8.0.0- CHAPTER 8- Critical Aspects of Human Interpersonal Communication

CHAPTER 8- Critical Aspects of Human Interpersonal Communication

  The man who gets the most satisfactory results is not

  always the man with the most brilliant single mind, but

  rather the man who can best co-ordinate the brains and

  talents of his associates.

  —W. Alton Jones

Delivering messages in a Collaboration 2.0 environment

Communicating with other human beings can be a challenging, difficult activity: The more challenging the potential roadblocks (like distance, culture, style differences) the greater the degree of difficulty. Some people think there is a class of people lucky enough to be born with great communication skills while the rest are mortals who slog their way through the activity of human communication. That is far from the truth. Communicating is hard work, but most people who want to, can become good communicators. Just as people become experts in technical areas – programming, accounting, and technical writing – people can become experts in the art of communication. It’s a matter of understanding the territory, and mastering the skills, moves and tools. The following diagram illustrates just how complex communicating a message really is – there are many structural challenges and potential roadblocks in the territory even when everyone has the best intention.  

  MOOD

  FEELINGS  DESIRED OUTCOME

   NOISE   

  OBSERVATIONS  PERSONALITY TYPE

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MESSENER>>ENCODING>>DELIVERY>>DECODING>> RECIEVER

==========================================================

  INTERPRETATIONS  COMMUNICATION STYLE

  NOISE

  INFLUENCE STYLE  CONFLICT STYLE

  TENSION

  FIGURE 27: COMMUNICATION PATHWAYS

Aside from the differences in people the external context magnifies the challenges as one moves faster and faster under a barrage of new information, in a constantly changing environment with new collaborators and shifting priorities without F2F contact.

What has been missing, and what is a key ingredient for successful 2.0 collaboration are some tutorials and protocols around the basics of interpersonal communication. If people do not become students of understanding the nuances of how to communicate most effectively in a virtual environment they will be forced to face the same consequences of ineffective communication as in the physical world. The opportunity is to create a context in which people communicate much more effectively, and that the skills used in the virtual world translate and carry over from cyberspace. 

As will be demonstrated, good communicators know the message they want received, the audience who will be listening, the roadblocks they will have to go through and the other variables at play. In a 2.0 setting, among other things, they have to communicate the nuance of tone, mood, emotion, and urgency by using words like literary prose or their “emoticon” equivalents.