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Which communication media is best?

Face-to-face communication is by far the richest medium, as it carries a large variety of information (verbal and visual cues) and allows for immediate feedback that's just as rich as the initial message.

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Characteristics of different Types of communication medium

Face-to-face communication is by far the richest medium, as it carries a large variety of information (verbal and visual cues) and allows for immediate feedback that’s just as rich as the initial message. Think of how much your communication partner’s body language will tell you. Video Calls are obviously less rich, but will still allow you to see gestures and other non-verbal communication. Voice Calls, e.g. on you mobile phone, strip you of all non-verbal information and such are already far less rich. But still, they offer the opportunity for instant feedback. The first asynchronous medium on the list is Instant Messaging, also SMS would be part of this group of communication channels. Not only can’t you hear the voice anymore, but also there’s no instant feedback anymore.

Social Media is usually even more asynchronous than instant messaging.

E-mail, being the most popular tool in business communication, is a rather lean medium and shouldn’t be used to communicate complex or ambiguous information. On the end of the scale, a standardized report consisting mainly of numbers would be the leanest medium.

Choose the right medium

Lean media vs rich media: Effective communication will require you to choose the right communication channel for the topic at hand. To determine the right medium for communicating information, you should look at the nature of that information.

How familiar are your recipients with the content and context of your message? Is it routine? How clear is your information? Will it mean the same for everyone, or will its meaning change in different circumstances or contexts?

If your message is routine and unambiguous, you generally can rely on lean media formats like emails or reports. Or take press statements for example: Companies issue written statements for easy-to-understand, non-ambiguous and uncritical messages. However, if your message is ambiguous and nonroutine, you should choose a richer medium, like a video call or a face-to-face conversation. To stay in the above example, for more complex or even critical information (such as in crises), companies will most likely use a press conferences over press statements, as they allow for rich communication and immediate feedback. Just imagine how you managed through the first weeks of Covid-19. You most probably didn’t rely on email but used very instantaneous communication like calls or video calls to instantly capture feedback and be able to respond to questions.

Uhh yeah, I heard it through the grapevine (singing)

Generally speaking, when it comes to choosing the right medium for communicating with your team, your task as a CEO or entrepreneur is to balance two effects that your choice of communication medium will have on your business. On the one hand, if you use an overly rich medium for a rather dull message, you are likely wasting time and resources — for example, if one of your team members calls a meeting (super-high media richness) to tell the team he will be off 30 minutes early to see the dentist (super unambiguous message). That kind of waste is unnecessary and will fuddle with the medium’s long-term credibility. When you have to attend 10 meetings a week that “could have been an email,” your appreciation for that format will decrease.

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