A short video by Chad Silverstein arguing that modern digital communication (texts, apps, email, Zoom) has weakened young professionals' interpersonal and written communication skills. He urges leaders to prioritize face-to-face connection, limit emotional messaging over text/email, and use written follow-ups only for factual summaries of conversations.
Chapters
It's really sad that today everybody is kind of, you know, the new generation of young professionals, you know, they've grown up with iPhones and apps and the way they communicate now is through text, through everything. People are talking less. And it's become a real problem. It's become a problem for people's writing skills. You know, it's been a problem for, you know, the level of professionalism that they don't know how to spell certain words because they're so used to abbreviating and shortcutting everything. And I think, you know, there's something to be said about being able to have a face to face conversation and be able to still remain human and talk and, you know, connect. And you can't do that over the phone. You can't do that even on zoom like you can in person. And so your job as a leader is to make sure that you're talking and spending some time and being mindful of the fact that if you have a lot of gap between getting that face to face because you're remote or because typically you've just gotten used to texting and emailing, you got to make it a discipline to go out of your way once in a while to connect with someone. Don't let it go too long and make sure that you follow up and do not under any circumstances, send anything via text or email or instant message that you don't want printed on the front page of a newspaper. The best advice I can give you, you only follow up in writing with facts. Facts and what we spoke about and what we said. We're going to do anything emotional, that's the rule of thumb. Anything emotional, anything that you sit there and you type them forever because you don't know how the person's going to perceive it. And you're thinking, will they take it the wrong way? Yes, they will. So don't do it. Go have the conversation. And I think it's going to be harder and harder for the younger generation because they don't, they don't see that that's the, the truth behind human relationships. And relationships are going to suffer when people can't communicate and they don't know how to communicate. So don't lose touch and make sure you go talk to people.
