The personal touch is more important than ever

(Posted on 30/04/18)

If we choose to, we can now shop, bank, book tickets, hire a car, make an appointment or ‘chat’ to friends and ‘go to work’ without having any form of direct personal communication with another human. Automation and the rise of digital has almost totally done away with our need to speak to each other. Verbal communication is almost in danger of becoming a lost art form and with more methods of communication than ever available to us, honing our traditional communication skills and evolving new ones is proving increasingly important.

In our digital age if your audience can’t hear your voice and can’t see your body language, honing your communication skills to work just as effectively without face-to-face communication is actually more important than ever. The weaker your communication skills are, the harder it will be for you to perform effectively.

With the rise of digital technology, high quality written communication skills should now be given far more weight. We have all misinterpreted texts and emails which we would have easily understood if we had had an actual conversation on the phone and face-to-face instead and been able to pick up the nuances of tone. Similarly, we are ourselves highly likely to have sent digital communications that were wildly misunderstood by the receiver. The quality of writing, especially for social media channels, is perhaps more important than ever as it now potentially commands a larger audience and invites immediate judgement. It has to be clear, concise, and perhaps most importantly, not open to misinterpretation.

Apart from writing skills, while conference calls and Skype can often be useful means of bringing people together, it’s essential to make sure you can handle these channels and still communicate within them just as confidently and effectively as you can in a busy boardroom or in a packed out presentation. Relationships in the business world may suffer if we don’t accord personal contact, in whatever form it may be, the importance it deserves.

To find out more about effective communication with your audience, contact the Zebra team.