Of communication, flaming remarks and resolving issues …

Have you ever been a party to flaming emails and inflammatory posts? Needless to say I have been a witness to one recently that sets me thinking of how counter-productive the entire thing is. Looking back, there have been many occasions that I have been a party to or bear witness to flaming emails and verbal “one–up-man ship” during meetings.

The verbal bit is nothing new as we see MPs (member of parliaments) engaging in such antics and drama often enough ~ some even to the extent of physical abuse. Read the news of the Taiwan parliamentary sittings and proceedings and you would know what I mean. Not that I agree to such a passionate and public display of sentiment but I understand that when it comes to verbal communication, passions run high and hot, and usually one does not have the time (nor the inclination) to think through and reflect before one reacts. The end result is a “free for all” verbal abuse that could escalate to physical violence. That’s the one major failure of verbal communication. People act or say things on impulse and according to emotion, thus they do not think through before they shoot their mouth off.

But written display of inflammatory remarks, attack and counter attack, is that necessary? Or should the blame be put squarely on the technology or the devices that facilitate instant feedback and reply, thus rendering that mode of communication and discussion into a verbal platform. I used to think that written communication allows a person to cool down and organise his thoughts before making a response.

But not anymore if what I recently witnessed is used as an example. And yes, I lay part of the blame on technology. As the turnaround time for the other party to read and reply is almost instantaneous, this type of written communication is tantamount to verbal conversation. As such, the amount of care in the choice of words used is very much reduced. What makes it worse is that all the nuances of body language in the art of verbal communication are missing in this new form of communication, which could have softened the tone of a message somewhat. This increases the potential of the message being misunderstood.

But that’s neither here nor there. I believe the bulk of the blame still lies with the participants of such meetings and forums. Whilst I understand that derogatory remarks need to be dealt with, there should also be a sense check to ensure that we do not get overly sensitive and spent too much time in rebutting such remarks. Inflammatory remarks, whether verbal or written, usually divert the attention of the participants from the issue at hand. All too often the real issues get buried under defensive arguments and egos that demand satisfaction. And sadly, after a lengthy discourse which waste precious meeting time, limited server space or dwindling bandwidth, the real issues are usually none the closer to being resolved.

Thus, the next time when we are faced with such a situation, perhaps we should pause and ask ourselves, “Are we focussing on resolving the issues?”