by Karen Anderson Peters, M.A. Verbal Presence

Did you ever notice how some leaders (be they corporate or public figures) appear to navigate through conversations or interviews as if the wind is always in their sails and the seas tranquil? We certainly know that the weather is never that fair in the tumultuous world of business, politics or even non-profits. Leaders at all levels are routinely faced with questions that challenge their knowledge, judgment or behavior (theirs or that of their direct reports).

What makes the difference between those who respond smoothly and seamlessly to difficult questions and those who don’t? The answer, of course, is many things. Individual situations, difficulty of the questions, intent of the question and the list can go on.

However, there are some common features, I think, that effective leaders exhibit in their verbal discourse whether in meetings, in Q & A’s after a presentation, in the media or in an informal water-cooler discussion. In the next blogs, I invite you to consider some conversational choices that might help you to channel a discussion in the direction of clarity. Clarity saves time, especially in a business environment. It also positions you as a leader sets a positive agenda and platform for discussion.

I will address how to effectively clarify a challenging question so that you can move to an answer with assurance.

Pause

Let’s begin by taking a moment to understand what might be going on under the surface (what I call the “unsaid) when asked a question that is “muddy” i.e. one that is not articulated well. The asker might be nervous. He/she might have multiple questions swimming around in his/her head, and is trying to ask just one. That question might actually be the one nearer the surface, or the most immediate. However, underneath may be a series of questions that reveal a build up of confusion that simply led to this one question.

I think this is a point when we can call upon our woman’s intuition to get a sense of the emotional context of the question. Usually there is some hint of whether the questioner is anxious, nervous, angry, excited or composed. Simply make a mental note of it, don’t respond to it.

Find your neutral ground

Then think about your own state of mind or emotion. How easy it is to blurt out an answer, the first thought that comes to mind when you get caught up in emotion yourself. Frequently, such responses come from a place of defensiveness. Often that comes from a fear that we have done something we are concerned might be wrong, have been misunderstood, or that that what seemed liked ordinary events have escalated and are now out of our control. We might perceive the question as an attack on our judgment, a policy we have made or a previous verbal interchange. We might find ourselves frustrated because we do not see this as an intelligent question. Or we are tired and want to put the issue to rest.

What is important here is not to assume the intent of the question or to pre-judge the intention of the asker. It is too easy to be wrong! We all enter conversations with our own agendas and you might want to clear your mind of misleading assumptions. If possible, you want to provide a deep answer to a shallow question, not the reverse. Don’t allow your own issues to blur a direct response.

The point is to turn on your sensitivity radar and address the question itself. Find your neutral ground, and set yourself in a place of confidence and clarity.

Respond with receptivity

Look the questioner in the eye with a soft—not a hard—look. Repeat the question, then reframe it. This will accomplish a number. It will give you another moment to get your own thoughts in order, let the asker know you are really paying attention to him/her, and assures that you are really answering the question that is being asked.

In addition, it is quite amazing that when you repeat and reframe the question that question often sounds and is heard differently. The asker might chime in to help you. Even a verbatim recap can sound different, or at least different enough that an awareness of what was said needs to be refined. Reframing and using your own words can help to adjust the conversation with an engagement in dialogue.

Unless the question is a grave one, keep your voice friendly and welcoming. View questions in a neutral context and avoid defensiveness. By being receptive to inquiry, you position yourself as a leader secure in herself. Others respect that.

by Diane Parente, Leadership Visual Presence

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook is paving the way for women leaders. She has created a buzz around inequality of women in leadership roles in all industries. Women make up half of the workforce however it is difficult to break into the higher ranks. In her book, ‘Lean In’, she states that, “Equality is good for society and business.”

In the many conversations I continue to have with successful women, they say that they consider Sandberg a modern day feminist. We have made some progress in regards to the disparity of pay between men and women, however not enough when compared to other countries and all of our efforts. With Sandberg’s career success, intellect and social media savvy, she has the voice to induce a change. We, at The Leadership Style Center, support her call to action to close the leadership gender gap.

What is keeping us back?

According to Sandberg, attaining top leadership positions requires a woman with self-confidence who can step in, pursue goals, seek challenges and take risks. From my experience working with successful women leaders, they have all had strong mentors who have helped them develop self-confidence.

She also added one more important element. Women need to support other women.

When we present our corporate leadership presence programs, we receive numerous comments that women do not support other women.

Example: Jill was telling me that she was recently hired to train the sales associates of a large retail chain. Jill was brought in because of her success record with her former employer. Her female boss is not open to new concepts and she undermines everything Jill does. Because it is not her idea she does not accept it. Her boss feels threatened and views Jill as competition.

Does this sound familiar?

Ladies…get over it! Feeling threatened by others pulls us all down. The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves by validating one another.

WWSD? (What Would Sheryl Do?)

Sandberg supports other women by looking and acting the part of a leader. She has substance plus style. Not only is she smart, and gracious but she presents herself as a leader with her visual & verbal presence. Her appearance, body language, behavior and communication clearly validates her ability as a strong voice for women equality in the workforce.

I watched her being interviewed on 60 minutes and she came across as personable and approachable. You were aware of her appearance however it did not take away from her message. As a leader your appearance does matter. Women are scrutinized more than men.

While attending a NAWBO (National Association of Business Owners) breakfast meeting one day, a colleague, Carol, asked me, “How do you tell a friend who is interviewing for a leadership position, that she is inappropriately dressed?”

For the last twenty plus years, I have been helping women present a visual presence that frames their credibility and value. And yes, this can be a touchy subject.

My reply to Carol was to ask her friend if she is open to feedback on her visual presence. To be effective leaders we all need to ask for input on how we can be better. Feedback is critical for self-growth.

My other suggestion to Carol was to invite her friend to one of our “How to Project an Effective Leadership Visual and Verbal Presence” presentations to increase her awareness of what is and what is not an effective leadership style.

Our vision, like Sheryl Sandberg’s, is to see more women attain top leadership positions. At The Leadership Style Center, we are here to help and support women to become more effective leaders with our Leadership Programs & Consultation.

We all need to step up and support each other was women. We can’t do it alone.

What can you do to support other women in their journey to be effective leaders?

By Diane Parente, Leadership Visual Presence

May 12th is the day to celebrate our mothers. As I was thinking about my mom, I have wonderful memories of the many valuable lessons she taught me, and how they relate to leadership.

I did not come from a wealthy family; however we definitely had an abundance of love. Both my parents worked. Mom owned a small coffee shop and worked 12 hours a day and dad was a mechanic. I am the oldest of four girls (two have passed away).

As the oldest, I was in charge of maintaining the house, laundry and helping with the dinner. I wrote down all the chores that needed to be done on small pieces of paper and put them in a bowl and tossed them around. We would take turns selecting three or four of the folded over pieces of paper and that was our chore for the day. Thinking back upon that, it was a brilliant plan. I didn’t need to tell my sisters what to do, they selected it.

This was a lesson in management and how to delegate without offending anyone.

We always ate dinner together. During the week it was simple like creamed tuna on toast, meatloaf or waffles. Sunday dinner was always special with a menu such as roast turkey or beef with mom’s delicious mashed potatoes, green beans and a cake or pie for dessert. We always looked forward to our Sunday Feast.

Eating together on a regular basis taught me the importance of building relationships over time through the art of conversation.

The house was always full of friends and family. They would stop by on Saturday or Sunday unexpectedly and mom would always invite them to stay for dinner. And of course they always accepted. Conversation was lively to say the least, we all had a chance to talk about the day and the fun things we did.

I learned how to be open and flexible to change.

Toys were non-existent since my family did not have the money to spend on extras. Therefore we created our own form of entertainment; playing cowgirls and Indians, sliding down dry grass on flattened cardboard boxes, building cities in our sandbox. We were never bored. We were out from seven in the morning until dinnertime only to run in the house and eat a sandwich for lunch.

I learned to be innovative and create from what was available.

I can honestly say, it was a wonderful life, simple, full of surprises and surrounded by love and discipline. We never swore and if we did we got our mouth washed out with soap. We learned to have respect for our elders always saying please and thank you. And we learned table manners quickly, no fingers in the food, napkins in the lap.

Good manners were consistently emphasized.

I went all through public schools. Homework was always to be done when we first returned home from school before we could go out to play. If we earned below a B, we were grounded to bed early and no allowance until we brought our grades up. And yes, it was the allowance that was the incentive. With the money we could buy candy and an ice cream cone. Remember, I was a kid then however I still like my treats.

We learned as much from school as we did from life experiences: how to manage our time better and to focus on what is important.

I remember asking my mother what she thought I should be when I grew up. She said, “You will figure it out. It is not my decision to make. That is a decision you will have to make.” She always supported me in anything I wanted to do if it was reasonable.

I learned to make my own decisions early.

Mom came from a thrifty Italian family and learned the value of saving when she was very young. At 92 she has three homes and they are all paid for.

I learned that you can have anything you want if you work hard and save your money.

Many of my classmates in grammar school had pools in their back yard. One day I said to mom, “Can we have a pool just like my friends?” She said, “Of course.” The next day she purchased shovels and said, “Okay, now dig your pool.” Six weeks later we dug a hole in the ground, laid the cement and we had our pool. Now please don’t assume we had an Olympic size pool. It was 5’ x 7’ and 3’ deep. We filled the pool and a garden hose was used to drain it. We had more fun than a barrel of monkeys in this hole in the ground.

I learned hard work and patience pay off.

Mom bought us three new dresses every year for school with two new pairs of shoes and new underwear. She made sure the dresses were starched and pressed for school. Hair was combed, braided or put in a ponytail. She always emphasized the importance of putting your best foot forward.

Mom said if you look clean and pressed people will treat your with respect. And I found that to be true.

What leadership lessons did you learn growing up? Be sure to share with us in the comments section below.

Stop for a moment and reflect on the important people in your life.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Diane Parente, founder The Leadership Style Center
www.theleadershipstylecenter
415 258-0285

by Karen Anderson Peters, M.A., Verbal Communications

In a recent conversation on NPR, Condoleezza Rice and Sheryl Sandburg were discussing what makes women successful—or holds them back. Confidence, they agreed, is a key component to a woman moving ahead in business. I agree.

However, confidence is not something you can study for in the same way as you would, say, learning to read a spreadsheet or developing good management skills. Both of these phenomenal women have a certain sense of inner drive and ability that I suspect was evident in them from the beginning. Some level of confidence is a gift, if you will.

We all rest somewhere on the confidence scale from extreme awkwardness to an almost flawless assurance. No one scores 0 or 100. We all have some areas and levels where we lack confidence, and even the most overtly confident woman has doubts. The challenge is to find where you fit and seek out ways to move your confidence quotient up the scale. This may be a big task but small steps can help—or help get you started. A good place to begin is with your verbal presence.

My observations of many women in conversation or speaking before a group reveal that small “clumsy chunks” of language and vocabulary serve to diminish their level of professionalism, and consequently how confident they appear to others. I also believe it reveals how confident they feel about themselves. I use the word, chunk, intentionally because once you attend to these words or short groups of words, you realize they are clumsy chunks of vocabulary that minimize the effectiveness of communication.

Here are just a few clumsy chunks: “sort of,” “kind of,” “stuff like that,” “maybe,” “it’s kinda like…” Sound familiar? I am sure you can add many more to the list. It’s a long one! The tentativeness connoted by these chunks announces to the audience: “I am not confident in what I am saying to you.”

I recently attended a networking event where a woman, active in the organization and a business owner, introduced the program with, “We are going to sort of try to bring you a good program today.” Though the sentence passed many of us by and most attendees were thinking ahead to the program, what is imprinted on us is a woman who is not confident. What she communicated was a tentativeness and lack of surety, punctuated by a high-pitched, low volume voice. I am a strong opponent of hyperbole. However, had she said, “We have an excellent program for you today”, we would have had a stronger impression of her as a leader with a message that reaches us on the unconscious level.

I find myself using chunk phrases sometimes and try my best to edit myself; they are a part of our everyday lexicon, along with our slackening grammar and slang. We have become less precise in our use of the English language in general. However, listen to someone like Rice or Sandburg. Listen to Hillary Clinton or Sonia Sotomayor. You won’t hear them using tentative or sloppy language, at least in the public sphere.

Purposeful well-sequenced language is a way that women live into their own sense of confidence. Whether they have worked at it or it comes naturally to them, the effect is the same. We want to hear what they have to say, and we believe what they say is of value. The language of leadership is concise, specific, and often means saying fewer of the words that undermine our confidence.

I recently had the honor of attending a reception for Madeleine Albright at Dominican University in San Rafael, California, followed by an on-stage interview in the lecture hall. In her introduction, the president of the university related the results of a questionnaire given to entering freshman. The 18-year-olds of 2013 think that the position of Secretary of State is a woman’s job. Madeleine Albright echoed that by relating how her own pre-teen granddaughter thinks the same thing. This was the decade before Hillary assumed the same office. Women are making progress.

When I first caught a glimpse of Madeleine Albright from across the crowded room, I was impressed by her short stature and her tall presence. She is, indeed, a woman who people would call charismatic. Not in the Hollywood sense. Rather in the way we speak about “statesmen.” She communicates through her very presence a quiet confidence, a knowing of who she is, and an assurance to us that being with her tonight would be a captivating evening. A sparkle in her eye and a generous smile helped to confirm it. That she was the first woman in the U.S. to hold the position of Secretary of State, a former U.N. Ambassador, a professor at Georgetown University, and a leading expert in the politics of Eastern Europe (the list is a long one) was almost incidental. She had a way of making everyone in the room feel comfortable.

As a communicator, I observe interactions people have with each other. I find I can tell so much about a person by the way he/she communicates with the people around, especially when these are not heads of state or the change-makers. I got the feeling if there were a toddler running around, Ms. Albright would have gotten down on the floor to play with her. She is not a woman of contradiction but of integration.

Madeleine Albright is one of the first women we would formally call “Stateswoman,” a title used in the masculine like many others in previous generations that was fixed in gender and reserved for men. Even if a woman might be granted the description, she would still be called “Statesman.” This is a title of deep respect that communicates not only exceptional work in the world but a true depth of understanding about that world. It connotes wisdom and conscience. Albright has broken through multiple glass ceilings using her intellect, experience and diplomacy. Albright has captured the title, rightfully, for women who serve in these roles that carry enormous responsibility, emotional torment, and history-making victories.

At the same time—and I believe what makes her so especially charismatic—is that she has done so by maintaining her femininity and graciousness.

Madeleine Albright is known for wearing tasteful tailored suits and a distinctive pin, located on the left shoulder. She tells an intriguing story about her meeting with a leading male head of state. After the first day of meetings, she read the press coverage that quoted him as saying that she was something like a serpent in her dealings with diplomatic issues. Rather than getting angry, she decided to use this rather condescending quip to her advantage. The following day, she wore a rhinestone pin of a coiled snake on her jacket.

This became the impetus that now has become her trademark: a pin on her lapel. She took this incident and made it a delightfully feminine twist on hard-core politics. Albright explained that soon after she purchased numerous pins from balloons and flowers to roaring lions to signal what her mood or inclination would be for that day. She told the story with humor, and we somehow sense she wears more butterflies than Bengals. I found this to be such a uniquely feminine way to approach diplomacy and, perhaps, life in general. Decorative pings never diminished her ability to deal with the tough issues; they communicate that she meant business.

I wonder what John Kerry will select for his lapel.

by Nancy Webb, Visual Communication Strategist

When was the last time your very first contact with a prospect happened in person? For many of us that only happens at networking events, or by chance in informal settings, like the supermarket or on an airplane.

Often, the people we encounter as leaders were given our contact information by a mutual acquaintance, or have looked us up on the internet, or encountered us on social media – often, all of the above.

By the time people contact or meet you they’ve already formed opinions about who you are, how you work, who you work with, and what you’re like as a person. They know how they feel about you, and whether (or not) they want to work with you.

All of this is based solely on what they’ve seen of your print and electronic communication.

And, if you’ve been following me here, you know that the visual aspect of those communications is a critical component of what kind of mental picture they form of you.

The Paper Handshake

This first encounter with you is what I call a “Paper Handshake.” It is you, extending your virtual hand, whether through your print materials like your business card, or promotional piece, or electronically through the web or email (which are often printed out).

Once they’re met you, these same materials help them recall the “you” they encountered in person.

So, what does your Paper Handshake say about you? Is it a bland, generic (forgettable) kind of experience like this one?

Or is it a firm, confident (memorable) handshake, showing a clear sense of who you are and what you’re about, like this one?

To make sure the first impression you make is the (lasting) one you intend:

▪   Be visually consistent across all your print and electronic materials

▪   Make sure your visuals are congruent with your leadership style and presence

▪   Apply your visual brand, overtly or subtly, to all the materials that represent you

▪   Have the best branding component of all your materials be the accessibility and clarity of your content.

When I pass around these little hands at my seminars and trainings they often get a little chuckle. But they also illustrate the reality that people feel they already have a tangible sense of who you are, even before they meet you, just from your “Paper Handshake.”

by Nancy Webb, Visual Communication Strategist

Here’s a handy little test to make sure your reader is seeing and reading your pages as you intended.

When you’ve finished writing and formatting your document, and believe you’re ready to send, post, handout, or otherwise spread your print or electronic word, do one last thing: Squint.

Here’s what I mean:

Lay the printed page on your desk, or better still, put it on the floor. Then stand up and look at it. Can you still read the words on the page? I don’t want you to be distracted by the meaning of the words for this exercise. This is strictly about how the visuals help (or hinder) your reader navigate your document.

So, squint – so that you see the text on the page more as chunks of pattern and color than as readable text.

Now ask yourself a few key questions:

▪   Where on the page do my eyes want go first? Second? Third? Is that the path I want my readers to take as they go through my document?

▪   What text is darkest and most prominent; what text is light and begins to disappear? In essence: what shouts, and what whispers? Is that what I intend to stand out (or recede) in my message?

▪   Is there a strong visual element that keeps drawing my eye (e.g.: bold color, compelling shape), and does it give me an informational payoff by bringing my eye to key content? Is my strong element serving my content or distracting from it?

Then:

If any of the answers to these questions about your intention is “no,” use size, weight, color, and placement to adjust the text until those answers are “yes.”

This one final step has served me well for many years. You’ll find that making these final tweaks help your reader better navigate your information and absorb you message.

by Syndi Seid, Advanced Etiquette

“Laws come into effect, when etiquette fails” is a most appropriate comment by etiquette maven Judith Martin.  Her point fits well with how we have had to pass laws governing the use of the Internet in marketing and advertising and telephone and cell phone solicitations.  Although time and laws have helped to reduce the offenses, yet I still get spammed regularly which has led to this article as a good reminder to all women leaders and your teams.

Business owners, companies, and consumers understand the value and importance of marketing as an integral component to gain visibility and sales for a company, product, or service.  Most companies want to properly use the Internet, telephone, and fax as legitimate methods for their sales and marketing strategy. People have wondered, however, what is proper and within etiquette? How do we weed out the good, bad, and ugly in unwanted solicitations?

At a convention in Orlando, Florida, in October 2003, the three leading advertising trade groups-the Direct Marketing Association, The American Association of Advertising Agencies, and The National Advertisers-agreed to the following guidelines for use of e-mail which is now standard practice.

E-Mail Advertising Guidelines
The subject line of an e-mail must be honest and not misleading. Senders should include a valid return e-mail address and physical address. Firms should also use their company or brand names in their domain address, and throughout the message. The e-mail should identify the sender and the subject at the beginning. All commercial e-mail should provide customers with a clear electronic option to opt out. And it must be easy to use. A company with multiple affiliates should offer notice and opt-out for each separate brand, or those that the consumer is likely to perceive. Firms should not acquire e-mail addresses surreptitiously through robots, spiders, and other automated mechanisms without the consumer’s consent. Marketers are also prohibited from using the dictionary attacks or other mechanisms for fabrication e-mail addresses without providing notice and choice. Opt-out requests must be honored in a reliable and prompt way. “Remove means remove,” the groups said.

E-mail lists should not be shared with third parties unless consumers have been given notice and choice. That restriction includes other brands and subsidiaries within the same parent company.

A commercial e-mail should contain the sender’s privacy policy-in the body of the message or via a link.

Guidelines Become Law
These e-mail guidelines were then incorporated into Public Law No. 108-197, the S.877 CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act), For a Summary, Bill Text, and Current Status of this Act, see Spam Laws: The United States CAN-SPAM Act , also at http://www.spamlaws.com/spam-laws.html

With this knowledge in hand, you may want to take time to adjust your marketing messages and clean-up your database.  Every businesses should review the items contained in the E-mail Advertising Guidelines and in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to verify you are in full compliance with the information you tell and send consumers. Make the necessary adjustments to your web site, e-mail broadcasts, fax announcements, and telephone scripts to properly identify your business and to allow the receiver the choice to be removed from your contact list. Consider contacting your clients and customers, by sending an e-mail, fax, or postcard informing them you are updating your database and want their permission to continue receiving your information.  Then be sure to provide easy steps on how they can opt-out, if desired. When placing cold calls and other telemarketing calls, identify yourself at the onset of the call and how you got their name and contact information.  For example:  “I received your information because of your membership in the [City] Chamber of Commerce.” Establish a system to keep track of individuals and companies who specifically request to be placed on a Do Not Call list-and do not call them again!

Following the law, following the E-mail Advertising Guidelines, and using professional business practices in all your marketing efforts-being honest, straight-forward, and genuine-will ensure you are performing appropriate marketing efforts rather than sending junk mail and spam destined for the delete box.

Question:  What other items do you have to add to this list?  Do let us hear from you.  If you enjoyed this article and want more, be sure to subscribe to our newsletters—at no charge—filled with great monthly tips on all sorts of topics relating to professional, visual, and verbal presence and etiquette.

Happy Practicing!

by Karen Anderson Peters, M.A. Communications for Leadership

The earmark of an effective leader is the ability to relate information, ideas, and vision in a way that inspires. Equally important is for those with whom they work to feel appreciated and heard. As a woman in leadership—or aspiring to leadership—paying attention to all the aspects of communication is what shapes her into a leader who is respected and successful.

In my opinion, interpersonal communication is the cornerstone of leadership. Of course, within this rather expansive topic there is so much to attend to.  You can over-think every word you say which will certainly decrease your ability to communicate.  In my series of blogs, I like to identify small steps we can take and practice to move the focus of better communication forward.

A blemish on an otherwise clean communication interchange is answering questions addressed to others. Take an instance where three or more people are engaged in a conversation about a work-related matter.  A colleague asks a question of the person who is leading the discussion.  Immediately, even impulsively, you answer the question. You know the answer—or at least you think you do–and feel compelled to come out with it.  You as the interrupter might appear to others as a know-it-all.  There is an implication of arrogance on your part. It is laid upon a presumption that the person asking the questions just didn’t comprehend the issue at hand—but you did.

Do you want to be viewed this way?

And then, who is to say that you got the point of the question right, anyway?  Perhaps the person was asking a question with a different agenda than yours. Or maybe saw a need for information to close a communications gap that might even have been helpful to you.  That person might have been able to give exactly the same answer you did; you eclipsed their thought process.  Had you not blurted out your own answer, you might have learned something yourself.

We all are impetuous at times. We have all done something like this. It probably doesn’t come from a malicious intent to make someone else look bad.  It can even reveal a deep engagement in the topic at hand.  However, interruptions of any sort can be perceived as a lack of respect.

So, challenge yourself.  Listen first.

Modern communication is much more complicated than it was even 20 or 30 years ago. Communication has become both more rapid and less personal. If you wish to build a business relationship, how you manage your communication choices is critical.

Today there is much hype about social media. You can tweet, message, chat, video chat, send phone photos, and email your friends and business associates via various social media apps. Each of these communication methods is useful in their own realm, but not every medium is the best medium for developing strong business relationships that will last past the next big tweet.

Two timeless methods of communication remain the bedrocks of doing business; the personal meeting and the telephone.  Video chat is a good hybrid of these two methods, but the technology for video chat is still fairly limited, whereas nearly everybody has a regular telephone, whether it is a land line or mobile phone.

The challenge is deciding which communication method is best at what time in a relationship. There are many factors that may help you make your decision, but deciding on how you will communicate is just about as important as what you wish to communicate, because the method of communication chosen is key in expressing how strongly you feel about your message.

Let’s rank the following communication methods on levels of intimacy and then we can see why one should be used over the other. #1 is the most intimate, to #6 the least intimate.

1. Personal meeting with food
2. Personal meeting
3. Telephone call
4. Email
5. Phone text
6. Social media tweet, text or chat

Personal meetings over food are one of the best ways to get to know another person and develop a longer term relationship.  The joint consumption of food is very primal and allows plenty of time to discuss a wide range of issues and subjects. Breaking bread together is a time honored way of sharing something vital to life and getting to know somebody on the next level. It involves lots of eye contact, social interaction over a prolonged time frame and a even allows for a certain amount of vulnerability that builds trust.

Personal meetings without food are more formal than sharing a meal, and can even be short and perfunctory. Nevertheless a personal meeting provides a much more meaningful experience than would a phone call or email. Any time we have a chance to look another person in the eyes, see and share verbal as well as body language, we get to know somebody better. The personal touch of taking the time to spend with another individual means something. It is especially valuable today when there are so many other methods of communicating. A personal visit or scheduled meeting tells the other person that they are important to you, that the constant onslaught of emails, texts and phone calls can be put on hold for this individual. The strongest business relationships are still forged face to face. In a tough business situation, face to face meetings are the most powerful way to negotiate through the wide range of emotions that may be occurring giving us the most opportunity to read our business partner and all the non-verbal clues their body is showing.

Telephone calls are a great way to communicate rapidly and without regard to location. The telephone preserves the communicative values of your tone of voice. Facial expressions are not visible, but the voice can communicate emotions like excitement, anger, enthusiasm and sadness just with inflections. The multiple dimensions of voice communication are essential to building trust in any relationship. A telephone call is often a very quick method of negotiating tough situations. The voice intonation clues allow us to react quickly, and appropriately.

Email is a great way of communicating written details in a precise manner. The availability of attachments allows for more expansive details and documentation. Email should only be used as a positive method of communication. Email is notoriously poor at transmitting emotion and other non-verbal clues that we use to evaluate a conversation. Lacking the personal intimacy of face to face or voice to voice communication, email can often be the vehicle to misunderstandings. Negotiations should rarely be attempted via email. There is just too much space, or room to hide behind the internet wall of anonymity to be effective at communicating on tough issues. Emails are written communication, and it is human nature to consider anything written to be final in nature.

As a practical matter, email has the advantage of presenting an issue that can be mulled for a while. The recipient of an email may take time to think on issues presented and will have time to formulate a response or interpretation over a longer time period than if the same info was communicated in person. This may be beneficial to you, or a detrimental depending on your aims. Before sending an email, we should always consider if it wouldn’t be better to make a phone call or visit in person. If there is no advantage to a more intimate communication, then an email should suffice. Email should never replace personal voice and visual communication.

Phone texts should be informational only, and should not require a response. Not everybody is good at texting, and not everybody can immediately respond to a text.  A text is good in that it most people who receive texts will see it immediately since we all take our phones with us everywhere. This is an advantage over email that may only be available when at our computers. Texting is more intimate than an email because it is more immediate, but the limited characters of a text do not lend themselves to communicating lots of information quickly. Texts are great for wishing somebody well, telling them to look out for something, making announcements and the like. They should be used sparingly and wisely. Texting is good for well-developed business relationships, but not good for starting them.

Social media is an emerging technology and has the drawback of being dependent on the particular platform being used. Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumbler, Squidoo, MySpace, and others are all closed systems and only good at reaching those who spend lots of time at those particular sites.   I included MySpace because although the major player 5-7 years ago, it is now practically dead. The others may be raging now, but if you want you business relationship to last more than a year or two, you will want to build it outside of the latest social media fad, or your business will go down with the platform you pick.

Do you remember the fax machine? Many companies still use them, but they are quickly fading from daily use. I remember when the fax machine was the first method of increasing the speed of business. It was the first widely distributed method of instantaneously transferring a written document electronically. No longer was the post office the fastest method for sending in a written order, or other communication that required paper. If your business relied on the fax machine to generate leads, you had to change your model.

Communication methods may change, but one thing will never change, the value of communicating face to face, voice to voice. The closer we can get to your clients, the stronger we will build our relationships with them. In the fast world of email, texts and tweets, it is nice to sit down with somebody, have their undivided attention and talk about life and business. Those are the people you will do business with for years to come, no matter what new communication method is invented.