SENDING SIGNALS!

Showing posts with label telephone. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Texting: Advantages, Limitations And Dangers

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Without being able to hear the nuances of voice or the unspoken but powerful connotative message of body language, texting back and forth (in lieu) of having a phone conversation or a face-to-face meeting, brief texting often creates a level of misunderstanding in terms of the true tone or intention of a communicated message. The following text dialog is a perfect example, taken from a very fresh, recent, real-world experience.
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TEXTING BETWEEN SENSITIVE SOULS

TRANSCRIPTION OF TEXT MESSAGE CONVERSATION

11:30 pm Eastern Time

August 20th, 2012

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Sent To Me:

U brainwashed M.He calls you his spiritual advisor! He thinks its scarey because u can read minds and see the future!! What the f---?

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My Response

B: I assure you that I've not brainwashed anyone, I cannot read minds and further, I cannot see the future -- if I could, I be playing the stock market. Sometimes needful or irrational persons come to their own "curious" conclusions. Be assured that I am quite ordinary, quite mortal. And have never, ever made any representations to the contrary to anyone - ever.

I feel that your tone is most accusatory, and I find it very offensive. I have only tried to be helpful to you. I am hurt deeply, and am deserving of either an apology or a dismissal from my good-faith association with you and your business. I have wronged no one. The next communication is yours, as I don't want to be where I' m unwelcome or where my integrity or motives are questioned. I don't want to say anything foolish or out of anger.

Respectfully, with best wishes, DC

Sent To Me

We all luv u and u r trying very hard to help me like no one else and I greatly appreciate it. Michael interpreted it in a "curious" way. I know you have only my best interests at heart. I'm sorry again. I read up on Crowd Funding. What can I do to make it up to you?

M thinks very highly of you. He called u his spiritual advisor as a big compliment.

Please write back.

My Response

No offense taken. I get this type of reaction more than I'd like, and I overreacted. I apologize if I wrote back before I'd had a chance to see the humor and the irony in it. You've still got me. We'll talk tomorrow, and make nice. Now, If you'll pardon me, I must commune with the spirits. ;-)

May I rest my case? Texting is excellent for group alerts, coordinating meetings, advertisements, charitable solicitations, sales events, coordinating flash mobs and other very emotion-free utilitarian connotations.

The downsides are frightful:

texting while driving is increasing fatalities;
texting emotionally sensitive material can cause misunderstandings due to the limited sensory nature of the messaging medium;
The phonetic spellings and acronyms being used in texting are creating a decline in the actual literacy of youth throughout the industrialized world -- wordsmithing, letter writing and poetry are fast becoming extinct.

Texting is a powerful communications utility, but you must use it with caution, lest you be misunderstood, or be in a great rush to find out more about the possibilities of the afterlife.

Amen, Messengers!

Douglas E. Castle for The Sending Signals Blog

Monday, August 06, 2012

How You Respond Says More Than What You Actually Say.

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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

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Screaming Silence - Out Of Touch

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If a person has been in close touch with you virtually every single day, if he or she suddenly ceases this pattern and becomes elusive, evasive, reluctant to answer questions or simply becomes difficult to reach, you are, as a typical Human Being, going to feel this change -- your intuition (perhaps even to extent of paranoia) will begin sending warning signals to you that either something negative has happened to the relationship or that something negative is going to happen to the relationship. The uncharacteristic discontinuance of communications sends signals of its own.

A failure to maintain at least a fair amount of communication with those whom you care about, either socially or from the standpoint of conducting business will be perceived by the usual recipient of either your attentions, confidences or affections as a strong negative. In the sudden absence of communications, suspicion and even anger tend to grow. It is simply a function of the way our hard-wired and sensitive intuition "pushes us."

If a time-honored companion suddenly breaks with tradition and leaves us wandering in the darkness of the unknown -- to speculate in silence -- when and if we emerge, we will be much less trusting than we were before.

The action to avoid the worst consequences associated with these periodic episodes of going undercover, silent or being hard to reach can be mitigated on the part of either party by doing one or more of the following:

1) Make an effort to reach out periodically and to keep in touch with everyone in your address book or registry;

2) If you must "go silent" for a brief period, be certain to offer an explanation without your even being asked to do this;

3) If an associate or colleague has "gone silent," use the telephone (email is too cold, and is always appropriate for heart-to-heart discussions about sensitive issues), call up and ask to be "brought up to date," or mention (my favorite), "I hadn't heard from you in a while. I was concerned that you might have gotten ill, or might need help with something. What can I do?"

4) Forward articles which may be of interest to your comrade with a personal email note of transmittal (if you've been too busy to speak), mentioning how busy you've been and how you intend to get around to actually being in touch by telephone;

5) If you hear of a colleague's or friend's achievement through a third party, send the achiever a congratulatory email, containing a promise to be in touch soon.

Remember: Silence creates a vacuum that becomes filled with frustration, fear or even forgetfulness.

Douglas E. Castle

p.s. Remember the eerie, telling lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel's hit song (now an oldie from the 1960s), "The Sound Of Silence."

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.