I think the voice mail was effective as the respondent would
be able to playback the message at their convenience. I however found the message a
little bland. It is also difficult to confirm if the respondent ever
received the message. It is more formal and has a sense of urgency and if the
respondent listen to it, they will be more inclined to take action.
Email
Although emails are a more permanent record and allows for a
review and searchability, the casual nature of this message does not indicate
urgency or make the request formal. It appears more informal and does
not impress the respondent with the urgent nature of what the sender wants to
achieve. The writer did not apply the rules of email etiquette available here.
Face to face.
In the face to face modality, the presenter is able to
communicate her needs in a more personable manner. She is pleasant and
engaging. My concern is that there is no way she can use this communication to
set a deadline and a reference point. The written word is more formal and is
easy to retrieve and review. In formal project environment, Portny, Mantel,
Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer, (2008) discourage use of informal
communication as it leads to miscommunication and hurt feelings. Face to face
communication can generate immediate feedback but in my opinion should be
followed up with documentation. In nursing, the adage states that “If it is not
written, it did not happen.” This is just as true in project management.
In project management, it is better to over-communicate than to
under communicate. I would recommend we apply all the three modalities to
impress on the respondent the urgency and the need to keep to the timelines. (2006)
discusses the Politeness of Requests Made via Email and Voicemail and make
several valid observations. He concludes that the results
indicate email requests were more polite than voicemail requests. His full article is avilable here.
Reference
Duthler, K. W. (2006). The politeness of requests made via email and voicemail: Support for the hyperpersonal model. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 6. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/duthler.htmlPortny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project Management .Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
David, I think you brought up some interesting points here in your blog post that I didn't consider regarding the effectiveness and worth of communicating in these three different modalities. I do like what you mentioned about emails providing a permanent record and also allowing the sender to confirm that the correspondence was received. You stated "If it is not written, it did not happen" and this is a simple statement to remember about documenting every pertinent meeting, message or information sharing. I generally think of email as to informal and also leaves the recipient too much room to choose the tonality of the message which could cause problems.
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