Reading carefully is the new listening, and writing clearly is the new empathy

Despite the tremendous growth of Zoom and other video conferencing platforms over the last few years, the vast majority of our communication remains in text form, primarily email.

There are big advantages to both types of communication, which Seth Godin broke down right near the beginning of the pandemic.

Real-time communication, like Zoom or in-person meetings, tends to offer greater clarity. Being face-to-face helps with tone and intention, and can greatly speed up the chase to a resolution.

Asynchronous communication, like email, gives two different advantages; time and recollection. Because it’s not real-time, you can have a text-based communication with a group of people and not have to worry about syncing up your schedules. Also, while you can always record a Zoom meeting if you want, the text-based record of email is much easier to search through in the future to find out what was said.

Email overload

Because we all tend to get a ton of emails each day, a typical way of handling that is to hustle through our responses. I’ve certainly been guilty of this, as I continue to try to break my habit of quick emails like “thoughts?” and give more detailed expectations.