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Did you know email messaging now exceeds telephone traffic and is the dominant form of business communication? Businesses report many of their employees spend three to four hours a day on email. And most of us would say, “What did we ever do without email?”
However, along with this change in the way we communicate has come a new set of challenges. Communicating electronically is a very different medium, and if you are going to be effective in your job, you will need to learn how to use this tool and not abuse it. And that includes not only email, but Facebook, Twitter or X, and all the others which seem to pop up daily.
I thought it might be helpful to examine ways to improve our electronic communication skills. The way we communicate creates impressions and perceptions of us as people. And as Christ-followers, we not only represent ourselves, but more importantly, we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, for we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of men (2 Corinthians 8:21). I think it behooves us to take pains to improve our communication skills.
Let me begin by saying that as convenient as electronic communication is, it cannot replace the power of personal interaction. There are many times when face-to-face and voice-to-voice communication is absolutely the better way to go. No doubt we’ve lost a lot of personal touch because we use electronic means too often and too much. It’s much more difficult to communicate care and compassion by email than it is in person.
It’s true we may communicate more often because we have these convenient ways to do it, but it’s also true that the impersonal nature of electronic communication can cause us to be careless in how we say things. It can make us sound cold and harsh. We must learn to put ourselves in the shoes of the person reading our emails and find ways to communicate courtesy and thoughtfulness electronically.