WorkLifeBridge

You just can’t beat email for its ease, convenience, and speed.

Yet Dan Goleman, author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, describes the overlooked advantages that face-to-face communication has over the electronic kind in “Email Is Easy to Write (and to Misread)“, a recent article in the New York Times. Goleman observes,

Face-to-face interaction… is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.

In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

And, as a result, email increases the likelihood that miscommunication and conflict will occur. In fact,

as the use of e-mail increases in an organization, the overall volume of other kinds of communication drops — particularly routine friendly greetings. But lacking these seemingly innocuous interactions, people feel more disconnected from co-workers. This was noted in an article in Organizational Science almost a decade ago, just as e-mail was starting to surge. Saying “Hi,” it turns out, really does matter; it’s social glue.

Does your organization rely heavily on email? If so, what does that mean for the quality of working relationships?