Re: care&feeding of volunteers (was: Design Process)

At 11:10 AM -0800 11/9/02, Chih-Chao Lam said (in response to my 
posting a URL discussing negotiations over email):
>  I will read this over the weekend, but perhaps you could also provide us
>  with a summary together with your own ideas? Ideally, how can we create a
>  design process and choose infrastructure tools that weaves and supports your
>  concerns about nurturing an emotional connection?

(*deep breath*)

The ideas in the article
	http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/research/reports/1999/morris.html
are couched in terms of negotiations, but much of a any healthy 
collaboration is an extended set of negotiations.

It is very important in negotiations for the negotiators to build a 
rapport.  In email, it's
	harder to build that rapport
and
	easier to tear it down
because of the lack of emotional-context cues: facial expression, 
tone of voice, speed of response, etc.

The article doesn't talk much about how to not tear the rapport down 
-- I'll address that briefly in a separate message.

There are two ways to build rapport that the article mentions:
+ Have participants mutually share "personal" information.

+ Give *emotional* feedback, not just *factual* feedback. 
"[S]uccessful negotiators add relationship-building content to their 
messages. They punctuate their messages with signals of positive 
emotion and intent and make statements referring to the relationship, 
such as: 'Thanks for your flexibility in working with me on these 
points,' or 'We have been making great progress together in this 
negotiation.' Statements about emotions and the emerging relationship 
would be superfluous in a face-to-face conversation, but in an email 
interaction they do the important communicative work that is done by 
nonverbal expressions and tone of voice during a personal encounter."

Chih-Chao Lam finished by saying:
>  From reading through several of your postings, I sense you bring a very
>  unique perspective that blends a strong humanist user-focus with a deep
>  understanding of technical constraints. That is very rare and worth
>  listening to.

Chih-Chao, you apparently already know what the article says!  You do 
a very good job of explicitly valuing the participants.  And it feels 
nice, thank you.  :-)


As an example of disclosing personal information:
+ I am surprised and overjoyed to find myself married.  :-) :-)
+ One of my hobbies is researching novel communications technologies 
(like inte-rword spacing, developed in about 700 AD by the Irish).
+ "Kaitlin" is really a formal name only.  Most people call me either 
"Kate" or "Ducky" (and I truly don't have a preference).
+ I am female.

-- 
Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
Author of the _Overcome Email Overload_ series, http://www.EmailOverload.com
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