E-mail: Does it help or hinder communication?
After reading the article entitled "The Secret Cause of the Flame Wars" by Stephen Leahy (handed out in class on 8/31), how do you feel about e-mail as a form of communication? What assertions does the author make regarding e-mail and how do these support or dispute your opinion? Do any of Leahy's points relate to "audience centered communication" and how might this concept help to make e-mails a more effective form of communication? Finally, considering the other articles in this packet and the information from the text, what steps might a person take to ensure that the message of his or her email is decoded correctly?
Most of how we communicate, to other people, takes place using non-verbal communication. I think the percent is around 70 for the amount that we use as non verbal to communicate with each other; such as tone, gestures, eye contact, body language, and more than these to effectively communicate with people when talking face-to-face.
ReplyDeleteThe author,of the article, starts out by using a phrase that was sent in an email;"don't work to hard", then asks was this person sarcastic or serious? Further in the article goes to explain that we, as recipients, will get the tone of the message wrong around 50% of the time.
I would agree with these findings, and furthermore, add that we can see this happening even amongst people who text message. Words and phrases can be taken in the wrong meaning, due to the tone in which it is said and received, and unless the communicator and recipient are taking the meaning the same way the translation of the message will get lost.
Thus, it is imperative, when trying to effectively communicate, with business peers to use email to send exactly what you mean. Utilize the non verbal communication for face-to-face meetings to lesson the chance of any miscommunication.
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ReplyDeleteIn this article I think it makes a valid point that in an e-mail unless you are completely clear about your intention sometimes you can be misinterpreted. E-mail can be a great tool for communication. I work with customers from all over the world. Written communication back and forth can be understood much better than communicating via phone you have to worry about accents and connections.
Leahy’s mentions that as a culture that we automatically believe we interpret an e-mail as it was written. However, we only get it right about 50% of the time. Which, I can understand even though e-mail has been a great tool to use in many different industries. You miss the body language and human interaction needed to sometimes completely understand the full meaning. Leahy I think makes a subtle point that when your reading a message make sure that your current mood does not affect your reading. Make sure you keep it detached from yourself and keep it about the reader.
The other articles in the package do touch on some very good points. Proofread and when proofreading save the message come back to it later to read so you do not miss anything. Spell a person’s name correctly. Limit your topics do not be like the e-mail from our packet of e-mails today that talked about different types of sausages, and told us about his grandmother all in one email. Make your messages personal. Keep it Simple, more is not better.
E-mail is extremely useful. Instead of getting up and walking across the office you can send a coworker a message. They will get is quickly, respond to it when they can and have it for later reference. But if you send it to the wrong address, they will never get it. If they read it and forget it about you may never get a response. They could easily delete it and then come asking for you to send it again. Or even worse, they could misinterpret the message and reply in a very unpleasant manner. There is a lot of convenience in using e-mail to communicate but at the same time it comes with so many risks. If you are careful you will spend time editing your messages, but by the time you get that done it would have been easier to have gotten up and walked across the office to deliver the message. When writing an e-mail you have no idea how it will be perceived or what reaction it will evoke, so much of that is outside of your control. I personally rely heavily on e-mail as a form of communication but I wish there was a way to ensure that my tone was perceived correctly.
ReplyDeleteIn his article Stephen Leahy argues for the misinterpretation of the tone in e-mail and how it causes misunderstandings. He makes a good point in indicating that most people think that they interpret the tone in a message correctly when in fact they are wrong at least half the time. Misinterpretation is what makes e-mail so frustrating and can cause so many problems. But Leahy is spot on when he points out that the cause for most of this is because people are so focused on themselves when they write a message instead of considering their audience. He mentions that much of interpretation is based on mood, bias and expectations of the reader.
So if the writer where to stop being self-centered for a few moments stepped back and looked at the message from a different perspective they would find ways to be clearer, more concise, and specific. Not only would communication be more effective it would also be more efficient. But key to all of this is being audience-centered. Being empathetic will help the audience decode the message correctly and react in the way the writer intended.
The point that Leahy makes regarding correct versus incorrect interpretations of e-mail messages is directly linked to the concept of audience centered communication. E-mail communication would be more effective if more e-mail users kept this idea in mind--that half of the messages they send are likely to be wrongly understood. It is for this reason that I am not fond of e-mail as a form of communication. It is far too easy to create a message that could be misinterpreted. Without the guide of a person's tone of voice or body language, as in face-to-face interaction, communicating effectively through e-mail can be a frustrating process. In my opinion, the best way to ensure clarity is to adopt a formal approach by treating e-mail messages in general (even those exchanged between friends) as if they were on par with academic or professional correspondence so as to eliminate any possible ambiguity. Failing this, the sender of any e-mail message ought to keep the Leahy's information in mind; their recipient may not read the same things from the message that they do. This should also apply as a general rule for recipients: to always remember that their interpretation may not match the sender's intention.
ReplyDeleteI feel that e-mails are important, to communicate between office personnel. E-mails are cheap, fast, and are used in large form, to communicate between different entities. It is specifically useful, when trying to communicate from long distances. Stephen Leahy's article suggests that the tone of any e-mail can be misinterpreted about 50 percent of the time. I agree with Leahy's article, and think that the tone of e-mails can be seen differently by the receiver. Work place e-mails should not be ambiguous, but straight to the point. The message should have less emotion, than an e-mail to a friend, or family member.
ReplyDeleteLeahy identifies egocentrism as the cause for misinterpretation, and suggests that we try to make our messages easier to decode. His article explains to me, how we should try to understand the recipient and their initial reaction to our messages.
Proofreading is useful when forming an e-mail. It can be beneficial to the overall message, to take some time and see if there are any mistakes. Another way to improve e-mails, would be to organize topics, and not jump from topic to topic.
I think that e-mail is a great way to communicate. It is the form of communication that I wish more people would use to communicate with me. I also love e-mail because you can communicate with more than one person at a time. You can even write e-mails, save them, and then come back to them when you are ready to send them. The author and I really do not agree with e-mails. Leahy says that most audience misinterpret e-mails. I can see how this happens. But I also think it is how you write your e-mail. If you keep your e-mails professional and not joking around I think your audience would not have a problem with understanding them. The other problem is that many people's e-mail are not audience centered communication. I know personally many of my e-mails are not. I think that if people made their e-mails more audience centered that would really help the audience understand. Things that you could do to help your audience decode your e-mails would be keep things simple, clear and professional.
ReplyDeleteI think email is a good way of communication when and if it is used properly. If it is not used correctly it can be very inefficient. Sending your message to the wrong person or sending an unclear message are both risks you take when you choose email over other way of communicating.
ReplyDeleteIn his article, Stephen Leahy argues that the biggest cause of confusion in an email is by misinterpreting the tone. He says that in reality we correctly guess the tone just above 50% of the time. This means the times we are incorrectly interpreting the tone means the message is inefficient and doesn’t accomplish anything productive. He also says that the leading cause of misinterpretation is because the sender doesn’t disconnect themselves with the email and they don’t think about the audience that it is being sent to.
All of Leahy’s points are related back to the “audience centered communication” approach and how to get the message across as clear and efficient as possible. Having an audience centered approach will make it much easier for the audience to understand the message and interpret the tone correctly.
In the other articles they tell you to be clear, concise, and compelling. The way we would say it back home is keep it simple stupid also known as “KISS.” This means to get to the point without adding in a bunch of unnecessary details and using to the point words so your message gets across in the correct manner.
I feel that emails are a generally efficiant means of communication if worded properly both in the subject header and the email body. Having used emails as a communication method for several years, I've never encountered a miscommunication yet.
ReplyDeleteTone can be misinterpretted whether written in an email or spoken in person, something that Leary seems to overlook. I've had more problems being misunderstood when talking face to face with someone than on any kind of technical communication.
The best way to avoid misinterpretation in emails would be to use simple uncomplicated words and stick to the main point that was mentioned in the subject header. The email should be clear and professional.
Email is a good form of communication if and only if the sender and receiver are on the same page. Effective communication deals with a lot of encoding and decoding which can obviously become skewed if the sender does send a clear and efficient email.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Leahy's article and the main issue seems to be that people think that they have correctly interpreted the tone of emails but statistics show that only 50 percent of the time it is decoded correctly. He also states that the leading cause for this breakdown is because some people have trouble detaching themselves from there own perspective and not focusing on how the reader will decode it. Leahys article to me explains makes it very clear that before you write your email think about who will be reading it and make it as simple as possible for them to understand what you are saying.
Many of Leahy's points relate to the audience centered approach. Focusing on the audience means to make sure that your email is efficient and easy to read, as well as, being understandable and respectful.
The first thing a person my due to make sure that their message is decoded correctly is know your reader. The second important issue would be to proof read to catch any errors, then proof read it again.
Issue #2
ReplyDeleteI feel that as long as people are straightforward in their messages that e-mails can be a very strong form of communication. Most of the problems begin when people try to use different tones and the reader can get confused easily, as shown in the study conducted. According to the article readers misunderstood the writers tone about fifty percent of the time, which is very surprising to me. The one problem that I could think of in this study might have been whom the selected e-mails were directed to. If the e-mails weren’t directed towards the students then it would be understandable that they might misunderstand the tone. The audience-centered approach is essential in getting your message across and if the e-mails selected were completely random then there is instantly a problem with the research methods used for this situation.
There are many things that a person can do to ensure that their message is decoded properly, and it starts with being familiar with the audience in which the message is being sent. One of my prime concerns in writing emails is keeping them to the point, as well as grammatically correct. Another thing that is helpful to remember is to avoid having too many topics in a single e-mail. If there are multiple message that need to be conveyed it is usually more helpful to split them up into a few separate e-mails. Last but certainly not least it is very important that the writer proofread and edit the message a couple times, to ensure the point is clearly addressed and there aren’t any silly mistakes.
Just like all new technology, emails have great benefits but also have some draw backs. Emails have greatly made communication much easier and more cost effective in society today, especially in the business world. Another great thing about emails is their “get to the point” utility but when people start adding extra context to their messages things can get confusing. As seen in the article The Secret Cause of Flame Wars, extra context in an email can be confusing because the level of sarcasm in an email with extra context is not correctly decoded by the audience.
ReplyDeleteOne way to get around this is to use an “audience centered approach” by putting yourself in the recipients’ shoes and reading the email to yourself. This can sometimes be a difficult task because in order to do this you must clear your head and eliminate all types of bias. Eliminating bias in an email is difficult because you cannot see your audiences’ reaction to see if they are understanding you correctly.
The best thing to do in an email is get straight to the point while using minimal “small talk” so your audience does not feel as if the message was not personalized at all. This can be done by getting to know your audience prior to writing the email. Implementing some of these techniques can result in an email that won’t get mis-decoded by your audience.
I believe that when e-mail is used correctly, it is a valuable communication tool. We can send fast, to the point e-mails, which will save time and make the workplace more efficient. However, problems occur when senders do not proof-read their e-mails before they’re sent. Senders also have the habit of presenting information on a “me” approach and not a “you” approach. This is what is known as the audience centered approach. This approach is essential in that it lets the reader know that you are not biased with your opinion and that you are concerned about them as a reader and not focused completely on yourself. I believe that Stephen Leahy was correct when he stated that we have a 50% chance of misinterpreting a message. Before an e-mail is sent you need to place yourself in the reader’s shoes. What do you think they will get out of the message? Does it make sense, is it free of the sender’s opinions, and is it reliable? These are all important pieces of communication that must be considered before you send an e-mail. You must also proof-read your e-mail before hitting the send button as well.
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