Face to face is dead - long live Facebook?

I was on Facebook recently and I saw a message trail which made me look twice.  Someone had posted an RIP for someone I knew.  As I looked, his sister had posted a comment, also his girlfriend and a number of his friends.  Strangely enough, it wasn’t that he had died that shocked me – although that was shocking enough.  It was the messages.

It’s difficult to find anything to say about death which in the light of mourning, isn’t trite or repetitive. But on Facebook, the messages acquired a new shallow quality that I found repulsive. 

I’ve no idea why messages about the death of a friend or relative should be different from those about the birth of a new baby.  After all, it’s a fast, easy to read, easy to write, update about something that has happened.  But nevertheless I found myself thinking how crass it was.

The death of someone you know is always shocking, expected or not. 

But death, thrust into Facebook posts of breakfast, travel plans, greetings to friends and party photographs, seems indecent in its starkness, as incongruous as someone shouting at prayers.

To my surprise, I find that lots of organisations appear to announce the deaths of employees via email, with noticeboards for people to write their thoughts and condolences.  In a large organisation, this might be rapid, expedient and – by giving employees an opportunity to express their feelings – humane.   HR and internal communication professionals believe that it helps for people to be able to post their thoughts, and that the family find it comforting.

Myself, I’m still not convinced that Facebook is the right place to announce a death.

Death brings us face to face (pardon the pun) with the inevitable. And facing our ultimate end doesn’t require a computer screen and type – it requires a soft voice and a warm, human hand.  It requires space and silence – but with company to reassure.  And a piece of electronics hasn’t yet been invented than can pass a tissue or give a hug. 

I worry that while social media was once heralded as something that could help shy and awkward teenagers connect with other teens, to help then gain confidence, it’s now had the effect of making face to face contact a highly risky thing.  While digital communication is as immediate as face to face – it’s also relatively anonymous. 

After all, face to face you don’t have time to think before making a response (as you do on Facebook) and your tone, face and body send messages as well as what you say.   But people KNOW you – you’re there in front of them.  If they don’t like what you say, they can punch you on the nose. If they like it, they can kiss you. Or something in between.  The response from Facebook is much more distant – they can unfollow you, even if they don’t want to make a response.  Or the argument is carried out online, potentially no less hurtful or vicious – just less immediate, less THERE.

I can see distance creeping in to relationships, even the closest ones.  I see relationships between people in the same house being conducted online, in the full view of friends and family, where instead of banging out their frustrations on a keyboard, they would be better served – as would their children – talking to one another. 

This is also played out in the workplace, where email is so much more prevalent for business communication than, say, picking up the phone or even walking to the other side of the office.

This is a little way from announcing that someone has died over the internet – but stems from the same issue, I think.  We’re forgetting how to communicate with one another, face to face.

I showed this blog to my partner – she pointed out the irony of using a blog to say this.  This irony is not lost on me….

why information = reduced stress

In December, I was walking from Kings Cross station to the British Library. As I walked up Euston Road, I also passed the long, snaking line of miserable people, pinched with cold, desperately waiting for a seat on Eurostar.

The amount of snow in London, of course, was unprecedented – and certainly the transport network was caught unprepared. None of this was of interest to the queues of shivering tourists and business people, simply wanting to get to their destination. As I walked the long, long line, there were train staff keeping people on the pavement, and preventing people from jumping the queue – even on the second day, handing out coffee. The one thing that wasn’t being handed out was information.

Press coverage of the event showed travellers angry and upset that they had been left in the dark and that they felt abandoned.

So why might information have helped? Customer announcements would hardly have melted the snow, or taken the ice off the rails.

Information is necessary for people to make choices. In the case of these travellers, even a little information might have enabled them to decide to stay in the queue – or to stay in a hotel for the afternoon. And it’s not so much the depth of information, it’s about the sense of power that having the information gives. In situations of uncertainty, more information gives at least the option for more choices. Without it, people are caught in a dilemma made even more difficult because of a lack of rational data to help them move from one place to another – and in the case of Eurostar, this place was physical as well as emotional.

It struck me, working on a change programme after Christmas, that stress for employees is often because of the same problem - a lack of information. There are plenty of good reasons why management may keep information about their future plans from employees – further consultation is required, plans aren’t finalised, the markets require it.

But there are also plenty of bad reasons that management keep quiet about their plans. These include sins of omission - management not considering that it’s necessary, or not even recognising that it’s important, or history (this kind of information has never been released in previous change programmes). They also include the less forgivable reasons, for example, management cowardice, or a paternalistic attitude towards employees that implies that they can’t cope with the “truth”.

However, my experience is that by withholding information, management make employees into children by disenfranchising them from the choices they might have. For example, knowing truthfully that a reorganisation is going to result in headcount reductions – even if you don’t know how many and where - may enable people to make their own minds up about what they want. This might mean hunkering down for the wait, or starting to look for a job elsewhere, even start a new career. It will certainly mean discussions with family, partners and friends, and those discussions about what, and when, and how – all give people a sense of power and self-direction. It will also enable them to start finding the resources and support they need to take action – whatever that is.

My guess is that management don’t do this because they fear an exodus of their best people and that “business as usual” won’t be possible as people consider their options.

I have news for them – for anyone going through large scale change, business is anything but usual.

But the benefits could be considerable.

If management is prepared for this, this may not simply mean an exodus of the best people. It might mean a more adult, informed, and frank debate about the future. It might mean more prepared and resilient employees who feel they have some control and some choices. All of which are steps towards reducing the stress of the people caught in the middle of the change.

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