For Transparency and Trust, Make It Face-to-Face

Hard-boiled police detectives love using web-cams for interrogating suspects, don't they?

Customs officials ask suspicious travelers to dial into conference calls.

And you probably asked your spouse to marry you via an e-mail message--flagged, of course, with a red exclamation point.

Why do these three scenarios sound ridiculous? In high-stakes communication situations, we depend upon the cues (and clues) provided by a face-to-face encounter.

No other dialogue offers such a rich environment for getting to the truth regarding people's motives and trustworthiness.

It's a lesson worth bearing in mind, when recession-battered budgets sing the siren song of virtual meetings rather than the real kind.

Webinars, product demos, video conferences, and social media offer tremendous opportunities for personal and business growth, at a fraction of the cost of corporate travel. But in make-or-break situations where maximum trust and credibility are called for, there is simply no substitute for the personal touch.

The Wall Street Journal made this argument recently, in a special advertising section on global business travel. Clearly, author Joe Mullich in "The New Face of Face-to-Face Meetings" (WSJ, September 22) and the section itself were encouraging corporate travel rather than the virtual kind. Yet it's difficult to argue with the viewpoint that companies need to appreciate the effects of certain kinds of cost-cutting. This sentence in particular, from a spokesperson of Oxford Economics USA, is hard to ignore: "The research informs us that when a company reduces its travel budget, it loses both revenue and profits, giving competitors a real advantage."

A psychologist who analyzed research in this area found that "group processes and outcomes that require coordination, consensus, timing and persuasion of others" benefit from in-person communication. And a survey of business publication subscribers reveals that meetings are particularly effective in negotiating contracts, senior job interviews, and listening to customers. "Anything with new customers, closing sales, and improving the top line is still done face-to-face," according to Fay Beauchine, president of the National Business Travel Association Foundation.

Given today's tightened budgets, more emphasis is being placed on measuring the impact of meetings, conferences, and trade shows. That makes perfect sense. Going completely digital to the detriment of human contact, trust-building, and long-term relationships, however, doesn't.