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Issue #34: March 5, 2004
To our readers:
If the phrase "high touch" has you thinking about inappropriate behaviors that can get you in trouble, think again. "High touch" in this context means "face-to-face communication" as opposed to the "high tech" and impersonal forms of communication to which many of us have become addicted: voice mails, e-mails, memos, reports, faxes, even telephone calls. In the electronic and photo-copied world of today, a simple face-to-face conversation constitutes a very personal experience and is therefore "high touch."
So how does that help you learn what people really think, and is it worth taking time away from your desk, computer, and telephone to engage in it?
Ask Pat Douglass. Her work as Assistant Vice President for Human Resources for Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, affects 10,000 Emory employees almost every day. The challenges of Human Resources in meeting the needs of employees at all levels of the University are numerous. Douglass has learned that the time spent with various departments in their workplace to understand their business has greatly increased HR's "customer satisfaction" rating. Colleagues have shared, in personal conversation, information they would not have imparted via e-mail, fax, or telephone. Based on that information, Douglass and her staff have been able to adjust training, policies, and procedures to more accurately reflect the real-world needs of the University. And that has enabled the HR department to meet their goal of partnering with their "clients" -- the various departments.
Contrast this with the usual experience when using surveys to draw feedback and gauge opinion. How many times have you invited employees, colleagues, and others to share their thoughts via memorandum, e-mail, or fax, and how often have you been disappointed in the meager response? Most people don't "have the time" to answer a survey, in whatever form it arrives. But walk by their desk when they've just received notice of an impending policy change and you might get an earful.
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Four Tips for Using "High Touch" Communication:
1. When you want to know what someone thinks about a plan, an idea, or a strategy, visit them where they work or where they congregate.
Show up where your internal customers are. Let them know you're interested in what they think about the proposed policy change, the new system for assigning prospects, the new reporting procedure. Your presence indicates you really do want to know what they think, so they'll be more inclined to take the time to tell you. Face-to-face with your customers, you're in a position to gauge their body language--rolling eyes, raised eyebrows, spontaneous smile, etc.--which will tell you even more about what they think. You're demonstrating your genuine interest while collecting valuable feedback, which makes the investment of your time quite worthwhile.
2. Learn about your "customer" in face-to-face conversation in your customer's work space.
Whenever you can, go to your internal customers' work space and learn about their "business"--the work they do and how they do it. While you're there learning, you provide your customers the opportunity to talk to you, to tell you how things affect them, to tell you what works and what doesn't work for them. All of this information can provide you both hard data and insight that can help you do your job more effectively. When you make visiting their work space routine, your internal customers become more comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas with you.
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3. Develop lists of questions you can ask to encourage customers/colleagues to tell you about their work.
If gentle, casual inquiry doesn't come naturally to you, create a list of questions that are non-threatening and that indicate a genuine desire to understand what your colleagues/customers do and how they do it. For example, ask someone in sales, "is it hard to keep up with your prospects and clients?" Ask a supervisor, "what do you find most rewarding in supervising employees?" or "how do you manage to supervise your staff while getting the rest of your job done?" Ask an accountant, "how do you keep up with new rules and laws as they're created?"
4. Let your customers know when something has changed as a result of what they shared with you.
When a change is made as a result of something you learned on your walk-abouts, let your customers/colleagues know. This illustrates that you consider them your partners in effecting change and in being successful, and encourages them to be even more open with you, creating a cycle beneficial to all concerned.
Electronic means of communication are of great benefit to us. They allow us to communicate more quickly with more people; they make it easy to keep records of what we say; they allow us tremendous control over who we talk to and when. The downside is they limit the degree to which spontaneous conversation arises. They don't allow us to see the nonverbal cues that can tell us so much more than the words themselves. They seldom express the warmth and genuine interest a face-to-face conversation can convey. They keep us from viewing how someone is reacting to our message. They don't build trust like personal conversations do. We do ourselves a favor by balancing the great convenience of electronic communication with the highly informative benefits of high touch, face-to-face conversation. The well-rounded manager is adept at both.
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