I’m on-line with my distance learning students in TMGT 7200 Management Information Systems in Transportation discussing the future. One of my students, using a subject line of “Lazy Culture,” has written:
I can definitely relate to the gap in the workplace but the issue I want to bring up is not so an issue of gap between old school and new generation but rather an issue of workplace gap where people are so involved in technology which allows them to do more in less time that often times there is no company spirit or friendly workplace environment. People are getting lazy to be human. Now its too hard to stop at someones desk and talk but most common way is to send an e-mail to person who sits right next to you.
She describes what I consider to be the dark side of technology, the decline in critical social relationships. Furthermore, and perhaps more worrying, is the tendency to believe that if you have shot off an e-mail you have completed your responsibilities with respect to communication. How many times have many of us encountered the phrase; “But I sent you an e-mail?” Or; “Sorry, I did’t see your e-mail?”
Technology has become a convenient scapegoat for our failure to accept the responsibility that communication is more than message flow, it is achieving understanding.
I want to add as comment a response made by another student to the original post.
“You are raising a profound observation into the heart of the American psyche. I want to refer to your description - “too lazy to be human” and qualify it as little or no people skills. And I mean real human empathy, not ‘customer service slick’.
The US is a really dynamic nation, with a good competitive streak, and an interest in remaining strongly productive. Sometimes though it seems that in the attempt to be clinically objective, dispassionate and ‘logical’ in decision-making and business etc, what is projected is an attitude that totally ignores what I want to term the ‘factor of humanity’. But given the amount of ‘emotion-related’ violence and hostility in the environment, it is clear that the underlying psyche is all too human, and negatively so, despite pretensions or appearances to the contrary.
Presenting a paper at SUNY Maritime’s first annual GBAT Conference, Mr. Charles Measter, a veteran of the shipping industry lamented the significant and visible decline in the quality of ship-broking practitioners. He posited that for the shipbroker and even the industry professional at large, their relationship building skills were sharply on the downside, and this would ultimately affect their ability to be excellent mediators and intermediaries between ship-owning interests, and chartering interests. He hoped that the industry would rise above the impersonal overemphasis on “closing the fixture” and engage their clients at a more human level.
Could this be the issue here: over expectation regarding gains (and timing) from productivity, a culture that has become excessively competitive at too early an age and for all the wrong reasons, the ease and convenience of information technology, and ‘over-celebrating’ “the art of the deal” have led to a massive erosion of ‘people skills’ in the US today - in business, at work, with the neighbors, almost everywhere. A long time ago, you weren’t quite sure if some people were being sincerely warm with you - you know, salespersons, customer service reps, etc. Now, even over the telephone you can ’see’ the fake in their fixed smile and hear the hollowness of their “friendliness” as they race to punch out the clock of productivity or make that sale.
It is very likely that people are being subjected to considerable strain by the environment around them with all the expectations, all the influences, all the ’stuff’ depicted as necessary for people and even their children to get ahead. Given all that, maybe sometimes it just becomes too much to work at really knowing the person in the next cubicle, and forming empathy with them. Too lazy to be human…
Thank you.”
Communication is, in the main, all about people skills. This student has jerked us, or at least me, up short and caused me to think about what it is I do when I communicateand when I teach, through example, communications.
Sometimes we need to step back and understand why we are where we are and how that impacts the alternatives formoving forward.
Reply to Jim
I have had a career in corporate education, responsible for training professionals around the world. It has been my experience that the ability to communicate effectively, sincerely and across cultures is essential to personal and professional success. My concern is that today’s workplace tends to reward individual contributors as opposed to team players, collaborators and effective communicators thereby creating silos. Technology as a communication tool has its place. However, think about what we can each accomplish when we use our personal communication tools — words in combination with eye contact, facial expression, tone of voice, body movement, pace, articulation, smile, and sincerety. We are all in the people business.
Reply to Diane, EOC