Upgrading a 2003 article on virtual teams, where I proposed a cable & wire model to calculate the probability of a communication breakdown. Yes, there is a formula for that!
Teaming up with individuals from other cultures and time zones is not so uncommon anymore. What once used to be the sole predicate of adventurous businessmen, who were keen on discovering other cultures, has rapidly become the number one burden of a major part of middle management in multinational companies. How can you possibly team up through a wire with people you never actually met? ‘Think global, act local’ is merely digested by top management and here comes ‘local meets local’!
Virtual teams gather through one or other wire enabling them to e-mail, call, chat, social-network, video-conference, telephone-conference, to have web-seminars etc. Each of these wires allows us to communicate in such a way that we can best reach our objectives. Mostly the objectives of virtual teams are quite challenging.
The Wires
In order to understand the difficulty of virtual communication we need to step back and have a look at the connection itself. I assume that face-to-face communications are by far the best way to get a message across. That is because in face-to-face communication we are using up to 7 different ways to get our message across.
If one would compare face-to-face communications to a cable connection one person with the other, it would have 7 wires. Each of them is a channel transmitting a part of the communication and taken together, they ensure a flawless interpretation (meaning: the message sent equals the message received).
- First, there is the message text. This is the literal transcript of the message. Nothing more, nothing less. Typically the impact of this part of a communication is overestimated.
- Second, the visual contact gives a first hint on how to interpret the message.
- Third, voice and articulation most of the times indicate the intensity of the message.
- Fourth, body language, which together with eye contact makes the visual part of a communication.
- Fifth, the context of the sender and the receiver, or rather the gap in-between. Context is what determines cultural differences. It feeds our perception and through this, the choices we make and the actions we take.
- Sixth, the urgency of sending and receiving. Sometimes the sender and the receiver experience the urgency very different.
- Finally, the feedback wire ensures that the message received gets the same interpretation as the message sent.
The Cable
But wait, because there is one we tend to forget: it’s the cable itself. All these wires are packaged into a cable, this is the relationship. Although relationship is not a wire that can transfer a message, it is the ‘thing’ that keeps it all together. In fact this ‘thing’ is hidden in the word ‘Communication’: ‘community’ or relationship. Therefore, any exchange of information that does not result in ‘being in relationship’ is non-communication. In general, the tightness of the cable is determined by how good you are at receiving and acknowledging, rather than sending.
How it Works
Each time you communicate have a look at the channels you are using. For each channel you can make a simple calculation: count the number of wires that you are using; divide that number by seven; subtract this number from 1. This is the probability of communication breakdown.
- In face-to-face communication all the wires are in use, which is the best guarantee that the shipment will arrive in the right form;
- In telephone communications the wires for eye contact, body language and the context in which the message is received, are not used.
- Have you decided to communicate by e-mail? Then you place all your bets on that one wire, namely the ‘message text’. The unused wires determine the possibilities for errors in your communications.
- Tweeting your message: this reduces the bandwidth of your text wire to 140 characters, but in return the number of feedback wires that you are putting yourself up to (virtually all people who can read your status) can cause great satisfaction or pain.
By now you may wonder: what specifically causes communication breakdown? Let me be very clear: it is not so much the number of wires in use that cause the breakdown. Rather, it is the amount of energy that you push through these wires, and as we all know, it is not the intellectual complexity of a message but the emotional level of a message that determines the energy level.
For instance, if you have very little wires in use, like in an email, try not to send an emotionally charged message expressing your disagreement with people who may be in a different context, experience a different urgency and not be in an optimal relationship. Smell the trouble of the unused wires? See the mismatch between energy level and the capacity of the wires in use? Chances are you have been there already more than once.
Prevention Techniques
Communication breakdowns, conflicts and misunderstandings in virtual teams are for 99% due to the fact that high energy messages are transferred at once over one or two wires. We think we are saving time by pushing messages and hoping that they arrive as they were intended. In reality we are losing time, because there is not enough bandwidth.
The one thing you need to remember is that the bandwidth of your cable (i.e.: the sum of the wires in use) should accommodate for the energy level of your message. If it is not, you should create redundancy by using more wires or reduce the energy level.
Examples of creating redundancy include:
- Summarize important phone calls per e-mail. Make a bullet list of the main conclusions and ask the receiver to confirm by replying to your e-mail.
- Use the feedback wire extensively during a virtual meeting by rephrasing and summarising.
- At the end of a virtual meeting, let the participants state in their own words what actions are expected of them. Often the social pressure of a virtual meeting is so high that participants are scared to say they did not understand what is expected of them. Moreover, the interpretation of ‘what is expected of me’ is context related.
- Carefully prepare virtual meetings with the necessary texts and visuals.
- If you want to make sure that your e-mail is followed by the appropriate action of the receiver, it is better to ask for confirmation by telephone.
Examples of reducing the energy level include:
- Use the Urgency wire to sync your sense of urgency with peers on the message you are going to email about a situation that upsets you. It’s called damage prevention
- The 24-hour rule: for an angry email, do not send it before you slept at least one night over it
- Follow the saying: ’emailing is silver, but telephone calls are golden’ You would be amazed about how a phone call makes you nuance the nasty phrases you would otherwise be writing in an email. (Trust me, I know what I am talking about)
In short: the more wires are used to communicate, the more accurate the meaning of a message will be transmitted. Actively creating redundancy in virtual communication is a way to minimize the communication breakdowns.
Always ask yourself: do I have enough bandwidth compared to the energy of my message?
