PART 1 – WHY REMOTE ONLINE RELATIONS FALL SHORT

At a time when the economy seems to be dominated by technology, and while the effects of the pandemic can still be felt through remote working, online meetings, webinars, and other dematerialised processes, it may be easy to forget that partnerships are not made between entities but between people.

Or, at least it is still the case in most countries of the Gulf and Southeast Asia, where you’re perhaps considering expanding your business right now. In these markets, forget about standardised processes and binding legal contracts: it’s all about trust and personal relationship, which can only be built over time through direct human connections.

Now, while it may be a cliché to emphasize on the importance of personal relationship in business, it is important to understand why digital tools have not managed to overcome and replace human contact entirely.

And the best way to do that is to turn to science, which shows how personal relationships and human contacts are anchored deep in our very genes and brains.

Limitations of Virtual Communication

While technological advancements have facilitated virtual communication, they often fall short in replicating the depth and nuances of in-person interactions. This is shown by all the scientific studies which have experimented on the subject.

For example, a study conducted by Bradley Okdie and his team in 2011, found that face-to-face communication was associated with more positive affect and trust when judging others, than computer-mediated communication. This probably explains partly why opinions, debates and communications are usually more polarised and judgemental on social media than in real life. As we have all experienced, trolling seems to be a pandemic on social media, when it is hardly encountered in real life.

Another experiment run by Ben Greiner and his team in 2014, indicated that face-to-face interaction was more effective in promoting cooperation and efficiency than avatar-to-avatar communication. The work done by Antonia Hamilton in 2016, also underscored the importance of nonverbal cues, mirroring of behaviour, and reciprocity in fostering trust and rapport, even leading sometimes to heartbeat and brainwaves to synchronise.

These studies collectively demonstrate the superiority of face-to-face over virtual communication. This is particularly relevant in cultures like Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asian countries, where nonverbal cues and subtle nuances play a significant role in communication and relationship-building.

Importance of Nonverbal Cues

In face-to-face interactions, nonverbal cues play a pivotal role in conveying information and establishing trust. Facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice provide invaluable insights into the sincerity and intentions of individuals.

This is proven, for example, by a multiple-process analysis ran by Joshua Guyer in 2019, which highlights that nonverbal actions like smiling, nodding, looking into someone’s eyes, and body movements, can change how we think, and explain why good-looking and strong speakers make people agree with them more.

In 1967, Mehrabian and Ferris also looked at how people express different attitudes using their faces and voices. They used three levels of attitude: positive, neutral, and negative. Then, they combined these with three levels of vocal expressions and found that attitudes people guessed from both facial and vocal expressions match. When people smiled or spoke happily, others thought they had a positive attitude. But they also noticed that facial expressions seemed more important than vocal ones when it came to guessing attitudes.

This clearly shows the limitations of language as a written or even verbal communication tool. It is perfect to share factual information and truth claims, as explained by Wittgenstein, but falls short when it comes to conveying emotions, social information, or implicit meaning without resorting to lengthy descriptions.

Indeed, we all have experienced how easy it is to create a misunderstanding in an email or a comment on social media, in the absence of tone of voice or facial expression, when the interpretation and perception of the reader is different from the meaning intended by the author. This is why we all use emojis in addition to words to convey our intentionality like irony, humour, anger, surprise, sarcasm and so on.

It is also important to know that most of nonverbal cues are interpreted unconsciously. Attraction to another person, for example, can lead to a dilatation of pupils and secretion of pheromones, which are perceived by the other person without them being aware of these signals.

Indeed, our brains don’t have the capacity to concentrate their attention on both consciously analysing the information shared with us in a conversation, and decipher at the same time the unintentional and discreet micro-cues sent to us through the other person’s behaviour.

Because of this, magicians and illusionists spend years practicing their tricks to perfection, so that they become automatic and don’t send unintended signals to their publics. On the other hand, illusionists and mentalists also train themselves in “cold reading” to perceive the smallest unconscious cues of their publics and convince them of their paranormal abilities.

Now, while it may be used to our disadvantage by manipulative and ill-intentioned people, unconsciously perceiving these nonverbal signals presents an evolutionary advantage, since it allows us to process information very quickly.

In the case of a potential aggression, for example, it is better to run away in a reflex, than to analyse every detail of the posture and facial expression of the grimacing man rushing towards you with his arm raised, to determine with certainty if he’s about to attack you or not.

This leads also to another important factor in understanding both verbal and nonverbal communication: context.

If you meet the same grimacing man during a family reunion, your brain may quickly decide, without you thinking about it, that it is your uncle John rushing to hug you. If the same encounter appears in a dark alley of a large city at night, this context will lead your brains to automatically and unconsciously tell you that it is not Uncle John and that you should flee.

More than that, communicating face-to-face also means that both persons share the same context. Sharing the same environment improves mutual communication, based on a common understanding of this social context, whether it is a business meeting, a casual meeting, or another occasion. That is, of course, if you both have the same reading of the context, which is highly dependent on culture.

This is why, when prospecting in a different country, you need to learn about the local customs to avoid mishaps. An invitation to dinner at a business partner’s home in France may implicitly means that your spouse is invited too, whereas it is almost never the case in Asian of Gulf countries unless expressly mentioned.

So, context, and your knowledge of it, provide essential information for communication.

Now, when you receive an email or have a video call, you both live in different space-time: Is it a different country, culture? What was the other person doing before? Is there a time difference? What is the climate out there? These are all factors which can influence how your communication will be received and interpreted, especially in the absence of nonverbal information showing your intentions and state of mind.

This is also proved by the “media richness theory” (MRT) first developed by Richard Daft and Robert Lengel in 1986, which describes the density of learning that can be conveyed through a specified communications medium. It confirms that face-to-face communication remains the richest medium because it allows for the simultaneous interpersonal exchange of cues from linguistic content, tone of voice, facial expressions, direction of gaze, gestures, and postures.

To conclude, we see that these studies and scientific facts explain why online or remote communication will never completely replace interpersonal contacts when it comes to business and to international expansion.

Therefore, it is vital for you to get your boots on the ground to meet your prospects and potential partners, if you want to be able to create a lasting relationship based on trust and mutual understanding. Especially when it comes to persons of another culture, where behaviours and nonverbal cues may have different meanings and can be more codified than in your own country.

Artemis Business Care is here to support you in organising your learning expeditions and business meetings, and to train you on cross-cultural communication, to help you avoid mishaps and misunderstandings in your interactions and communications with your prospects.

We are also here to represent your brand locally to build and maintain a personal relationship with your partners in Saudi Arabia.