Tag Archives: Communication

In a world full of messages, are we losing communication?

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A student emailed me recently with a perfectly reasonable question about an upcoming quiz.

The message was short. Very short. Just one line:

“Hi there, I was just wondering if the content for week 7 will be included or excluded from the quiz on the 14th of April?”

That was it.

No name. No sign off. No self-identification. No real sense of who was writing to whom.

I did not think the student intended to be rude. In fact, I am quite sure they did not.

But the email still unsettled me.

Not because it was offensive, but because it felt like a message stripped down to its bare transaction. Efficient, yes. Clear enough, yes. Human, not quite.

And that made me ask a bigger question.

How a message can be clear and still feel wrong?

A message can be clear and still feel wrong

The student’s question was valid. The channel was appropriate. Email is the right way to ask that sort of question.

Yet something was missing.

The problem was not content. It was texture.

A greeting that recognised the person being addressed. A sign off that acknowledged the interaction. A simple sense that this was not merely a data exchange, but a communication between people.

These may seem like small things. But they are not trivial. They signal awareness of context, relationship, and tone.

When they disappear, a message can still work at the level of information while failing at the level of human connection.

That distinction matters more than we sometimes admit.

This is not really about rudeness

It would be easy to read such a message and conclude that standards are slipping, or that students no longer know how to communicate professionally.

I think that is too simple.

I did not feel that this student was deliberately rude. I still do not. The issue was not intention. The issue was that the email could easily be perceived by others as abrupt, overly direct, or impersonal.

That is a different problem.

A message does not need bad intent to create a poor impression.

And perhaps that is one of the defining communication challenges of our time. We are increasingly surrounded by people who mean no harm, but who have grown used to communication styles that strip away many of the cues older generations still rely on.

We may be mistaking constant messaging for communication skill

This is where the issue becomes more interesting.

We often assume that because younger generations message constantly, they must be naturally strong communicators. But frequency is not the same as depth, and speed is not the same as judgement.

Many students today have grown up in environments where communication is rapid, informal, and highly transactional. Messages are short. Context is assumed. Formality is reduced. The goal is often simple: send the question, get the answer, move on.

In that environment, a one-line email may feel completely normal.

But formal communication, whether in university or in project work, asks for something more. It requires an awareness of audience, role, setting, and likely interpretation. It asks the sender not only to express a need, but to frame it appropriately.

That is where the tension sits.

The sender may feel the message was efficient and harmless.
The receiver may experience it as flat, abrupt, or careless.

Neither side is necessarily wrong in motive. But they are operating with different communication norms.

Why this hit me as a teacher

What made this moment sting was that I had already spent six weeks teaching this cohort about communication.

We had explored tone, emotional intelligence, personality, nonverbal communication, virtual interaction, and the importance of considering the receiver. So when I read that email, part of me immediately felt I had failed.

That reaction was probably harsher than the situation deserved, but it revealed something important.

Teaching communication today is not simply a matter of explaining models or offering tips. It is an effort to interrupt habits that students may have been developing for years. They come into our classrooms shaped by texting culture, social media shorthand, flattened tone, and constant digital interaction.

So perhaps the real lesson is this.

When students communicate poorly, it is not always because they have ignored what we taught. Sometimes it is because what we are teaching is pushing against a much larger cultural current.

Why this matters beyond university

This is not just about emailing lecturers. It is about professional life.

Future project managers will work in environments where success depends not only on sending information, but on building trust, showing judgement, and adapting communication to context. They will write to stakeholders, sponsors, clients, team members, and partners. They will need to influence without authority, clarify ambiguity, and maintain relationships under pressure.

In those situations, technically correct communication is not enough.

A message can be clear and still damage rapport.
A question can be valid and still sound careless.
An email can achieve the task and still weaken the relationship.

That is why these small habits matter.

Not because formality is sacred, but because communication is always doing more than one thing at once.

So what did I do?

I replied in the tone I hoped to model:

Hi [student name],
Thank you for your email,

Week 7 in-class quiz will cover material from week 1 to week 6 only.

Wish you all the best in your studies and quizzes.

Best regards,
Ibrahim

I chose not to correct the student directly. Instead, I tried to demonstrate what professional, respectful communication can look like without turning the exchange into a reprimand.

That felt more constructive.

The provocation for educators

Here is the question this incident has left me with.

If students are growing up in communication environments that reward speed, brevity, and function, are universities doing enough to teach tone, audience awareness, context, and professionalism explicitly?

Or are we still assuming that students will somehow absorb these things along the way?

I am increasingly convinced they may not.

And if that is true, then communication education is no longer a soft extra. It is a core professional capability.

Final reflection

That one email did not convince me that students are rude. It did not convince me that Gen Z is disrespectful.

But it did convince me of this.

We may be living through a generational shift in communication norms, one in which messages are becoming more frequent, more immediate, and more efficient, while also becoming thinner in tone, context, and relational awareness.

That matters.

Because in project work, in leadership, and in life, communication is not just about getting words across. It is about how those words land, what they signal, and what kind of relationship they create.

We have never sent more messages.

But perhaps that does not mean we are communicating better.

Communicate as a child

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Photo courtesy of the talented Diana Ayoub (dianaayoub.wordpress.com) – thank you Diana

“We don’t tell you what you like to hear, we tell you what you need to know.”  This was the tagline in a radio promotion for an Accounting & Taxation Services company, sometime ago.  Its simplicity and honesty made it click and stay in my mind.  Since then, I’ve been using it to explain ‘how’ to communicate project progress every time I teach project management.

With similar simplicity and honesty, was the child’s question to his pregnant mother: “if the new baby is growing in your tummy, then what’s growing in your butt?”  This story was used in a TED talk by a speaker who I can’t remember.  The speaker beautifully explained the importance of telling what we need to know rather than what we like to hear.  Before I proceed, let me clarify one thing now: I’m not talking about the dimension of ‘honest’ communication and that we should always be honest in what we say.  I don’t want to go down that route, honestly.  I’m trying to present communication from children’s point of view where they are really “honest” in what they say, even when they are lying.  In their judgment they are honest because they are saying something ‘useful’, they are telling what they believe needs to be known: “it’s not me who broke the vase”, “my dad says that he is not in”, “my mother said that you look ugly”, etc.

So, when communicating, make sure that you have a ‘useful’ communication.  And by communication I don’t mean only talking or writing; listening and reading are also important means of communication and you should ensure that all of this is ‘useful’.  When asking a question, aim for useful answers.  When giving out new information, make an effort to present something useful to the receiver.  When reading a book or a blog, rate it as how much useful was it for you.  And when telling out something, make sure that you tell what the receivers need to know, not only what they like to hear.  It would be great if what they need to know matches what they like to hear.  But if these don’t match, tilt towards what needs to be known.

One way of having good and useful communication is to communicate as a child.  I don’t mean that you get emotional or innocently rude when talking, but to use some childish techniques to make useful and effective communication.  For example, children like to ask a lot of ‘why’ questions.  So, always ‘start with why’ as Simon Sinek advises in his book: ‘Start with why’.  Ask yourself: why I am doing this, and why the receiver will accept my communication?  This will help you fine-tune your communication.

Also, children ask a lot of probing questions, like “where do babies come from?” or “where does Santa Clause live?”  Get into the habit of asking probing questions rather than closed ones, and be ready to explain the facts in a useful way, not necessarily in an honest way.  After all, when describing the facts about ‘the birds and the bees’, you don’t want to be completely honest to get your message through, you just need to exchange useful information.  When explaining something, make it as simple as if you are presenting it to children.  When preparing a communiqué, always remember the quote attributed to Einstein: “if you can’t explain it to a six years old, you don’t understand it.”

Finally, let me ask you this: when you get curious to know a secret about your neighbours, who do you ask?