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The Magic of Face-to-Face Conversation
By rdaprix | March 29, 2010
A few days ago I had the exhilarating experience of meeting with four colleagues in a two-day, brainstorming session. The members of the group have known each other for years as colleagues and even as competitors, so this was a group with a common history.
Our subject was differentiation in what has become a crowded profession. We spent a lot of time reflecting on the rather unsurprising premise that consulting is fundamentally about human relationships—personal relationships between the consultant and his or her clients and corporate relationships with customers, shareholders, communities and all of the other constituents that leaders care about.
The insights that flowed from that premise were informative, but what really struck me was the magic of a face-to-face conversation among five highly experienced and caring people. I was reminded once again that there is no virtual substitute for the dynamics of a face-to-face experience. There’s no way to capture the tone of voice, body language, energy, or enthusiastic interruptions for different ideas careening around the room. With the right participants wrestling with an important subject, meeting in person is an intellectual experience without equal.
The use of technology in today’s corporate environment has created a manic necessity for instant decisions and input, leaving us little time for such valuable face-to-face interludes. Instead, we conference call, email and text or tweet our half-formed thoughts as though these terms really were action verbs instead of nouns.
Clearly, the technology train has left the station. Although there’s probably little chance of going back to a more reflective time we should make time for face-to-face conversations in between rapid-fire messaging. Based on what I recently experienced, in-person conversations are not only useful for relationship building and productive outcomes, but they’re more efficient than you might think.
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