Can You Hear Me
Page 6
The online version of this establishing step is much more difficult to get right. Because the emotional exchanges are muted or shut out completely, the relationship, even at its best, is tepid.
You cannot easily establish a strong sense of empathy. And trust is thus fragile. Or the brain will simply make up the emotions it imagines the other person is experiencing, because the unconscious brain hates an information vacuum.
Here’s the main lesson: If you can possibly begin a relationship of any importance in person, you should do so. Period, full stop, end of discussion.
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52 The Five Basic Problems with Virtual Communications If, for a variety of reasons, you can’t, then be aware that the relationship will be far more fragile than it otherwise might have been. Do everything you can, especially early on, to be consistent, trustworthy, and transparent. Any cracks in that edifice will doom the relationship.
Stage 2: Establish credibility. The next stage is the credibility stage. That’s where we decide, if we’re the client, Does this vendor know what it (or he or she) is talking about? This stage can take a little longer or a lot longer than the first stage, depending on the cultures involved (how fast people get down to business) and the deliberate opportunities scheduled early on for establishing credibility, say, with a workshop or training session. If we are a vendor, we make a similar decision, but it might be more accurately phrased as, Does this person or team have the right power, access, and competencies?
This credibility check is the only stage of a virtual business relationship that can thrive at least as well as a face-to-face one can. The information explosion that is the internet allows us to check, double-check, and triple-check a party’s expertise, bona fides, and arrest record.
Stage 3: Establish trust. Once the first two phases are accomplished, the work can begin. We have entered the trust phase.
It’s the longest of the three phases, simply because this stage is when the work is being done, but also because trust takes time to establish. We want to see how a person or group reacts under different conditions, including stress. We may even test the party for reliability. Does the person or group come through for us under unusual circumstances? Do they work late to make us look good? Do they cut ethical corners under certain conditions? And on and on.
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If the trust is violated or broken at some point, people naturally fall back on competence. We will continue the relationship if the estimation of competence is high enough to overcome the broken trust. If not, the relationship can irrevocably break down.
Online, this stage remains fragile, without the durability of a face-to-face friendship. For this reason, it’s more difficult to create the trust and easier to break it. Once again, an empathy deficit is the cause.
Stage 4: The relationship winds down. The final stage is a natural winding down of the relationship. The ending may be strictly defined by a work calendar or, less precisely, by a sense that the goals set at the beginning have been accomplished. If the work has been successful and the personal connections strong, there may even be continued connection long after the basic work is done. Online, the ending is more abrupt and people rarely return to talk over the experience.
The online world needs to sip
from the emotional well
The very nature of the virtual world further chips away at the traditional human connections of a business relationship.
One negative influence of the online world is simply, for example, the distractions of daily virtual life. A second one is how some online memes go viral.
As has been observed countless times by countless people, we live in an increasingly overstimulated, 24-7, interruption-prone world. We check email hundreds of times a day and Facebook more often than that.
Thus, we are constantly pulled away from the present moment and are pushed into our heads, our mobile phones, Chapter_02.indd 53
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54 The Five Basic Problems with Virtual Communications and our to-do lists. When we have the opportunity to meet someone new, the impression that we’re likely to give ranges from not fully present to actively distracted. It’s not a good continuum to be on. The other party will unconsciously sense the distraction—or perhaps even consciously—and feel resentment as a result. Relationships can get off to a weak or fragile start in that way, particularly online.
In face-to-face encounters, though, there’s a chance that our unconscious minds will take over and make the relationship real even though our conscious minds aren’t paying much attention.
But online, there is no fallback. We tend to start out badly in the virtual world, and doubly so, because we’re usually blissfully unaware of how poorly it’s going. Because empathy is unconscious, we don’t notice its absence as quickly as we would if it were a conscious experience. What can we do to put the essentially human back into the virtual?
Think about what goes viral online: the simple, the emotional, the repetitive, the cotton candy of the mind. If we spend our days dipping in and out of that trivial stream of data, we are impoverished in any deeper emotional sense. And over time, this propensity will cheapen our online lives—and our experience of empathy.
But we can do better. If we dig deep into stories that offer the raw power of human emotion and struggle and if we guide online audiences on a journey into real intimacy and connection, then we will truly engage them. We will provide an experience that begins to restore some of the emotions that the virtual takes out, and we’ll create a strong bond of empathy.
What sort of a journey will you take your virtual audience on? Will you tell them a love story? Will it be a quest for understanding or growth or mastery? Will it be a journey of Chapter_02.indd 54
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discovery in a strange new land? Will it be a tale of hard-won success after much struggle? You have the power of choice, but you can’t duck the responsibility of digging deeper than anyone else does today to find the unique, human story that only you can tell—and that will resonate with almost everyone you touch.6
We care enormously about other people’s intent. What do they mean, and what do they mean toward us? Are they friend or foe? Powerful or subservient? A potential mate or not? And the questions go on.
We’re more alike than we are different. Recent work on brain scans, for example, can read human emotions with 90 percent accuracy. Researchers showed people pictures of unpleasant things—physical injuries, hate groups, and acts of aggression—
and found that people reacted in predictable ways. But more than that, they all reacted with pretty much the same brain patterns.7
We’re more alike than we are different
Similarly, work by a team of psychologists at Princeton University found that when a storyteller and a listener get together, their brain patterns match up identically. Stories take over our brains—and in the same ways.8
Human emotions are similar, and the brain patterns show it.
As the Princeton study’s chief researcher, Luke Chang, put it, emotions have a “neural signature,” which is essentially the same from human to human. The study’s findings also suggest that computers could learn to recognize these emotions with high accuracy—90 percent so far. The 2001: A Space Odyssey scenario is not as far off as we might like to think.
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56 The Five Basic Problems with Virtual Communications The price of online attention is distraction But just getting a hearing in the minds of harried, overstimulated consumers is increasingly difficult. Your new product, new service, or new marketplace approach—all of it has to compete with a thousand other such stories and a thousand other sources of information, entertainment, and distraction.
Your story will have to be more compell
ing than the alternatives. That’s not easy, especially given the inherent limits on storytelling online in service to a commercial idea. Commercially aimed stories are not pure storytelling; they don’t want to risk controversy, and among other features, they are biased toward the happy ending.
A whole industry is developing around software that is learning to recognize human emotion—more precisely and accurately than humans can. With such technology becoming available, your corporate story will have to stand up to competing stories that will be tested against the split-second emotional reactions of potential customers. Soon, software will understand the emotional reactions and decisions of your customers better than any human can.
A by-product of this research is that we’re learning how much of decision making is unconscious and is indeed beyond the reach of the conscious mind until the decision is already made.9 Your traditional means of testing—the focus groups, the in-depth interviews, the surveys, and so on—by their very nature miss out on the interesting parts of consumer choice. If you’re not tapping into this new kind of data, you’re not only behind the curve, but also out of the loop, the one that matters, the consumer decision-making loop.
Can your story stand up to that kind of pressure? Does your story meet these new kinds of tests?
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Moreover, you now have to tell your story faster and faster.
Impossible to tell a great story in a few seconds, you say? Apparently, Ernest Hemingway (to win a luncheon bet, the tale goes) told perhaps the shortest story ever and inadvertently started a flash-fiction game that has gone on to this day: six-word stories.
His (the story goes) example: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
The story may be apocryphal, but the point stands. Short stories can have punch.
In the virtual world, good storytelling
is even more important
Some new research into the unconscious workings of the mind points toward cracking this code of storytelling in the digital world in a way that will grab people and not let them go.10 How do you do that? Ezequiel Morsella, the theory’s lead author, puts it this way: “The information we perceive in our consciousness is not created by conscious processes, nor is it reacted to by conscious processes. Consciousness is the middle-man, and it doesn’t do as much work as you think.”11
We may feel like we’re in charge of our minds, effortlessly having those conscious feelings, thoughts, and ideas that seem to lead naturally to our actions. But as Morsella says, “we have long thought consciousness solved problems and had many moving parts, but it’s much more basic and static. This theory is very counterintuitive. It goes against our everyday way of thinking.”
Instead, our conscious minds are simply acting, watching, and reporting to ourselves on our repetitive movements over and over again—walking, eating, chasing after saber-toothed cats—just another day at the caveperson office. The important decisions driving those actions are taken by the unconscious Chapter_02.indd 57
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58 The Five Basic Problems with Virtual Communications mind and sent up to the conscious mind to become aware of and move on. As Morsella puts it, “for the vast majority of human history, we were hunting and gathering and had more pressing concerns that required rapidly executed voluntary actions. Consciousness seems to have evolved for these types of actions rather than to understand itself.”12
This evolutionary result makes sense, because unconscious thought is more efficient than conscious thought. So as a species, we’re always trying to articulate our feelings and telling people to get in touch with them, but those feelings are doing quite well unconsciously. Unconscious thought is simply faster and may have saved your life on more than one occasion. It’s just that it isn’t conscious.
Online, your hands are tied behind your back But the unconscious doesn’t work very well online. Unconscious thought and gestures precede conscious thought. In fact, so important is gesture—a physical manifestation of our unconscious—that we find it hard to communicate if we are unable to gesture. Try speaking for any length of time with your hands tied behind your back, either literally or figuratively.
You’ll find it surprisingly difficult.
Think of the online consequences. Your hands are always virtually tied behind your back.
Face-to-face, we’re always signaling, and so is everyone else, about intentions and feelings. Most of the time, we pay no conscious attention to all those signals—either the ones we’re putting out or the ones others are sending to us. Our unconscious handles all that. Online, the signaling is restricted, muted, and at times completely absent. We’re not consciously aware of the Chapter_02.indd 58
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absence, but unconsciously, the paucity of the communications channel, whether it’s text based, voice based, or even visual, frustrates us and makes us feel incomplete.
What can you do to improve the paucity of online human connection and thus the essential exchange of empathy that drives so much else in human behavior? First of all, increase your own efforts to be emotionally transparent and authentic. Precisely because the online world is emotionally less satisfying—the emotional equivalent of Pringles, so you have to keep dipping back into the can to get more, because a few don’t satisfy—you have to become clearer in your own mind on what you intend, what you expect, and what you require.
Second, increase your efforts to demand the same emotional clarity of others. Once you’ve stepped up your efforts, you then can expect others to do the same. Remember, to a much greater extent, you are what you say you are online. In person, we can check what people say against their body language for consistency, but online, we tend to take people and institutions at their word—provisionally. Of course, at the first sign of inconsistency, we sever the connection. Which makes the third step critical.
Third, regularly test your online expressions and connections by asking: Are they authentic, clear, complete, and consistent?
Your online presence needs regular housekeeping and updating in a way that isn’t so urgent in person. In person, you can say to a business connection, “We’re updating our brochure.” But in the virtual world, your website, your Facebook presence, or any other social media identity represents who you are. Inconsistencies are damning.
I’ll close with a couple of techniques for providing relief in the online emotional desert.
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60 The Five Basic Problems with Virtual Communications Practical fixes
The empathy quiz
(This test is based on one developed by Simon Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge.)
Give yourself a plus if you agree with each of the twenty-five statements, a minus if you don’t agree. Scoring below.
1. I can easily tell if someone else wants
+ –
to enter a conversation.
2. I really enjoy caring for other people.
+ –
3. I try to solve my own problems rather
+ –
than discussing them with others.
4. I find it hard to know what to do in
+ –
a social situation.
5. Friendships and relationships are just too
+ –
difficult, so I tend not to bother with them.
6. In a conversation, I tend to focus on my own
+ –
thoughts rather than on what my listener might be thinking.
7. I can pick up quickly if someone says one
+ –
thing but means another.
8. I tend to have very strong opinions
+ –
about morality.
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+ –
things upset people so much.
10. I find it easy to put myself in
+ –
somebody else’s shoes.
11. I think that good manners are the most
+ –
important thing a parent can teach a child.
12. I am good at predicting how someone will feel.
+ –
13. I am quick to spot when someone in a group
+ –
is feeling awkward or uncomfortable.
14. I am very blunt, which some people take to be
+ –
rudeness, even though I don’t mean to be rude.
15. People tell me I am good at understanding how they are feeling and what they are
+ –
thinking.
16. When I talk to people, I tend to talk about
+ –
their experiences rather than my own.
17. I can make decisions without being influenced
+ –
by others’ feelings.
18. I can easily tell if someone is interested
+ –
or bored with what I am saying.
19. Friends usually talk to me about their problems,
+ –
because they say that I am very understanding.
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62 The Five Basic Problems with Virtual Communications 20. I can sense if I am intruding, even if the
+ –
other person doesn’t tell me.
21. I like to be very organized in day-to-day life and often make lists of the chores I
+ –
have to do.
22. I can rapidly and intuitively tune into
+ –
how someone else feels.
23. I can easily work out what another person
+ –
might want to talk about.
24. I can tell if someone is masking
+ –
his or her true emotion.
25. I can usually appreciate the other person’s