The Internet has changed the way we communicate.   We used to have many more face-to-face conversations and business meetings in physical locations.  Today, we primarily communicate by email, SMS or texting and voice communication using the Internet.

In face-to-face and telephone conversations we can pick up many non-verbals from the people we are talking with but we lose those emotions behind the words when we read or write an email or text message.  Why is that important?

All of our decisions are made emotionally while we justify and rationalise them analytically.  At the office, on the road and at home, all the work is done through relationships and it is most important that those relationships be managed well.

That is why an effective leader needs to hear/see the emotions behind the words spoken or written so as to appropriately respond in his or her return email or text.  The meaning behind the message is expressed and influenced by tone, body language and timing.

To help grease the skids of communication, an expert in the video games business has applied his human interactive knowledge to the game of business communication.  Patrick Alain has developed the best-selling games of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption and recently wrote, "The Leader Phrase Book: 3000+Powerful Phrases that put you in Command."

With this new book, a leader who has a particular situation of communication (that is ‘courageous’, challenging or relevant) can use the book contents and index to find the area that is most applicable to the situation.  Examples might be: conflict between other people, engaging the trust of the other side, experiencing a falling-out and how to reconnect, forgetting something, apologising for, etc.

In the "phrase book," the phrases range from conciliatory to argumentative, constructive to destructive, courteous to rude and so on; allowing the responder to use good judgment and context to be his or her guide in choosing the right response for the situation.  All the phrases are sorted incrementally in terms of the emotional scale for phrase selection by the leader.

No longer will a leader waste time in picking just the right response for the situation.

With thanks to: Coach2Coach e-newsletter, January 6, 2012