カテゴリー: Communication

There is still a lot of communication through online tools, but I often feel that it is difficult for the other person to understand my opinion, probably because communication with only voice or words occupies the majority.

When I look back on myself, I often point out the mistakes of the other person directly. This is wrong, you should fix it like this. It is often shaped like an Objection. If the other person has a flexible way of thinking or is willing to take in the opinions of others, the story will often go smoothly. However if you are confident in your own way or if you get older and you will be selfish, it is often difficult to receive the suggestions of people, including myself.

In such a case, I think it is important not to point out the mistakes of the other party directly, but to show the way and guide the other people to what goal they should go to. If possible, you run in parallel there.

If you point out only a specific part, it is usually only that is corrected. And after all all the points are corrected one by one. By sharing the goals to be pursued, it is possible not only to correct pinpoints, but also to review the entire path for that purpose. For example, if there is an explanatory material for someone, if you take the style of pointing out a part of the slide that is a specific part and correcting it, you have to point out all the parts.

If the other people can be aware of what the purpose of the material is, they can correct various mistakes by themselves.

If you know what you are doing your current job for and why you are doing it, you will make fewer mistakes. If possible, I think it is necessary to guide people to acquire the attitude of searching for a goal and thinking about the way to that goal, rather than simply teaching them about that goal. It will take time, but from a future perspective, It seems to be a long way, and it will be a short way.

Thank you and Good luck on good synergies.

Recently, return to office is gradually starting, but there are still many online meetings, and my there are many online meeting application such as ZOOM, Webex, Teams, and Bluejeans in my laptop.

How often do you turn on the camera at the time of the meeting?

I turn on the camera when talking to people from other companies, but when I talk to coworkers in the my company, I usually turn off the camera. Furthermore many of co-workers around me also turn off the camera. Therefore, there are many times when everyone is silent just by displaying the icon. It’s difficult to read in an atmosphere without returning anything.

As many of you may know, according to the “Mehrabian’s Law” proposed by Albert Mehrabian, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1971, The degree of influence of “visual information (Visual)” on people by appearance and gestures such as facial expressions and eyes is 55%. “auditory information (Vocal)” such as voice volume and speaking speed is 38%, and “linguistic information (Verbal)” which is the content of the conversation itself is 7%. It is the “law of 3V”, also known as the “rule of 7-38-55”. 

In other words, recipients are more likely to receive invisible emotions from nonverbal communication. Turning on the camera allows you to tell the recipient more accurately what you want to say. Imagine, If you use a chat tool to convey only the language, you may have the experience of misrepresenting it. Some people say that the camera should be turned on from the viewpoint of etiquette. From the perspective of wanting to convey what you want to say more accurately, or to convey the reaction to the other people’s explanation, it seems more effective to have a meeting with turning on the camera.

As an aside, Mehrabian’s law is based on the question, “What should a person given contradictory information prioritize in judging the emotions and attitudes of the other person?” By no means does it prove that “look is important to people”. Mehrabian himself complains about this, “My research is misunderstood.”

You often see information that extremely explains that facial expressions and speaking styles rather than contents or the content is not very important, but linguistic information plays a major role in conveying information as a major premise. The content that describes what you want to convey is same . I think it is possible to cover a little the insufficiency of the content with speaking. However if your content is insufficient, you may be judged that you’re all talk.

Now that online meetings are the mainstream, in order to convey your message more accurately, you would like to turn on the camera and make effective use of nonverbal communication.

Thank you and good luck on your communication life.