What We Have is a Failure to Communicate

This past weekend I went for breakfast with my wife and two boys at a local establishment. Throughout the various interactions with our waiter my wife and I noticed how every discussion was left open-ended, as if to suggest that any closing comments would not come until it was time to leave.

Our bias was instantly to attribute this to the waiter’s age, but upon further reflection this is a broader societal affliction that is killing our confidence, credibility, and the level of trust we build in others.

How is this affliction affecting you? Have you stopped to think about how you communicate?

If you send text messages, take a look at your messages and notice how often you actually say “good-bye?” My guess is it’s rare.

Now look at your emails. Are your closing comments typed into each email in a genuine fashion or are they composed in a neatly presented “email signature” file that automatically presents itself at the end of each communication?

If you use Social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter have a look at your messages and comments. My guess is when you add a comment to LinkedIn or Facebook you rarely end it with “good bye.”

If you’re still wondering why this matters, consider that the greatest challenge you are likely plagued with today is ensuring that how you communicate ensures impact. Simply put, having to repeat, re-phrase or re-verbalize your communications is frustrating, non-value added and unproductive.

Consider for example that:

Business owners or leaders want to capture and retain the attention of their employees with every communication.

Sales and Business Development professionals want to capture their prospective customers attention and trust.

Business and Personal advisers want to gain the attention, respect and confidence of their clients.

Unfortunately technology has hindered our ability to create communications that have impact, and that is unlikely to change unless we begin to use the tools more consciously.

To stand out from the crowd and provide meaningful, powerful and productive communications, stop using the communication tools we are fortunate to have as a one directional arrow and start engaging in more genuine and listener centric dialogues. Then again, you can send another open-ended tweet and hope that someone out there understands and responds. Sounds like a good use of time, don’t you think?

© Shawn Casemore 2015. All rights reserved.