Are You Configuring The Future to Suit The Facts?

“I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, A Scandal in Bohemia. According to German psychologist, Gerd Gerzenger of the Max Plank Institute, relying on your intuition […]

AM-FM: A Formula for High-Context Virtual Communications

With all the time you spend online, wouldn’t it be nice if you could communicate more in ways that don’t leave you feeling that you sold out, stooping to the lowest common denominator?  I’m talking to you – high-context communicator.  How can you feel more authentic, real, in your virtual communications? The high-context virtual communications […]

Communicating With Your Audience in Their Culture

To communicate effectively we need to already have some areas of commonness between us.  Culture is one of those areas.   When facilitating virtual teams or in local cross-cultural contexts, I sometimes underestimate the differences between cultures.  It’s easy to auto-pilot into my culture’s way of doing things.  And, that’s not always a good thing. […]

Effective Communications: Adding Verbal and Non-Verbal Capacity in Virtual Contexts

Working virtually can put the squeeze on our full range of verbal and nonverbal communication skills. This is a given with it comes to nonverbal. When we’re in the same physical space together, the success of our communication effort  is mightily influenced by our nonverbal, visual, actions.  Where is body language, and tone of voice, […]

Effective communications: High-context in a low-context virtual world

Keeping communications high-context in the virtual world can be a frustrating exercise.  Virtual interactions tend to favour low-context, direct and impersonal, forms of communication.  If you’re from a high-context culture, beware. Here’s a two-minute screencast I created to look at the high/low context conundrum, and what you can do about it: (Update: This screencast is […]