[Tango-L] Truth in stereotypes

[Jay Rabe]

Indeed Susan. Tango-L is well-known if not notorious for a history of flames and personal attacks, though it seems to me it's been better in the last couple of years. But there is something unique about the online communication medium that I think facilitates asocial communication behavior. I suspect it's similar to road rage phenomenon where the impersonality of being protected in your car seems to allow people to do aggressive things they'd never do face-to-face. 

In my past life in the corporate world, we did lots of coaching/training on appropriate electronic communication. Other than the impersonality inherent in the medium, there's also the lack of visual cues that are known to comprise 70% or so of the message in F2F conversations.


So the general guidelines to keep things productive and civil:
* Avoid sarcasm. Without visual cues of facial expression and tone of voice, it doesn't usually come through well.
* Stick to the facts - address the issue not the person.
* Avoid labeling
* If something strikes you emotionally, rather than assume you know the intent and understand the message, ask for clarification before responding (active feedback communication 101)


In the tango world, things get pretty squishy. We're dealing with such subtlety of movement, attitude, perception, and emotion/feeling that having a clear discussion is asking for the impossible. Still we try.


And one other thing, be careful about over-generalizing. Whether talking about cliques or leaders/followers attitudes towards their partners or any other of the issues that we love to try to understand, it's easy to find specific examples in your experience or from what you've heard (rumors and urban myths are a whole other problem) to support just about any thesis you have. But it also doesn't take much to find examples that contradict/oppose the thesis. 


Jay Rabe  Portland
===========================
> Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 14:01:46 -0800
> From: susan_munoz at sbcglobal.net
> 
> ... ... ...  So, maybe it's not gender related, maybe it's not even 
> ego related, and maybe it's not even tango dancer related, rather, it's more 
> communication 101 related..... which, I don't know about you, but I can always 
> improve upon.