Communication Difficulties |
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I've been criticized recently on account of my poor Yahoo! Messenger communication skills. Not just messenger actually, it seems I don't convey the full set of signals in an adequate manner when using some communication channels (e.g. phone, messenger, sms). Allegedly, my communication through these channels is cold and flat making me seem uninterested, uptight or even hostile.
To make it easier to understand I'll refer to the break down of communication into its components as described in Professor Albert Mehrabian's model.
Professor Mehrabian said that:
7% of meaning is derived from the actual words used
38% of meaning is paralinguistic (tone or the way in which the words are said)
55% of meaning comes from body language (mostly the facial expression)
While this statistic is far from being 100% applicable to 100% of the situations I think it's a pretty good illustration of why things may get misinterpreted on the phone and, even more so, on messenger and other forms of written chat. After all, looking at the numbers above it seems only 45% of the communication gets through the phone line and a puny 7% through messenger.
Granted, the matter is certainly far more complicated but I take the opportunity to excuse myself this way, to all who might have felt mistreated, patronised, ignored or insulted by my digital communication manners.
All those not accepting this explanation and the real-world state of fact, please be advised I will make the necessary adjustments by closing the obviously unsatisfactory communication channels, like phones, and accepting your communications only via smoke signals, jungle drums and messenger doves.
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