By Greg Griffin, Ph.D., AICP
Aug. 13, 2021
RU Able to Meat Me? Professor Keri Stephens, a communication studies mentor from UT-Austin, used this emailed quip as part of the title in her study of overly casual messages and their impact on recipients' responses. Spoiler alert: non-professional communication will get you less-than-professional results. As students and workers return to universities and offices, this quick primer can save you or someone you care about from becoming your own victim of miscommunication.
Most of the work of urban planners involves organizational (not personal) communication, whether written, spoken, graphical, or a combination of media. The quality of how you communicate—not just the thinking or product—dictates how peers, community members, and employers perceive the quality of your efforts. Organizational communication involves targeting the right audience for the need, choosing a communication medium, and expending the appropriate amount of time to develop relationships and solve problems.
Audience
Consider who might be the perfect person to meet a need—finding an answer, sharing, or just exploring ideas. When you are new to a group, explore how they communicate by attending events, reading their published works, and connecting on social media like LinkedIn. For many incoming urban planning students, your peers a year ahead of you might have just the right balance of situated knowledge to connect. They might also be the ones best situated to suggest the best internships, scholarships, and where to find the tastiest tacos in town. Professors or potential employers might prefer to communicate differently than your peers. Do they include email, phone, or social media on their email signatures or in social media bios? These are often signals from your audience on their preferred methods to communicate—ignore them at your own peril.
Communication Medium
Direct message, email, phone, or video call—is there a best approach for organizational communication? A classic study showed that "managers prefer rich media for ambiguous communications and less rich media for unequivocal communications." Ambiguous issues are complicated and may have multiple interpretations that require rich media—such as a face-to-face discussion. Unequivocal communication happens when all parties clearly understand the context—a short written message is fine. So, we align the medium with the complexity of the issue to communicate. What about when the topic may be ambiguous, but we know time is limited?
Time
Each organizational communication method has its time requirements, in both the number-of-minutes sense and immediacy. Texts are laser-fast but imply immediate attention with their 'DING' or buzz on a personal cell phone. Is your message that time-sensitive? Email is considered asynchronous—a response within 24-hours is generally appropriate. Urban planners aren't EMTs. Even though we both work on life-and-death issues, our forward-looking ideas will still be potent an hour or day later. Email or other asynchronous media respects your recipient's time by allowing them to choose how to order their work. Did you think of a major issue at bedtime or weekend? Go ahead and write the email, but put a delay on the send button until the next regular work morning. People will think you started work early.
There may be generational expectations at play on time and communication as well. People raised before the Internet revolution, circa 1990, may consider texting to be reserved for family members and friends, especially if their employer does not provide a mobile device. Complex topics take face time, and we crave the opportunity to connect and solve tough challenges together, especially as we emerge from the COVID pandemic.
This brief post only introduced audience, media choice, and time issues of organizational communication. Dig into other resources to build your communication toolbox for writing, public speaking, presenting ideas, and tailoring communication for urban planning. You now have a sense of when to drop a DM in my Twitter, or email, and for vital, ambiguous topics, you can meet me as well.
Greg Griffin is an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at The University of Texas at San Antonio, and his writings are published in outlets such as Transportation Research Record and the Chicago Tribune. greg.griffin@utsa.edu