At my very first job, I was really upset when colleagues did not pay attention to my written messages. Even if I got a reply, it was unhelpful. The only solution that I found to move things forward was to speak directly to colleagues. Since then, I believe in the power of verbal communication when you have to speak to a person to get things done.

As a student, I met the power of verbal communications during discussion results of my writing assignments. Verbally, I could show how I develop the main idea in an assignment and clearly understand mistakes in a draft. I am more fluent in verbal communications than in writing. But I do not care about that because I know that verbal communications are the best friends to support ideas in writing.

I moved to the US and I fell in an ocean of new communications. I had to buy a car, rent a house, buy tickets and groceries, find kindergarten and school for my kids. Sometimes writing communications were helpful to me, but I came to the conclusion that I was missing something big. For maximum success I need to speak face to face. In this way I am sure that I was understood. People are happy to say a few Russian words which is my native language and of course I am happy to return a few words too – Добрый день и спасибо! Everybody has fun and gets better mood than before. This is the power of verbal communications!

I see a problem of corporate communication during remote work. The most typical situation is when colleagues start playing baseball, but as a ball they use a task in the corporate project management software.  Another big problem, infinite discussions in chats without success. My only action in such situation is to invite all parties to meet in person. Then the task is solved magically in time just because we spoke to each other, seeing and hearing the person, transmitting a lot of information over verbal channels. I believe we are more open when chatting verbally.

By now, I use chats mostly as a new information channel, like newspapers, radio or television. When I get a message, I act as passive recipient, put it in low priority, it is something small that does not require my immediate response. If I want to do something for 100% I call the person or meet them and use the power of verbal communications.

I really do welcome the changes that we have gone through in the last two decades and believe in merging new technologies with the power of verbal communications. However, I will not stop communicating verbally in every moment of my life where and when I can use this power.