Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World

Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me? Communicating virtually is cool, useful, and ubiquitous. But whenever there's a glitch with the technology or a message is unclear, we're reminded that the quality of human connection we experience in many forms of virtual communication is awful. We've all felt disconnected and bored in a video conference, frustrated that we're not getting through on the phone, or upset when our email is badly misinterpreted. The truth is, virtual communication breeds misunderstanding because it deprives us of the emotional knowledge that helps us understand context. 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--sharply highlighting what is lost in our accelerating shift to a more virtual world. And he provides a clear path forward for helping us connect better with others. Morgan argues that while virtual communication will never be as rich or intuitive as a face-to-face meeting, recent research suggests that what will help--and what we need to learn--is to consciously deliver a whole set of cues, both verbal and nonverbal, that we used to deliver unconsciously in the pre-virtual era. He explains and 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.