- Today we are going to look
at face-to-face versus online communication,
so let's check it out.
(upbeat music)
Hello there and welcome back.
I'm Alex Lyon and this channel
is all about helping you develop as a leader,
and we are in the second part of a two-part series
on face-to-face and online communication.
The first video looks almost entirely
at face-to-face communication
and today we'll look at the similarities and differences
and uses for these two types of communication in general.
So what do we mean by face-to-face?
Well when we say face-to-face
we're mostly talking about one-on-one communication.
In the business we call this interpersonal communication.
Essentially the communication that happens
in personal relationships and family relationships
or in one-on-one work relationships
and really that takes up a huge part
of our lives day to day.
So, I'll briefly recap why I believe
face-to-face communication is the standard form against
which all other types of communication are judged.
So the bottom line is that it's the most complex,
it's the most complete.
We have all these variables to pay attention
to at the same time.
So I love it and it's the standard.
At the same time it doesn't mean face-to-face communication
is always the superior choice.
It's not always the best approach.
That depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
So, let's compare the two and see what type might be best
for you given your specific situation,
and usually I emphasize things at work.
So most of the examples are at work.
So in the first video we talked about
how face-to-face communication lends itself profoundly
to the co-creation of meaning between people.
So communication does not simply transmit
existing information from point A to point B
like through the telephone line.
That's one of the very old models of communication.
Communication creates our relationships in realtime.
This makes face-to-face interaction really good
for complex tasks.
And so here are three examples of complex tasks
that face-to-face communication is best at.
First the co-creation of something.
For example song writing or other artistic endeavors.
Essentially building new things together.
So yes, you could send files back and forth
and collaborate to write a song if you had to I guess,
but that would probably not work out very well
over the long run.
To really create something,
you have to spend some foundational time face-to-face.
I was just watching, for example,
an interview with Paul McCartney from the Beatles
and he was talking about how he
and John Lennon wrote songs together and they would always
be face-to-face, share ideas and collaborate.
They weren't simply sending recordings back and forth.
So in most cases co-creating something
is most effective when you're doing it face-to-face
at least in the initial stages of creation.
Now once you have a foundation established,
you could send files back and forth later perhaps.
The second way that face-to-face communications
is especially helpful is in connection,
building relationships with each other.
If you think about it you can't have
a complete relationship if you don't spend
time face-to-face together.
Again, especially in the beginning of the relationship
or the time when the relationship gets real.
So, face-to-face communication solidifies relationships,
and if you do happen to begin a relationship online
like many of us do nowadays,
the real turning point is when you
finally meet face-to-face and interact.
That in many ways seals or legitimizes
the relationship, it makes it real.
So in person you begin to create shared experiences,
shared history and shared meaning.
And this is all very difficult to do
if the relationship remains 100% online.
The third way where a face-to-face communication really
is super valuable is in collaborative problem solving.
So building solutions through brainstorming sessions.
So I talked a bit about this in first video in this series,
but when you're face-to-face you come up with ideas
that you would have never thought of separately.
So there's something almost magical
about bouncing ideas back and forth
in realtime that creates something new.
So, I was having a conversation
with my wife recently and we were trying to figure out
what kinds of family activities that we can do together.
We're looking for fun for the whole family
which is really challenging to do
if you've ever experienced it.
And we were face to face
and we brainstormed possible fun things that we could all do
and we came up with some really great ideas
and there's just no way we would of come up
with so many interesting ideas,
so many possible solutions
if we were just texting back and forth.
It would of ran out of gas.
It's just not gonna happen in the same way.
You have to be there to bounce the ideas
off of each other and hear yourself in light
of the other person's point of view
and then you can even combine ideas, reach compromises.
It's very difficult to get those creative solutions
if you're not face-to-face at least part of the time.
So face-to-face communication is especially important
when creating something new in those initial stages
of creation and working through those difficulties.
And once you have that foundation,
you can use more online communication,
but now let's turn to online communication
and it really leaves out most aspects
of face-to-face communication
because each type of online communication
just takes a sliver of face-to-face.
So, each of the common line technology,
online technologies, were designed for a specific purpose
and because of that they all have really clear shortcomings.
So, it takes out a layer of the cake,
almost all the other layers of the cake
that I mentioned in the first video
and focuses entirely on one or maybe two layers
and so it leaves out quite a bit.
So email, for example, bites off one of the smallest pieces
of the face-to-face cake
but it's still really important.
So email is great for transmitting large amounts
of specific data in a moment.
Like a large file, detailed instructions in writing
in a somewhat permanent way.
It's right there in text.
It's also great at sending invites
or for appointments or putting things on your calender.
Again, because that information
like the times and the dates, they're very specific.
And so it's good for your routine transmission
of already existing information from A to B.
Information that hopefully doesn't require
a lot of interpretation and the email is very fast.
You can just attach a document and click send.
Of course in theory we could do
a lot of this face-to-face,
but it would be really time consuming,
really labor intensive and that's why we'll often say,
"Can you send me that on email?"
'Cause it's much more efficient,
but on the other side email tends
to lead to a lot of misunderstandings,
and a lot of confusion about intentions of the other person.
It's not great at working through issues.
You can't hear tone, you can't see facial expression.
We can't sense the other person's mood or sense of humor
and if we are already in a bad mood,
we will very likely read their email wrong, right?
And once a conversation on email gets off track like this
it's really hard to solve that misunderstanding
if you stay on email.
You really have to get face to face
as quickly as possible to work that out
and the same goes for texting.
There's more back and forth,
but those limitations are still there.
Next type of online communication is social media
and it bites off a bigger piece of the cake,
more layers of the cake, but it's still not complete.
So social media is multimedia really.
There is the potential for video, images,
audio, texts and so it's great for sharing
parts of our lives with other people.
And the big advantage is that we can be very careful
and creative about how we craft an interesting message.
It's great for marketing for that reason
for essentially pushing out the best possible message.
It certainly does allow
for potential interaction with others,
but really there are two main criticisms to social media.
First it can lack authenticity.
Messages are so carefully crafted
that they can come across as phony,
it's all just a show.
The second criticism is that people tend to react
to social media in a love it or hate it way.
So it seems like everything gets sorted
into strongly agree or strongly disagree reactions.
There's no middle ground,
very little compromise on social media.
When we're interacting face to face though,
you have to look at the person in the eye.
You have to feel the potential awkwardness
of saying something nasty and so you would hold back
face-to-face in most cases,
but online we have trolls, haters, full-time critics
about any topic.
You could post a picture about your lawn,
the grass in your yard, and somebody would say something
about how there's a water shortage
and you should be ashamed of yourself
and the outrage that you have a green lawn,
but you wouldn't talk like that face-to-face.
In person people are more courteous in their conversations.
So next is video.
Video takes an even bigger bite of the cake,
more layers because it has visual, audio,
and you can add texts or subtitles.
So video is great, for example,
for general education purposes.
You can even make it live, right?
You can add chat to that so there's some interaction.
It can be much more dynamic than just a one-way video,
and if you're talking live on video,
you can adjust to the feedback
that you're getting in the moment.
Facebook Live is fun, YouTube Live is great,
but with live video,
you're still probably going
to see those professional critics.
Anytime I watch somebody live on YouTube
there's always at least one persona acting crazy
in the chat section.
So you're still on these social media platforms
that tend to split people into those extreme love it
or hate it camps and the people that are in the middle
don't tend to comment.
So I think the best of the online types of communication
is really one-to-one live video, I love this.
It's challenging but using Zoom or Skype or FaceTime
to do one-on-one live video,
this comes the closest to face-to-face.
It bites off most of the layers of the cake, but not all.
So I had a one-to-one call on video about six months ago
to kick off a new working relationship.
It was an hour-long call and we covered a lot of ground,
but it was enough to begin a working relationship,
to make a foundation and after that the emails
and other online communication went really smoothly
and it all worked out because we had created
that relationship first live on one-on-one video.
Now this is also the most challenging, right?
People don't have a lot of experience doing these kinds
of calls especially professionally
and I believe part of that intimidation comes from the fact
that it gets closest to face-to-face communication.
In other words it's one of the most demanding types
of online communication because it has so many layers
of the cake that face-to-face communication has.
So that complexity makes it really valuable,
but also really challenging,
but if you can't meet face to face
to create something to meet for the first time,
you're in different cities for example,
this can be a great substitute to face-to-face communication
to make some progress and to move forward.
So in all I believe that face-to-face
is the most complex and the most complete.
It's still the standard form that all the other types
of communication try to imitate, really.
But some types of online communication
are better choices depending
on what you're trying to accomplish
and that's usually because they were designed
for a specific use in mind like email, as we mentioned.
It's great for appointments and things,
but it's not great for disagreements.
So as mentioned the first video in this series
looks entirely at face-to-face communication.
If you haven't checked that out yet,
I encourage you to do so.
I will put a link to that in the description below the video
and that really looks at the different layers
of face-to-face communication.
I'd also like to tell you about a resource,
a free pdf download that I created
on the essential professional communication skills
that every working person should possess.
I'll put a link to that,
and that's all I have for you today.
Thanks, God bless, and I will see you in the next video.