The arrival and continuation of the global pandemic, contrary to expectations and beliefs, has achieved something of a miracle. It has millions all over the planet, kicking and screaming or dancing happily, in the digital age. People everywhere, whether they’re in their twenties, a 60-year-old apprentice, or a cuddly 80, suddenly find themselves on technology and digital communication platforms, whether out of necessity or choice. Most of them, especially older people, had managed to avoid it for many decades until the world changed.
Suddenly, almost magically, technophobic middle-aged school teachers and old-style teachers are successfully taking online classes and assigning and evaluating assignments and tests on tech platforms like Zoom and Google. Letters and calls that only grandparents control to children and grandchildren through video calls. Team meetings and business conferences have turned into multi-member video calls, and seminars of all kinds have turned into webinars. As for the big change in the way we communicate, it’s a happy world indeed.
What we also need to keep in mind, amid all this technological generosity everywhere, is that the customs and rules of communication will have to change and be modified as well, to keep up with the new ways in which we now communicate. to a large degree. As we learn to navigate the complexities of teams at Microsoft, adobe connect, Google meet, Zoom, and whatever, on a purely technological and skills-based level, we must not neglect the changes we need to make to ingrained habits and behaviors that have. cultivated throughout known history in face-to-face communication. The new tag should replace the set of rules of manners that we are used to. The new skills must replace the old set of more refined and sharpened tools that we already have in our arsenals.
Something as essential and fundamental as capturing and holding your audience’s attention during any type of interaction is now a far cry from what it used to be when everyone was in the same physical room. Physical communication spaces, we are discovering more and more, were much more forgiving than digital ones. In a physical space, face to face, people had no choice but to pay some attention, or were at least predisposed to try, given the lack of many other avenues. We deal with speeches, talks, meetings, seminars, sessions, under the premise that the human attention span is 90 minutes. Ah! Those were the days!
The world of digital communication is not that accommodating, as we have learned over the past 10 odd months. Whatever the reasons behind this, people in online media tend to have a much shorter attention span. Instant gratification is readily available online, and one assumes that the mind has been trained to expect that from ALL online content, or perhaps it is a much more fundamental difference in how our brains process different types of stimuli. Whatever the reason, capturing and retaining the audience’s attention has become a more critical and difficult function of everyday communication, especially in the workplace.
Unless one can “hook” the audience in the first five seconds, consider the audience lost. People are much more distracted these days, there are more distractions available at our fingertips if we are to be online for any type of work. As a result, they are also much more impatient. If it doesn’t attract almost instantly, we tend to move on or tune out mentally, if not physically. Add to that the shortcomings of the digital communication mode when it comes to sensory input, and “holding” the audience’s attention becomes just as important and central as “getting” it in the first place.
Physically, in a room, meeting room or auditorium, you can present audiovisual inputs, walk, use your body language as a tool to hold the audience’s attention, easily interact with your listeners, and receive verbal input and feedback from them. non-verbal communication. We have a digital platform, this is much more limited. One cannot move, the sensory information the viewer receives is all digital anyway, so playing a clip or showing a Powerpoint presentation does not have nearly the same impact, and since the probability that all members of the audience are visible is miniscule, non-verbal feedback is minimal. Verbal feedback too, in the form of responses, laughter when making a joke, a buzz of agreement when making a valid point, etc., becomes quite limited as efficient content delivery requires that the audience be muted as much as possible. possible.
Therefore, it is clear that the time has come to rethink what we have always considered traditional communication skills. It’s time to enact a paradigm shift in the way we talk to people and the way we present our content. It’s time to reshape old skills and learn new ones. It is time to re-imagine how we are going to effectively work in teams, lead them, conduct business, generate profits, and participate in the global workforce as efficient and productive members in the Post Covid world.
