Corporate Events Plus

In today’s digital age the importance of face-to-face communication for Production Meetings seems to be fading, With the trend of many team members working remotely from home offices it is possible to send an entire day without actually interacting with people. People rely heavily on the convenience of emails, text messages, and social media.

Is face-to-face communication being left behind?

The Digital Dilemma

Miscommunication is one of the major causes of inefficiency and work-place conflicts. Many of these issues can be attributed to digital communications and the various ways they can be interpreted.

I came across this quote recently;

“When we assume that other people know what we’re thinking, and what we are expecting of them, we do them a real disservice. Assuming that we’ve been clear about what we wanted, we blame them when things don’t go as planned.” – Heidi Grant Halvorson, Forbes.

Of course nothing is failsafe, it is still possible to miss interpret something even in a face to face meeting

However there are Face-to-Face Advantages

Non-Verbal Cues

You can gauge how interested someone is in what you are talking about by reading their body language. I already employ this notion in video conference calls by always using my camera option on the computer to encourage others to engage visually.

If you are in a meeting and your colleagues are fiddling with their pens, or checking their watches, you know that you have to:

• adjust the tone of  your voice or
• use more exciting language to capture their attention.

Likewise, if colleagues and partners are actively nodding their heads and smiling, it is clear that they are engaged with you and your message.

Effectiveness

Face-to-face communication and in-person meetings can boost efficiency. Instead of spending an entire day e-mailing back and forth, you can include multiple elements of a project in one meeting instead of multiple emails.

There is a real benefit to ‘brainstorming’ together to solve problems on a project and solutions can be agreed quickly.

Recently we have been making face to face project meetings for heads of departments a priority – we have all been wondering why we let face to face communication slip.