the eleventy billionth time email has screwed up my communication
by Kyeli on September 24th, 2008 @ 3:03 pm in
Usual Error Project
Tags: halt, intent, pace and kyeli screw up, usual error
Though we are communication educators, Pace and I are not infallible.
Yesterday, we had a major miscommunication with my brother and mom (hi, Mom! Hi, Tony!) We have major life plans in the works with the four (five, including the Boy) of us – we’re buying a duplex and moving into each half to be near each other. Right now, they live in Dallas and we live in Austin, putting four hours of travel one way between us. Needless to say, this makes communication about such a major undertaking a bit tricky.
We’ve had lots of back and forth. Pace and I are incredibly excited, and our excitement is contagious and tends to burn through all the things Mom and Tony have to deal with on their end. No one’s doing anything wrong, but one minute it’s “right now, let’s move!”, and the next it’s “wait, wait, not right now!”. A lot of miscommunications about the urgency and possibility of the move have happened.
All this culminated yesterday. Tony wrote me an email after he and Mom had a long discussion. The email, from my perspective, was a long list of reasons why they were backing out and not moving to Austin in the foreseeable future. They listed all the things that were blocking the move from happening, clearly stating the reasons behind each block.
I cried a lot, and Pace and I spent several hours talking about what we needed for ourselves, and started tentatively making alternate plans. I wrote a response email, saying that we understood that while they want to move to Austin, it’s not a good thing or even a possible thing for them. I reassured them that I wasn’t mad, that I understood their position, and that we would go forward with what we need to do and hopefully at some point in the future we could make a move together happen.
An hour or so later, Tony replied, utterly baffled. He and Mom had absolutely not been backing out, and were super-confused as to why we were.
I called him in tears. We’d both completely miscommunicated and misunderstood each other. They intended to list the things they were thinking about, the things they needed to work through or deal with before they move, and we’d perceived it as backing out, and our response made them think we were backing out. The whole thing got muddied and confusing to all of us.
Since this is the eleventy billionth time this has happened, you’d think I would’ve learned by now that communicating via email on major things is never a good idea. Oi. It’s far more likely to result in hurt feelings and miscommunicating than any other medium, and when so many people are involved, the phone isn’t much better.
We decided to put all conversations regarding the move on hold for a couple of days. Tomorrow, we will drive up to Dallas to spend a couple of days talking in person, which is far less likely to result in such a major misunderstanding.
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9 Comments!
#2 Posted by 
Pam on September 24th, 2008 6:52 pm | link
Oh, that’s such awesome news! Yay!
#3 Posted by 
Oliver Danni on September 24th, 2008 9:55 pm | link
I have found that the internet is the prime breeding ground for the Usual Error for this very reason. Since everyone’s text looks the same on the internet, people assume that when someone says something on the internet, they mean it the same way as the reader would if it were the reader saying it. When I write an email, I’m not necessarily thinking about how the reader is going to read it…I’m thinking about how the email sounds to ME in MY head, and my decisions about what words, grammatical conventions, etc. to use are based on how I would react to those choices if I read them…but actually have nothing to do with how the recipient of my email will react, because I’m not in their head reading so I don’t know what goes on in their head while they read!
#4 Posted by 
Mantic-Angel on September 26th, 2008 9:10 pm | link
Hmmm, interesting to think about. Such miscommunications happen to me plenty face-to-face, but they’re much easier to sort out, because there’s not the response-delay that email introduces. It makes sense that a miscommunication can be a lot more time sensitive than the original issue, and thus email is probably a really bad choice for untangling it if time is important to you.
I’ve actually found email a nice medium, as long as I take in to account the delay; the delay means I don’t use it often, though. I’d much rather instant message or call someone on the phone, since then I can TALK to them instead of just leaving them a message. Interactive, two-way communication rocks :)
#5 Posted by 
Pace on September 27th, 2008 11:27 am | link
@Oliver: Exactly. With text, there’s less information being conveyed, and so there are lots more things for the recipient to fill in with assumptions.
@Mantic-Angel: That makes a lot of sense, as long as you’re communicating with people who don’t perceive tone, body language, and all the other things that come along with face-to-face communication. If you’re communicating with aspies or (certain sorts of) geeks, then face-to-face doesn’t add anything to your bandwidth, merely to your ping time. (: But when communicating with non-geeks and non-aspies, there are a lot of subtle things that are completely lost if the message is stripped down to just the text.
#6 Posted by Mantic-Angel on September 28th, 2008 1:31 pm | link
@Pace: I’ve actually found that there are a number of equivalent channels in text. On the phone, I read a lot in to tone of voice and speaking pace. In person, body language and posture are big factors. Online, response times, word choice, and emotives become important. While I can read certain people better in certain mediums, there’s definitely people that are MORE expressive to me online, and others that I just can’t read at all off of their emails :)
It really seems like they’re each separate social skills, and most people only ever learn one or two. Having had to deliberately learn a fair amount of the face-to-face, I’d even say they’re learnable skills, but I don’t see many people really making an effort to learn how to communicate WELL in new mediums.
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