Communicating virtually is cool, useful, and now even more ubiquitous and necessary than ever. But we're often reminded that the quality of human connection we experience in many forms of virtual communication is awful. We've all felt disconnected in a video conference, frustrated that we're not getting through on the phone, upset when our email is badly misinterpreted, or anxious that we're being misunderstood.
How can we fix this? In this powerful, practical book, communication expert Nick Morgan outlines five big problems with communication in the virtual world—lack of feedback, lack of empathy, lack of control, lack of emotion, and lack of connection and commitment—and shows how to overcome them as we shift to working remotely more and more.
Morgan argues that while virtual communication will never be as rich or intuitive as a face-to-face meeting, recent research suggests that we need to learn is to consciously deliver a whole set of cues, both verbal and nonverbal, that we used to deliver unconsciously in the pre-virtual era. He guides us through this important process, providing rules for virtual feedback, an empathy assessment and virtual temperature check, tips for creating trust in a virtual context, and advice for specific digital channels such as email and text, the conference call, Skype, and more.
Whether you're an entrepreneur, an independent professional, or a manager in an organization that has more than one office or customers who aren't nearby, Can You Hear Me? is your essential communications manual for twenty-first-century work.
Author
Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America's top communication theorists and coaches. A passionate teacher, he is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas - and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear on the Today Show, and to take on the investment community. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has himself spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world.
Nick's methods, which are well known for challenging conventional thinking, have been published worldwide. His acclaimed book on public speaking, Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking, was published by Harvard in 2003 and reprinted in paperback in 2005 as Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. His book on authentic communications, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009. His new book on communications and brain science, Mastery, will be published by Harvard in 2013. He has written hundreds of articles for local and national publications.
Nick served as editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter from 1998 - 2003. He is a former Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. After earning his PhD. in literature and rhetoric, Nick spent a number of years teaching Shakespeare and Public Speaking at the University of Virginia, Lehigh University, and Princeton University. He first started writing speeches for Virginia Governor Charles S. Robb and went on to found his own communications consulting organization, Public Words, in 1997.
Nick attributes his success to his honest and direct approach that challenges even the most confident orators to rethink how they communicate.