Ask Ella: E-mail Drives New Communication Standards
E-mail is setting the professional pace of communication across all channels. In doing so it is, by default, defining new models of communication and their standards across the board. Standards set by default can be more dangerous than standards set by design, as they temporarily create uncertainty and fear.
Old standards of communication methods and tools required sensitivity to the recipient, requiring preemptive statements and wordy sentences that conveyed the traditional civilities used in communication models of the past. Companies that hold the new contemporary view of communication are grappling with ways to implement new communication standards and must also lead responsibly in the education and the assimilation of their employees to these new desired standards and ideals. Companies that do not contextualize this communication evolution for their employees by quickly establishing new formalized standards of communication and set clear guidelines for the successful achievement of these standards, create fear, anxiety and resentment in their workforce that ultimately undermines the economy of such standards and their objectives, which is to move the process along.
Companies without programs that address the stresses that come from this radical and monumental communications change -- to get to the point quickly and concisely and without the fluff -- are setting themselves up to lose the valuable talent they have worked so hard to identify, recruit and train. Unless the receivers and expected participants of this new communications style are educated about the necessities of this new rhythm and are taught the skills and the coping mechanisms needed to enable them to succeed in this new model, they will continue to feel they have been dealt with unfairly and abruptly by the superiors and the companies they work for, undermining company and worker productivity. Abruptness is perceived when changes takes place quickly, without segue or design. These abrupt shifts that workers are required to make without assistance or contextual understanding create defensive behavior and an inability to hear commands clearly.
The faster we communicate, the faster we work. The faster we work, the more we accomplish. The more we accomplish, the more we earn. Managers who are expected to work under tighter deadlines with less talent have come to understand more rapidly the necessity of communicating in this new shorthand dialog across all channels of communication. As we move faster, our competitors move faster. The pace of work will advance until it begins to push the limits of the capabilities of the technical tools we use to do our work and our willingness to change with them. As limits are pushed, we must look for new ways that not only advance and quicken our work processes but also ways to build a comfortable order into their execution. I have no doubt that once we become more proficient in the use of these new models -- accustomed to their space and its requirements -- we will realize and then began to embrace the advantages these changes bring to our lives daily. Some of the advantages of the new model of communication are the ability to work more quickly, more efficiently, and from a more virtual space and to make more of a difference over a shorter period of time in our job and in our personal lives and relationships.
In order to take full advantage of our commercial and professional potential we must learn how to exchange parts of "old for new" ideological models of communication as quickly and seamlessly as we have learned to change the technology that drives them and their capabilities. If we are to excel past where we are today -- in science, in medicine, in space and in telecommunications -- we need to learn to give way to better and quicker ways of getting things done across the board. By applying the same newly devised standards for communication across all channels of information exchange, we increase the fluidity of accomplishment.
All Rights Reserved by Ella Kallish
Written By Ella Kallish
For more information on Ella Kallish go to www.ellakallish.com
Ella Kallish is available for corporate and group seminars.
