A few years ago, I worked at a media company with someone who had just graduated from college and was embarking on his first journalism job. One of the most vital parts of a journalist’s job involves interviewing people, yet there was an aspect to this duty that made my neophyte colleague uncomfortable—he felt ill at ease calling people and doing interviews by telephone.
As a member of Gen Z, my colleague came of age in an era where private direct messages and text messages were the prime methods of communication. In his world, dialing a number to speak to a person was kind of scary.
I began my career long before my youthful colleague was born, and in that now-prehistoric era there were, of course, no emails or texts. If I needed to contact someone, I would call them.
Yes, texting and emails are very convenient, but in my experience the connection in typed words on a screen is weak when compared to the interaction achieved by speaking to people by phone. Working during the pre-digital era, I was able to establish immediate connections with people with a vocal link—conversation enabled a spontaneous mix of business and pleasure that you cannot duplicate in texting. On several occasions, the person taking my call would respond to my call by warmly declaring, “I’d know that voice anywhere.” That’s because I gave myself voice lessons at the start of my career to fix self-perceived vocal deficiencies, and sounding professional has helped my career in numerous ways. Being able to use your spoken voice also separates strong leaders from the weaker ones. In problem-solving situations, the ability to pick up the phone and sort through an issue is vital to avoid miscommunications that can arise when something like an email is internalized incorrectly.
Maybe I am being nostalgic for a disappeared way of life, but I prefer talking to people and hearing their vocal replies rather than typing out messages for them. Conversation is a lost art, and the skills to connect with our fellow man—be it a coworker, a friend, or in a job interview, are what give us our individuality. We can’t let convenience overtake our capacity for charisma and personality. Yes, I can email and text like the sharpest Gen Zer—but the sound of another person’s voice is a link that no emojis or text acronyms can match.
