I’ve talked a lot about the bandwidth differences between conscious and non-conscious sense-making and decision-making, as well as the bandwidth difference between verbal and non-verbal communication. It’s not the 9 to 1 ratio that you sometimes hear bandied about as the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge. According to brain research, it’s more like 800,000 to 1.
Carol Kinsey Goman’s latest book is The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work. In a new essay called “Face to Face,” She reminds us how much of that bandwidth is used to read body language for all the context that it adds to the explicit text of conversations. It’s why we start learning to read body language much earlier in childhood than we learn spoken language.
In fact our brains need and expect these more primitive and significant channels of information. According to Dr. Lewis Thomas, an expert on the psychobiology of emotions, when we are denied these interpersonal cues and are forced to rely on the printed word alone, the brain struggles and real communication suffers. Think of it this way: Technology may be a great facilitator for factual information, but when your communication has any emotional charge, a face-to-face meeting is still your best choice. It’s the only way that others can note the alignment of your verbal and nonverbal messages and be convinced that your motives match your rhetoric.
Carol’s point is that this contextual bandwidth cannot be maintained in virtual communication channels: In fact, the more business professionals communicate electronically, the more pressing becomes the need for more personal interaction.
While I certainly agree in general, electronic communication has become a fact of modern life. So the questions is, how and how much can you mitigate the bandwidth constraints?
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