mentor and a parent. It allows people to go back-n-forth and through successive iterations of communicating about a topic, subject, argument or issue debate until there is either agreement or an agreement to disagree.

Unfortunately the acceleration in our always-on, always-connected, constant attention-shifting lifestyle with digital communications means that it’s getting harder, rather than easier, to effectively communicate instead of just communicating more.

Thanks for reading.

By: Grant Stringer

Grant Stringer — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:53:32 +0000

I must be careful how I say this
I have encountered this problem and miscommunication on many occasions – With some people you can spell things out soooo clearly but they still get the wrong end of the stick.
That saying ” …the meaning of the communication is the response you get ” drives me wild in those situations. Linguistics and semantics have probably been responsible for more war and arguments than we could ever imagine!
Keep open channels of communication at all times – ye right!
Nice post btw – and point taken.

By: Steve Borsch

Steve Borsch — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:41:52 +0000

When I was an executive at a software company, several other execs would hold me up for collegial ridicule for my “Ted Kaczynski manifesto” emails. Usually long, quite detailed, and admittedly challenging to carve out the time to read, my boss finally came to my defense in a meeting by saying:

“Yes they’re long but he can talk to all of us at once and when you’re done reading it, you *clearly* understand his arguments, right?” Everyone agreed.

The challenge is balancing clear messages with a clarity of intent in a day when few of us can ask our readers, audience, or “followers” to invest the time to get a holistic view of what one is trying to communicate.

Thanks for the very thoughtful comment Paul.

By: Paul Jinks

Paul Jinks — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:31:54 +0000

Thanks Steve

It’s useful to be reminded of how the quick, informal (i.e. in some respects speech-like) text communication of the internet differs from speech: you cannot finesse meaning with intonation, stress, facial expression, gestures or other contextual cues. Your recipient may read your words long after the spontaneity of your post has faded. it can be viewed and reviewed time and again – and by the whole interweb. :-O

I think this matters greatly, particularly in communication for business and education and with people we don’t know well and/or whose first language isn’t English.

For the record, this is known as contrastive stress and is definitely best avoided in written text, or at least used with caution. The use of italics/ the em tag to indicate contrastive stress can be at best ambigous