Guest Post: Anup Shete

Anup is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students. Here he blogs about virtual communication.

Virtual communication is the process of meeting in virtual reality. There are basically two types of virtual communication processes. One is synchronous communication which includes video conferencing, phone and chat. In this type, all parties involved interact and respond immediately (or at the same time). The other type of virtual communication is asynchronous communication. This includes email, forums, blogs, etc. Here the response can be delayed (or is not expected at all). Virtual communication is catching up very fast in today’s hectic world as people find less time to travel and prefer meeting or staying in touch online and getting things done faster. However, virtual communication does come with its set of pros and cons. We’ll concentrate on active communication viz. synchronous communication in the professional scenario.

One of the best things about synchronous communication is that it saves you the time of having to physically travel to the location to meet the person. You can interact with multiple people through video conferencing and phone while cutting down on traveling time and cost. Multi-country meetings are possible without even leaving the office. I have personally had most of my client meetings as teleconference or video-conference calls. This gives you the ability to interact with the client immediately every time you have a query or need to discuss something in general. For personal interactions, applications like Skype make it easy for one to see one's family and talk to them at the same time.

Although virtual communication has its benefits, there are some downsides to communicating without being physically present. The most important one is that there is no face-to-face interaction, which can be daunting for some people. We miss out on subtle non-verbal cues like facial expressions, body language, etc., when we meet in the virtual space. As part of a study done for the Cornell Daily Sun, Christine Duffy of the Maritz travel company and Mary Beth McEuen from the Maritz institute found that virtual communication is less effective than face to face meeting (http://cornellsun.co/node/44228). The study mentions facial expressions and body language as critical factors in the process of communication which are missing in virtual interactions.

I remember an instance from one of our client meetings. It was a teleconference call between two teams, one in India and the other in the United States. Since everyone was connecting virtually, they preferred joining in from their homes. Most of the people involved in the conference thought they could multi-task and manage something else while on the call. In the end, it was complete chaos. People were trying to interact with each other while the other person was doing something else. Although a virtual meeting was the best option in this case, the idea of the meeting became casual once everyone realized it was not face to face.

On a more personal note, I agree with the study mentioned above that face-to-face meetings are more personal as well as effective. Meeting someone in person automatically straightens you up and makes you pay attention. However, there are some instances when it is not possible to be present physically, and that’s when virtual meetings come in handy. Especially with globalization, the need to interact with people from all over the world has increased, and it is definitely cheaper and more convenient to interact virtually despite its drawbacks.