Get up from that desk: why we should always prioritise the human touch
Have you ever found yourself annoyed by the tone of an email only to find, if you happen to have a chat with that person later, they hadn’t meant to be rude, they’d just replied in a hurry? Or perhaps you’ve been the one to send the apparently rude email – and you had no idea that’s how it’d been construed. We’d be willing to bet both of those scenarios will be familiar. It’s one example of how communicating well can sometimes feel harder in the digital age. That’s not to say technology hasn’t made us more productive and efficient, it absolutely has. Company intranets, email, social media – they’re incredibly powerful ways of disseminating information. But with our use of technology about to undergo a revolution as more businesses start embracing AI, keeping the human touch has never been more important. Here’s why:
· We need our non-verbal cues: Without hearing the tone or seeing the smile (or lack of one), we humans often struggle to figure out the meaning of whatever’s just been said. It’s why emails get misinterpreted; we suffer from what researchers like to call ‘negative intensification bias.’ In other words, we read meaning into what’s been written based on our emotions at the time. So, while a dispassionate observer might read your email and think it’s innocuous, your stressed employee, who doesn’t feel like they’re on top of anything at the moment, insinuates a criticism – you’re chasing them up because you don’t think they’re doing a good job. But if you’d just popped over to their desk and asked them how they were getting on with a friendly smile, they’d have seen you were trying to be supportive, while you might have sensed they’d benefit from a bit of help if they’re to meet their deadline.
· It's what people want. If the pandemic taught us one thing it was that everyone needs face-to-face interactions to be happy in life. And once a bit more normalcy returned, here at Cosy Meerkat, we found ourselves getting lots of requests for comms audits; people wanted to know whether to carry on using the technology they’d brought in during lockdown. What came back from every audit we did was that people wanted more face-to-face communication. Three in four said it was their preferred communications channel and four in five said that it was through team briefings that they wanted to hear company information. It seems technology can push your comms out at scale, but it’s hearing it from a human which will ensure it sticks in someone’s head.
In organisations where internal comms is seen as everyone’s role you tend to find rumours hold less sway and that employees have a better understanding of the businesses goals and why what they do is important. Productivity and commitment go up as a result. But the communications need to be organised and prioritised and you should never leave your line managers to just get on with it.
Blame the line managers?
One of the biggest complaints we hear is it’s the line managers who are the block in the internal communications chain – they’re where the messaging goes wrong, if it goes out at all. But is it really their fault? According to the Chartered Management Institute, there are 2.4 million accidental managers in this country. These are people who probably excelled in their job and then got promoted to run their team. We regularly work with Investors In People and they point to research which suggests that when it comes to training first time managers, a staggering 71% of employers say they don’t give them any special training when they’re first promoted. And when it comes to specific communications training, Engage for Success found that only 15% of managers say it’s compulsory where they work, while 51% say it’s voluntary, leaving quite a lot who don’t get any at all. Yet communication is one of those soft skills that doesn’t come naturally to everyone, so, basically, we’re leaving our accidental managers high and dry.
Train the line managers
It sounds simple, but if line manager training has been overlooked, changing that can make a massive difference to the effectiveness of your communications. At Cosy Meerkat we offer a specific package to help you train your line managers, so here are a few tips from us on the kind of thing you should be doing:
1. Start with the why: Make sure your middle managers understand why investing time in people management activities is important and what’s in it for them. Without that, everything else will likely fall on deaf ears.
2. Listen to their concerns: Get out into the business and listen to what worries they have about communications as well as where they need help and support. It could be they don’t feel they have enough time or they don’t know how to deal with difficult issues. You can then design workshops or training programmes based on their specific needs.
3. Make comms part of their job remit: More of an HR one this, but until the right management behaviours are established and become the norm, you might need to incentivise – or push people in the right direction. If managers are held accountable for having regular one-to-ones or team briefings they’re far more likely to do it.
4. Consider email training for all. This doesn’t have to be a session on its own, but something you incorporate into a wider communications training programme. Making people aware of how what they write and even say can be misconstrued and that the power dynamic as well as the general climate in the organisation can have an impact on how a recipient views information, will make people better communicators and improve working relationships.
5. Invest in technology which helps make those face-to-face communications easier. Rather than leaving your manager to schedule and prepare for all those one-to-ones on their own, find an app or programme that will schedule the meeting, suggest prompts for discussion and bring up relevant emails and notes from the last meeting. It’s exactly the kind of thing AI should be used for - liberating managers from those repetitive, time-consuming tasks so that they can focus on the human connection with their teams.
So the next time you’re tempted to fire off an email to someone a few desks away, get up and walk over to them. Have that brief chat. Prioritise listening, one of the most powerful ways to engage. You’ll be glad you did.
