04.30.07
How we come across to others
My last post on this blog prompted a couple of responses that have given me cause to think about the way that what we say and write comes across to others. There is something very different about the way we say things to each other in person or over the phone where we are able to change the tone and volume of our voice, and perhaps even smile which delivers the message in the way we intend. In an email or in a comment on a blog things can be very different, particularly when we fire something off in anger or distress. Emails can cause particular offense if people are not careful with the way they come across, for example some people dispense with any niceties like writing dear so and so and instead launch straight in. This I would suggest can cause the directness bordering on curt particularly if the person then begins to have a bit of a rant about something they perceive you or someone else has done. Experience has taught me that emails can be very useful, but also quite a damaging tool in terms of relationships between colleagues, and sometime they can be used to say things we would never say face to face.
Equally people sometimes use the comments section of a blog to dispatch the kind of words that they perhaps wouldn’t dare to utter if forced a) to reveal their identity and b) to see the expression on the person they launched it at when it is read. I have been extremely lucky, my relatively low readership is mainly comprised of sensible people who think before they write, but you only have to read a small proportion of what is published in the blogsphere to see examples of comments posted with the most amazing vitriol. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we all have to adhere to the ‘if you haven’t got something nice to say, then don’t say it at all’ line, but I think it might be a good idea to think about how you would feel if it were directed to you and face to face.
