What is delayed feedback communication and how does it work? It became a major way of communication nowadays and it’s influencing everything we do in our personal, social and business life.
Is it good or bad? Is there a way to make it better?
what is that?
In a face to face – “normal” conversation, we change our communication parameters (both verbal and nonverbal) according to the feedback we perceive from our recipients. I don’t need to ask questions to acknowledge if the other person is listening to me, considers the topic interesting and so on. All I need to do is to look at the person and interpret the nonverbal language. The same is partially true in phone conversation (I mean an audio one). There is some kind of interactivity in any such conversation and the feedback (most of it in a non-verbal form) plays an important role.
The instant feedback plays a major role, as a big part of our conversations is to influence the other person in a certain manner. We basically want something from the other party and we need acceptance. It is part of the rapport we are trying to build. Sometimes the feedback to our message is more important than the message itself.
But a huge part of our lives is now influenced by what we call electronic communication. We have e-mail, whatsapp, text, slack, messenger, different messaging apps and so on.
Many of these applications, not only that lack a huge chunk of nonverbal feedback, but add a second component to it which I call delayed feedback. So actually to a feedback depleted communication you are adding delays.
We do not have two brains: one for normal conversations and another one for delayed feedback (delayed feedback expectation is a behaviour that we learn later in life). Our brain is craving for feedback. It is wired within us.
If my message to you gets an answer (if any) at a later moment in time, time matters.
how does this affect us?
Think of a normal discussion with a friend. Now think that your friend:
- approves what you say
- disapprove what you say
- offers no feedback what so ever – completely blank
I bet the third option is the worst for most of the people reading this article?
Why is that? Because personal connection plays a major role in every human interaction.
Lack of feedback, normally leads to anxiety. Why? Because we automatically interpret it as a lack of interest in our selves, not a lack of interest in our message.
now back to electronic communication
Let’s go back to electronic communication now.
Of course we do not expect an answer right away when we send a message. How does our brain work here?
Well, the previous experience plays a major role. Let’s say that you are used to receive an answer to your message in maybe 2 hours in average.
If the time passes the 2 hour mark, your anxiety starts growing and you reach a point where you start to expect bad outcomes associated to the message you just send. It grows an unnecessary tension that you automatically associate with the person that you are expecting the answer from.
It changes the perceived status toward the person. You perceive that the person is does not want to talk to you, you might even start to associate negative feelings.
Moreover, if the person is not answering in a deliberately soft manner, the normal tendency is to make negative associations or to read through a negative filter.
More than that, if you use social media means to communicate (Instagram messenger – for example, and you see that the person is active on the network, this reinforces your feelings).
there’s a time dimension
A good communicator knows there is a time dimension to the communication process. If you answer fast, this tells the other person that she is important to you. The length of your answer, tells the other person how important she is to you.
Remember that being busy is not an excuse. When you say to someone I was busy – most of the time it means I was busy for you!
In personal communication the reaction time is part of the communication. Think of someone that does not return your calls, or returns them after few days? How does it feel?
We all want to be better communicators. If you are using delayed feedback communication, remember to always create a time expectation for your feedback. Creating expectation and fulfil them is part of the communication.
If the person is somebody you are used to and you normally answer in let’s say two hour time, if you are answering in this time interval is fine. People know what to expect from you. If everything changes tell them you’ll get back in let’s say five hours time. If still don’t have an answer during the five hour interval, getting back to the person and saying you don’t have an answer yet and you would probably need more time is a good way to maintain feedback.
Even if it lacks feedback, messaging has the advantage that doesn’t take too much time to answer. You can schedule a time interval to answer all your messages that enter in the category of being feedback delayed. (it might work this way too – so that everybody knows that you answer in the end of the day for example.
Remember that time dimension of your feedback is more important than the answer. Getting back and saying that you don’t have an answer yet, actually maintains the relation which might be more important than the message itself.
If the person is new to your circle be sure to create realistic expectations, such as “I usually answer e-mails in two days”. It creates realistic expectations and improves relationship building. Always remember that people will not remember most of the time what you said to them, but will remember how you treated them. Time dimension is a major component in a delayed communication world.
by Emanoil Draganescu