Nowadays we do just about everything using screens. Our phones, tablets, televisions and computers are the hubs where we work, learn, interact and receive our news. Because of this it’s easy to suffer from information overload. It becomes common to skim our feeds, speed past photos, and suffer eye strain after hours of exposure.
Over the past year we have found ourselves doing this more than ever. Why? We’re not supposed to be going outside! As a result, our minds eventually force us to space out, and as a result our productivity begins to suffer.
Since there aren’t as many options regarding actual face-to-face meetings and networking get-togethers, how can you break up that monotony and make that online time count? This week’s book recommendation, Can You Hear Me?, is a treatise on how to make online interactions count without getting lost in the muddle. What’s more, it will help you form healthier habits and better tackle specific forms of communication: chats, text, email, conference calls, and more.
Here is the summary on Amazon:
“Communicating virtually is cool, useful, and now even more ubiquitous and necessary than ever. But we're often reminded that the quality of human connection we experience in many forms of virtual communication is awful. We've all felt disconnected in a video conference, frustrated that we're not getting through on the phone, upset when our email is badly misinterpreted, or anxious that we're being misunderstood.
“How can we fix this? In this powerful, practical book, communication expert Nick Morgan outlines five big problems with communication in the virtual world—lack of feedback, lack of empathy, lack of control, lack of emotion, and lack of connection and commitment—and shows how to overcome them as we shift to working remotely more and more.
“Morgan argues that while virtual communication will never be as rich or intuitive as a face-to-face meeting, recent research suggests that we need to learn how to consciously deliver a whole set of cues, both verbal and nonverbal, that we used to deliver unconsciously in the pre-virtual era. He guides us through this important process, providing rules for virtual feedback, an empathy assessment and virtual temperature check, tips for creating trust in a virtual context, and advice for specific digital channels such as email and text, the conference call, Skype, and more.
“Whether you're an entrepreneur, an independent professional, or a manager in an organization that has more than one office or customers who aren't nearby, Can You Hear Me? is your essential communications manual for twenty-first-century work.”
