you want to convey general or specific?
Is your information sensitive in any way — that is, should only specific individuals view the information?
Do you need to communicate with one person, a group, or the entire company?
Who is the person or group of people you’re talking with? Your message will vary depending on whether you’re talking to an employee or talking to your boss.
Does the message require a response?
The type of message you’re sending can affect how you deliver your message.
Understanding your culture
If your company culture is about using face-to-face communication in the workplace, you should use it for every communication, if at all possible. But if your team is used to getting messages in all sorts of formats, keep doing that. Consistency is key, no matter whether you’re working in the office or remotely.
Picking a delivery method
Speaking of receiving messages in different formats, you need to know what your audience wants to receive. Sometimes that’s easy, if you have a culture that knows what it’s getting, such as a weekly meeting on your shared communication platform. But if you have a culture where different people have different preferences, you may feel that you need a top hat, cape, and wand to make it all work.
For example, some people want to connect using email or text because they check that method most often and find meetings — online or in-person — mostly a waste of time that distracts from their work. Others need to see people’s faces.
Now it’s time for another "what’s more" — you may want to have some messages sent in as wide a format as possible. For example, if you have a state of the company report for the year just ended, it’s better to have an in-person meeting, if it’s available.
If it’s not, a video is the next best thing because people can see your face. A video meeting may have too many people in it for the app to handle, so a recorded video distributed on shared communication or even on a private YouTube channel may be the best option.
Chapter 3
Minding Your Online Manners at Any Age
IN THIS CHAPTER
You know when you meet someone face-to-face that the other person’s age tells you how you should communicate with them. If you’re talking with your peers at work, you speak with them differently than you would with friends when you’re on the town.
The height of the COVID-19 pandemic laser-focused attention on what it meant to mind your manners because there were far fewer people to talk with in person — and you didn’t want to stick around for too long, anyway.
Alas and alack, viruses change over time, and everyone is still trying to figure out how to paint that nasty SARS-CoV-2 virus into a corner. As much as we hope the virus is stuck in that corner by the time you read this book, online communication is still the order of the day for people in many age groups.
The strain of the pandemic has frayed manners in person, but maybe because people are more used to talking online these days, they may feel that manners are optional because the folks they’re addressing can’t see them — or else said people can just turn away by turning off their web cameras, so no one in a video meeting sees them.
But this doesn’t describe you, right? If you’re reading this chapter, we’re guessing that you’re not so sure — and kudos to you. Don’t get stars in your eyes, though, because we want you to channel your inner Miss Manners in this chapter.
We start by talking about manners for different audiences, from adults to kids, before we remind you about common manners everyone should know. And we begin by talking about how etiquette varies by audience.
Seeing How Etiquette Varies for Different Audiences
Imagine that you’re in an online meeting with video, so everyone else in the meeting sees you. You start using a bit of profanity, and you think no one will mind.
Then, on one of the other cameras, you see that two children have walked in and are asking questions of their parent. The parent of that child gives a look into the camera that would melt lead.
Oops.
One definition of an adult is someone who sets a good example for others in any situation, including online communication. But how do you model that behavior?
Adults: Being up front about behavior and modeling that behavior
If you remember one rule in this book, please remember this one: Don’t do things online that you would never do in a face-to-face situation.
It’s even more important to remember this rule because you face more variables online when you connect over the Internet. You’ve probably seen examples shown repeatedly on TV news programs where kids and/or pets have barged into a meeting room where someone is attending a meeting and the unintended visitors start distracting people.
Worse, when you communicate online via text, people can’t use your facial expressions and other non-verbal cues your body gives off to get the entire picture of what you are trying to say. Yes, emojis help a bit, but they can’t compensate for being there in person. And, without seeing
