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Corporate road warriors
Corporate road warriors
The characteristic that most distinguishes
today’s executives is not their technological sophistication but the amount of
time they spend on the move. The observe the real impact of globalisation, you
only have to walk around an international airport. Among the crowds of
tourists, an army of road warriors and
corporate executives march red-eyed across the world’s time zones. Global
markets mean constant global travel.
Management consultant are among frenetic
frequent fliers. They routinely cross continents for a face-to-face meeting and
then return home. They point to the importance of personal contact. For a
profession built on rational analysis, it seems illogical. Face-to-face
meetings when one of the parties is exhausted and jet-lagged seem unlikely to
benefit anyone. But most consultants act as if e-mail and satellite links had
never been invented. For the masters of logic, only the face-to-face experience
will do.
The question is why all the technological
gadgetry has failed make a dent in the amount of business travel? The answer
seems to lie with a simple statistic. More than 90 percent of human
communication is nonverbal(some studies put it as high as 93 percent). Facial
expressions, body language, eye contact-these are all key conduits. Without
them you can’t get past first base. It’s tough to bond over the Internet. “Most
of us still want face-to-face contact”, says Gary Cooper, professor of
organizational psychology and health at the University of Manchester Institute
of Science and Technology (UMIST). A lot of people rely on their personalities
to persuade other , he say “That doesn’t come out in e-mail, and video
conferencing is limiting. They may also want to influence people outside of the
meeting. A lot of lobbying goes on before and after meetings. That’s why
eyeball-to-eyeball is so important. We still don’t fully trust the technology
even though it’s been around for a while. We prefer to talk behind close door.
‘We also read body language to pick up the
atmosphere, he says. We walk into a meeting and pick up the feel of what the
other people are thinking. We watch how Y reacts to what X is saying. You can’t
do that by videoconference. Most of us don’t have the self-confidence to
believe we can build the sorts of relationships we need with clients and
suppliers down the wire. Business travel won’t decrease for that reason. It’s a
shame because at the moment we’re burning out an awful lot of people.
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