Is Social Media Improving Professional Courtesy?

Chuck, I’m not yet willing to ascribe so much power to social media. If anything, outside of the PR/Marketing sphere, these tools are often used to advance and promote uncivil dialogue; reading the message boards on a newspaper’s web site being exhibit A.

I also am quite conscious of the Twitter phenomenon making its way into other types of social speech—140 characters is hardly well-suited to thoughtful discourse or context.

Blogs can behave, as we see, more like mainstream media (HuffPo; DailyKos) than the personal diaries they originally represented.  Still, I do believe the amount of interaction and the expansion of personal networks are two significant benefits of social media. 

I also agree that our social network personas are absolutely a reflection on our professionalism, and would add that those personas must match our offline selves. Otherwise, people will perceive our inauthenticity—#fail.

Sean
@commammo

What stuck out to me was one of your last lines:

“Chances are good that if you are courteous in real-life, you are probably courteous in the digital life too.”

I’d honestly have to disagree with this statement. I think the social web has tested the psychology of human nature and how/why we interact with one another. I think the social aspect of the online world has made people overly courteous. It may sound like a good quality to have, but do we communicate online the same that we do offline? Are people less likely to provide a counter-thought vs. just agreeing to keep things positive and ‘social’?

It’s something that no one really has an answer to but a question that rings in my head a lot.

Interesting question, and comments!

Have these networks made us more courteous? Possibly. But there are people in this space who, no matter their profession, use distance and virtuality to bypass common courtesy.

I think these networks do allow us to build relationship foundations during times we previously wouldn’t have been able to focus on relationship building, so maybe the fact that the opportunity to step into the waters of public courtesy more often has helped us hone our skills a bit?

To Sonny’s point about the psychology of all this stuff, I find that social networks have diminished our ability to handle confrontation and issue resolution. We’ll turn to email or Twitter DM or a Facebook wall to discuss an issue with someone before we’ll give them the courtesy to talk face-to-face.

Anecdote: Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich PR in Chicago, put a ban on in-house email communication specifically because in-house issues weren’t being addressed properly. Has it improved communication for her team? Absolutely.

Courtesy? Maybe. I think it’s more about the increase in frequency of opportunities to exercise courtesy publicly, and the increase in opportunities to see others exercise courtesy publicly.

Good food for thought!

Indeed, witness the number of times someone sends a flame mail and has to retract, embarrassingly. Or the filter takes an hour off, and a thoughtless comment takes flight in a conference room. Some of that is the current age, where compromise is considered weakness, and everyone competes for a voice in the conversation, each growing progressively louder with every moment.

Social Media isn’t immune to these factors.

Even courteous disagreement, and animated discussion that stays focused on topic can be a challenge. Why would that be different in social media?

A good discussion doesn’t have to be comprised only of agreement—provided we all are respectful of one another.

I think big confrontation is always going to be intimidating, and you’re right, people don’t love getting in each others’ faces. So maybe it’s really that the level of confrontation we choose to deal with face to face is lowering, or even that we’re willing to start more conflict behind the safety of a computer screen.

Yes, definitely a personality thing, but I still think this online stuff will effectively lower our general tolerance for face-to-face less-than-pleasant interaction.

And, for reference, here’s the blog post Gini wrote about her email ban: http://bit.ly/2RAdn

Chuck - as to how we “break down that wall…”  The concept of politesse—of adopting a series of social constructs to govern behavior—could stand a comeback. So to the dictum: “I may disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

When I’m teaching managers communication skills, a big focus is creating the right environment to use teamwork effectively. That means understanding different communication styles and behaviors and remaining non-judgmental about them. If you have a culture based on hierarchy, it will be very difficult to immediately institute open door policies and open discussion in groups. You may have to start person to person to foster that type of openness.

So, perhaps a path forward in social media is to take disagreement out of the public purview—DM instead of Twitter stream, for example; e-mail instead of blog comments.

Another hallmark of civility is to state that you disagree, without being crass, flip or mean about it. Questioning should be careful, allowing enough time to answer. Stringing questions can be seen as hectoring, so considering one’s questions carefully helps a lot.

Eek, this is a nosebleed posting! My apologies, Chuck!

Good discussion!