Template:Onworld and offworld negotiation

The same dynamic exists in a negotiation. The JC snookered himself into using a four-box quadrant to illustrate this — he has an irrational fear of anything thought-leaders are fond of — but they do seem to fit here because there are two perpendicular axes at play: How many people are you speaking to, and in what medium.

How many

How many people are in your audience? The more there are, the more formal you must be, the more generalised, the less opportunity for there is for nuance and that lubricating milk of human frailty, wit. The more people, the narrower will be their common interest. Plainly, the more people there are, the greater will be the cultural, social and human barriers to unguarded constructive communication.

Fort any communication other than a one-way broadcast, one-to-many is a categorically worse medium for communication than one-to-one.

What medium

Now your “medium of communication” can take a more or less personal, and immediate form. The least personal and immediate communications are written ones (here the message is, literally, removed from the sender’s personality and, even where transmitted immediately, need not be answered in real time). The most personal and immediate ones are in actual, analogue person — like that ever happens these days — and failing that, a video call where you can see and hear nuance, then an audio call where you can just hear it. But any of these is vastly superior to written communication.

On constructive and defensive communication

In terms of our Onworld/Offworld distinction let us make some value judgments: whether we like it or not, the offworld we inhabit is a complex, non-linear one. Personal, creative, immediate, and substantive communications beat impersonal, delayed, and formalistic ones. Constructive communicators — players of “keepy-uppy” and like-minded infinite games — communicate to get along, and they therefore get on better than those who communicate defensively — who play backward-looking, bounded, aero-sum, finite games.

But the sorts of communications you favour depend what sort of, and how good, a communicator you are. Constructive, expert, imaginative, pragmatic, empathetic participants will be good at immediate interpersonal communications. Negative, defensive, inexpert, heartless, wooden communicators tend to be better at delayed, written communications.

Why would you design your communication channels to favour negative, unempathetic, inexpert, defensive people?