Before I started writing this short article, I paused to consider just how much of my personal and even business relationship building I was doing old school, face-to-face, person-to-person.
I was pretty shocked when I realised just how much of my communication is via email, instant messaging, Skype, text messaging and telephone calls on my mobile phone. At a rough guess, I figure at least 80% of my communication is not face-to-face. How does your communication percentage look? My next question is ‘so what?’ It’s a little question but let me assure you there are some pretty big ramifications, which you are about to find out.
The basics of quality communication
Essentially communication is less about what we are communicating, through our various modalities, and more importantly about ‘what is received’ by the person we are communicating with.
Psychologists believe that when we are communicating with other people, their ability to understand us is determined by the following:
- Our body language (55%)
- The tone, pitch, and pace of our spoken words (38%)
- The specific words used (7%)