Communication Error: Empathy Not Found

This week I listened to Duct Tape Marketing’s Communicating with Empathy in a Digital World. This episode of the podcast specifically discussed the potential for misunderstanding when communicating online. In our text, “Communicating Online”, it says that face-to-face conversations allow us to pay attention to behaviors that help clarify meaning (Green, 2017, p. 28). Dr. Nick Morgan, the guest on Duct Tape Marketing’s episode, is hailed as one of America’s leading experts on communication and he tends to agree. He states that visual cues are something humans have developed over hundreds of thousands of years. Dr. Morgan explains that as hunter-gatherers we looked for signs of predators when voyaging out and discussed how the lack of those cues can make us feel anxious (Morgan, 2018). Anecdotally, I can agree with this point. I find myself thinking the worse when I’m having a conversation – specifically via text – and I don’t get a response. I worry that I’ve offended the recipient, or worse, that I’ve bored them into not wanting to converse further. Dr. Morgan lets us know that this is a learned behavior, but one that we can correct.

One way in which he suggests we handle this communication error is by using the red, yellow, green, system (Morgan, 2018). This system is great for conference calls where not everyone is participating on camera. The idea is that at the start of the meeting, the facilitator should ask everyone to say how they’re feeling – red being terrible, yellow being pretty good, no big fired to put out, and green is confident and caught up. The point of this is to then address why an employee said red and if they need to be dismissed from the call. This method made me feel odd while Dr. Morgan discussed it, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to like what it could mean for communicating professionally online going forward. For instance, it would be nice to get the opportunity to sit out calls – or portions of a meeting – that don’t pertain to you if you’re really behind on tasks that are a direct duty for your department, or having a red day, as Dr. Morgan put it. This shows empathy on a case-by-case basis and everyone benefits from knowing that communicating your feelings to higher-ups isn’t cause for concern. 

References:

Jantsch, J. (2018, October 30). Communicating with empathy in the digital world. Duct Tape Marketing. https://ducttapemarketing.com/empathy-virtual-communication/.

Green, J. M. (2017). Communicating online. McGraw Hill Education Create.