SENDING SIGNALS!

Showing posts with label SMS. Show all posts

Monday, August 06, 2012

How You Respond Says More Than What You Actually Say.

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

As a society and as a civilization, we are overworked, overstimulated, overburdened, under capitalized, emotionally depressed and financially depleted. Everyone knows this. But these negative factors are taking away the precious element of empathy in our communications that helps to make our exchanges the most effective. Too much texting and too little talking is broadening the gap between the Baby Boomer crowd and the Millenials, and is creating a new 'relationship' paradigm that has us minimizing the significance of relationships in general. We're routinely De-personalizing, and becoming frighteningly mechanical as we advance. Maybe we suffer from "Machine envy."

If I telephone you, and you text me back in return, that may mean that you are busy and want to acknowledge that I have reached out to you, and that you'll call me later when things are less hectic. But if you never, ever phone me back, and I can only seem to get text messages from you in response to my telephone entreaties, my subconscious is going to invariably register this as disrespectful or unfriendly. If I don't view it as such, it means that my standards for exactly what constitutes a "relationship" have diminished with the times and the technology.

As a rule, the more in-touch (employing the greatest number of senses) we are with our counterpart, the stronger the bond and the deeper the trust that we are able to build. Without hearing a voice, seeing a face, savoring subtle non-verbal cues, and biochemistry (the pheromone effect that my parents used to simply ref to as "chemistry."

While not fully true, it is mostly true: How you respond (via text, phone, email, etc.) weighs just as heavily on the quality and effectiveness of your communication as the actual content of that communique.

The more of yourself that you give to a communication, the more effective, generally speaking you will be at conveying a message that will "get through" the rest of the noise associated with our overstimulated, multitasking society.

Do not underestimate the power of sending a stronger signal by touching more of the other person's senses.

Douglas E. Castle for The Sending Signals Blog

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Your Message: How It's Sent = What It [Really] Says.

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

The manner (or technological means) through which a message is sent -- or is unsent -- conveys a message more powerful than the content within the message itself.

If you'd like to be understood and if you'd like to understand what others are saying, play close attention to the manner in which the message is sent or unsent; it's a true "tell" about the emotions and priorities of the sender...or the non-sender.

Further, if the manner in which the message is sent (i.e., a quick text with a sad emoticon, sent during your usual Monday business conference), is at odds with the content of the message ("Harvey, I am having some 2nd thoughts about our relationship. Gotta Go. Busy here!") is at odds with the gravity or importance of the message, you might be dealing with a person (the sender) who is either 1) afraid of any confrontation; 2) has already made up his or her mind and has moved on; 3) does not want you to be able to reach him or her to retain an angry, punishing distance or, is 4) classically passive-aggressive [look that up in your DSM-IV] and is saying the "right" thing in a manner meant to say the precise opposite.

Communications between people have always been complicated - but technology can now give us more of a clue than ever before as to the totality of the message, and the possible thought or emotional process behind it. It can also give us a means of sending clearer, better more meaningful expressions of ideas or feelings.

Use technology with caution and creativity - anticipate your receiver's feelings about how the message is sent as well as the wording of the message.

People are often using texting to avoid differences, discussion or dialog. It can be dismissive.

People should only be using email for official or formal "on the record" requests or messages, or for selling your things which you don't need, and of course, for spamming. [Kindly refer to The Spambox Gold Blog] .

The ultimate communication is still by telephone, and if the issue is one of timing, state it clearly in your interim text message; "Sorry! Tied up in meetings until 3:00 pm. May I call you on your cellular at 4:00 pm?" Be polite and be clear.

The best example of a conflictory message is to send your beloved a bouquet of roses, and a handwritten message about "There's something I just can't wait to ask you -- please meet me at the Grille de Romantique at 8:00 tonight. My love, Oscar" by either a mafia enforcer, a process server or attached to a drone missile. --- talk about getting to someone's heart!

---------
Please use the the above information as you see fit. For those of you who prefer outlines guidelines, deadlines and headlines to pure, unsupervised discretion, here are some very general rules:

1) When in doubt, pick up the phone and call;

2) When someone calls you, and it is not a convenient time, try not to text -- pick up the phone and say "I'm about to walk into the courtroom. May I call you this evening?" If you have time to text, you had time to pick up the phone and defer the call;

3) If someone sends you a text message asking, "May I talk to you? It's important." Either text back a "yes" with a good time, or a "No. I'm still too angry to speak objectively about this. Give me time. I'll call you."

If you do not answer this type of text message out of anger or without regard to consequences, you will have alienated somebody; perhaps irreparably.

BTW (lol), the above rules do not apply to good friends and business associates who wish to carry on a humorous or risque back-and-forth "volley-style" conversation. If that's your custom, and you have established that as a clandestine communication channel (which is naughty, but can be very funny) between the two of you, do it with glee. Just don't ever do it while driving or performing an elaborate neurosurgery.

I have missed all of you, and I am sorry for my long absence. I try to provide you with valuable information ("content"), but you provide my soul with an outlet for its expression, and that is a great and valuable gift. Thank you for what you give me.

Douglas E Castle for The Sending Signals Blog

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Enhanced Emails And Mobile Messaging

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

I have often mentioned that both email and texting carry with them an air of impersonality, of impatience, and of conspicuous disrespectful multitasking. While my basic feelings are somewhat the same as they were a year ago (see below), "enhanced" emails and mobile messages can carry much more detail, gravity, personality and even intimacy if they are done with painstaking care. Here's my view from the past:
-----------------------------------

Email is the appropriate broadcast or distribution forum for non-time-sensitive mass mailing, sending newsletters, for issuing memos (where an electronic record should be retained) and for sending large attachments. It is superb for contracts, as well. It is becoming somewhat outmoded by many other signaling mechanisms and applications, but it is still quite useful.

Having said this, email does not work, (certainly not even as effectively as instant messaging, rapid back-and-forth texting, telephoning, web conferencing or just getting together (in the real world, and not in some coffee chatroom in cyberspace), for having a conversation. Here's why:

1) Too much time may lapse between sending, receiving and responding. Momentum is lost, timeliness is lost, spontaneity is lost, and nuances of meaning are lost. Emails are cold representatives, and very flat-affect messengers. No brainstorming every happened through a discrete series of emails.

2) If your email subject line isn't a grabber, you're liable to wind up being inadvertently deleted -- and you'll sit stewing in anger on the wrongful assumption that your email was read. There is so much correspondence in the average inbox that your missive is likely to be missed. If it is read by the intended recipient, it may be read more than a day after it was sent.

3) Email now carries a cache, deservedly or not, of being one-sided, and is generally read with a modicum of prejudice against the sender. The hidden message that supersedes and often outweighs the email content is that "I am making a declaration from the mountaintop, and I don't wish to be interrupted by your thoughts or questions."

If you truly want to accomplish something, conversations are best carried out where there is a facility and expectation of rapid thought and response...sort of like neurons transmitting a signal.

The bottom line is this: Use email wisely. It is a useful tool for transmitting information. But never use it as a platform for passionate, urgent or sensitive conversation. It works against you.
----------------------------------

Now I'll take a moment to update and modify my stance (Man -- how I hate to be proven wrong!). With the availability, increasing popularity and increasing quality of voicemail embeds (http://audioboo.fm), where people can hear you speak, with the utmost sincerity for up to 3 minutes -- and with the embedding of either webcam or other videos, slideshows, hysterically-scripted avatars (http://www.voki.com), and 2 minute cartoons (http://goanimate.com), an email or text message can be personalized, more sensorially captivating, and much more meaningful.

It even affords the sender a chance to put extra creativity, and an echo of his or her personality into the transmittal.

I would strongly suggest that you give these enhancements a try -- not only for basic person-to-person communications, but even for group messages, entertainment of the recipients and serious marketing and branding. We'll have to wake up the folks at MAD MARKETING TACTICS about this development.

In the meantime, meet a friend of mine from the skeleton crew who went out on a wild bender last night and forgot to attend his ladyfriend's dinner dance...He appears to us through Voki.

You might want to forward this to all of your friends, with the possible exception of your mom or your psychiatrist....

Douglas E Castle

http://SendingSignals.blogspot.com
http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com

If you have an interesting or important point of view regarding any aspect of communications -- we are absolutely to open to any topic relating to interpersonal or organizational communications, public speaking, the art of persuasion, better writing, or even such wondrous things such as subliminal and hypnotic messaging, multi-sensory communications, intuition, instinct, extrasensory perception (ESP) or the fast-evolving notion of the Collective Intelligence, SHARE if you CARE. You might just want to write for The Sending Signals Blog as a guest columnist! If you have something important to say, let it be said HERE where it will be read, and where you'll receive the attention and audience which you deserve.