The Importance of Verbal Communication

by Jim Headley

Published on this site: October 29th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

It has been cited that verbal communication is 10% what you say and 90% how you say it. In today's technology driven world, you would not know that though. Today, people across the world have become so dependent upon non-verbal methods of communication that the verbal communication methods have been falling by the wayside.

Take a look at the popularity of text messaging and emails. These written communications often leave much to the imagination and create a great deal of confusion for those who are attempting to communicate with each other. When trying to communicate the importance of a message to another human being, the reader can lose the intent or the real meaning of the message.

At particular risk for misinterpretation are those important messages that are sent at times of high emotion. The tone, inflection, and the stress placed on individual words can be lost when using only the written word. This could be disastrous when trying to tell a loved one your feelings or when trying to close an important business deal. People often misinterpret the written words and may take offense to messages that were meant to be completely harmless or even humorous.

This is why we must always remember that 90% of communication is how we say what we want to get across to the other party. Emails and text messages only give us 10% of the communication process, thus leaving 90% of the communication process up to the recipient to guess.

If you want to communicate an important message to a loved one or to a business contact, you may be better off going the old fashioned route of using the telephone. This eliminates any confusion in the communication process, and also allows you and the other party to ask for any needed clarifications. These clarifications can be made via the telephone, before unintended interpretations have been made. Using verbal telephone communication allows you to emphasize the importance of the message and to communicate the excitement of your words to the other party.

It often seems easier to simply send an email to someone, but many people actually prefer telephone communication to emails. Telephone communication maintains the bit of humanity, which is lost in emails. Many business people who are not comfortable with emails don't even read their emails. I once sat in the office of a Chief Operating Officer of a major corporation and saw him inadvertently delete many of his emails. When I asked him about it, he said that if the messages he accidentally deleted were important that the senders would call him. He was not a fan of emails and even though he was often stretched thin on time, he said that he preferred telephone calls, because he got a chance to visit briefly with his business contacts.

Many business executives today are of a generation who held jobs before emails, so they do not rely as much on computers as their younger counterparts. Many of them ignore emails for the most part and look for the telephone follow up from the sender and take the attitude that "If it was important they will call me." Taking care of important business transactions over the telephone, instead of by email, assures that the right person receives the message and that it is not simply going to an assistant or worse, to a bulk mail folder where it gets deleted.

If you communicate with people on an international level, be it personal or business, you may believe that your only choice is to email because of the expense of international phone calls. While this may have been true in the past, it is not true today. There are options in making international telephone calls. One of these options includes inexpensive international calling cards that allow you to call overseas at a rate as low as 2.9 cents per minute. It is well worth the money, in my opinion, to assure that the importance and the intent of the message is not lost in the written word of an email.

International telephone calls are not as outrageously expensive as they once were, and you can be sure that the recipient understands the meaning and true intent of your communications.

Jim Headley, ([email protected]) VP of New Business Development, Telecents Communications Inc Telecents' SENDGLOBAL brand offers FREE International Calling Call Free to Europe, South America, Asian, Mexico, Middle East, India. Visit http://www.sendglobal.com enter promo code "MD8KT" Want to become an agent/affiliate? Go to http://www.sendglobl.info login TCI