Real-time, spoken communication is on-site work super power.
When uncertainty is high, and an intense discussion is needed, spoken word is much more efficient, from my experience. People are fundamentally better at speaking quickly and taking proper turns. This all is much slower and more cumbersome in video call, phone call, or a text chat. The perceived sequence breaks, the turn-taking protocol breaks (unless enforced by a moderator, at the expense of speed), and the communication become slower, less efficient, and more tiresome.
I love neatly written logically organized texts. But to produce such a text, a lot of the questions it answers should be already understood, answered, and arranged in a easy-to-consume order. There are situations when this is not possible, and finding out the scope of the problem and its structure is exactly the task. Here's where face-to-face verbal communication rules.
Of course, providing some written output after such a meeting is important, too, be it nicely written minutiae (a shared document on a large screen works well), or just a photo of the whiteboard.
So, both written and face-to-face types of communication are important. None can efficiently replace the other.
But with text there are tools to overcome this problem. Text scales into larger groups, and accepts days long latency. People adapt quite well to hierarchical chat and shared co-authored documents. Any group larger than half a dozen people will organize better around text. But any large group is also composed of smaller ones, that can always benefit from on-site talking.
My impression, after some time of forced remote-only interaction is that both modes are very important, but spoken on-site communication is ideal for a very small share of the total communication.
when you have three introverts and one extrovert talking you end up with the extrovert talking and introverts listening. All the introverts have agreed by minute 2 and are itching to get to work. Meanwhile the extrovert elaborates for a further 25 minutes on some philosophies and generalisms and the introverts eyes are glazed over.
That's because when the extrovert is talking to other extroverts, they will tell him "yeah, yeah, we get it" and not just sit there like a sheep and let him pontificate.
How about you try that instead of just bearing with uncomfortable experiences? Chances are he'll be far less offended than you might think. Talk is cheap, after all.
I agree with you partially. I found something interesting, with this everyone work from home: I'm able to communicate with certain people more effectively via zoom.
I think it boils down to with zoom, you are literally in someone's face, and it's very obvious when you aren't fully focused on them.
Perhaps the new way, with zoom, gave some people an opportunity to reset their manners? Not clear what the real reason behind it is, but I noticed it immediately.
In a natural conversation, it is rare to have someone stair you in the eyes for more than a couple seconds.
Hadn't considered that for some, this constant stair feels like they are finally being recognized. This makes a lot of sense. You wait for your turn to talk and the stage is yours. In some sense, everything is fairer.
I agree. I see a distinct difference between video-meetings where all people have video active vs. having that disabled. In the second case I have to actively work on keeping engaged. It is quite some effort. When people are in each other's face it is more easy.
When uncertainty is high, and an intense discussion is needed, spoken word is much more efficient, from my experience. People are fundamentally better at speaking quickly and taking proper turns. This all is much slower and more cumbersome in video call, phone call, or a text chat. The perceived sequence breaks, the turn-taking protocol breaks (unless enforced by a moderator, at the expense of speed), and the communication become slower, less efficient, and more tiresome.
I love neatly written logically organized texts. But to produce such a text, a lot of the questions it answers should be already understood, answered, and arranged in a easy-to-consume order. There are situations when this is not possible, and finding out the scope of the problem and its structure is exactly the task. Here's where face-to-face verbal communication rules.
Of course, providing some written output after such a meeting is important, too, be it nicely written minutiae (a shared document on a large screen works well), or just a photo of the whiteboard.
So, both written and face-to-face types of communication are important. None can efficiently replace the other.