Face to Facetime

If you know me at all you know I love technology and social media. I still defend the position that social media can help us connect (or re-connect) with friends, family and in some cases even allow us to "meet" others within our areas of interest. But there's a caveat.

I truly didn't realize I was missing real life, human interaction until lunch a few days ago. Spreading my time between several jobs and family life was masking my need for personal interaction with sheer busy-ness. While I had some casual conversations with others via email, tweets and texts,  time spent physically present with others was missing.

Some of the media team went out to lunch the other day, and somehow we neglected to check our phones the entire time. We actually ate lunch, talked and laughed uninterrupted and free-spirited. We didn't talk about anything meaningful per say, but it was such an enjoyable time.

Here's the thing, no amount of text via Facebook or Twitter can describe someone's laughter. Seeing "lol" or a :-) just doesn't cut it after a while. Face to face, quality time is still, and will always be necessary. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a single laugh shared in good company is a novel in itself.

Don't Forget the Minutiae

I'm about to wage war on miscommunication. It's everywhere, and it degrades team morale, heightens stress, and causes confusion in the ranks. Today's battle: the minutiae (and yes I had to look up the spelling).

Details are one of the tent poles of good communication. I've noticed people can seem good at communicating lots of information, but if they're missing just a few, small details amidst the bombardment of facts, it all goes to waste.

“God is not the author of confusion, but of peace...”

— 1 Corinthians 14:33

This applies to work, family, kids, everything. If you see confusion between your kid's expectations and your own, there's probably miscommunication somewhere. Maybe you forgot to say, "you only get 2 M&M's" and instead proclaimed "you get a few M&M's." Big difference to a kid, and you'll know it once he eats that second M&M.

When you communicate, take special care to deliver the details. Be specific, concise, and complete. Don't ramble, but don't leave anything out. Balance.