If you’re wondering what that’s like, it’s nothing more or less than how people use time as social cues to recognize who has priority in a relationship, what activities are appropriate at any given time, or who should leave first after a fight. social gathering.
In other words, chronemics refers to how we use time as a form of communication to understand someone’s level of importance and preferred interactions; for example, if we have to leave soon after meeting someone new or stay more than an hour there. And even the bad habit of being late, and what it says about you.
- Tell me how you manage your time, and I’ll tell you what others perceive
One of the most common misconceptions about the use of time in communication is that the person in the most hurry is the one with the most power. It is assumed that a person with a high position must always be in a hurry and that he is full of tasks and commitments.
However it is not always so. Although being in a hurry can be a sign of seeming importance, it can also be a sign of lack of self-confidence, anxiety, and even disorganization in your time management.
Getting back to being late, studies show that punctuality is the mark of an organized person. A punctual person is aware of the limits, of the commitments made, and trusts in their ability to manage time, which can possibly translate into a better ability to manage other aspects of life well.
On the other hand, a recurrently late person not only shows little interest in other people, but this behavior is decoded as someone with an inconstant, disorganized, unreliable personality.
- The cronemics in your day to day
So that you can verify the effect of chronemics in your daily agenda, here are some examples that we have so incorporated that they are often unconscious:
1) The schedule of emails and invitations or appointments:
If you have to email a colleague, it’s best to do it at a time when they’re likely to be at their computer. Sending an email at 3am can have a negative response because it can wake up the colleague and invade their break time.
Similarly, sending an invitation to a special event at 3 in the morning can be considered inconsiderate, as it can wake up the person invited if they have their devices activated.
And what about the bosses or leaders having the staff at any time?
In Portugal, for example, the parliament passed a law that prohibits company managers from sending Whatsapp messages and even work emails outside of established hours; a policy that seeks to regulate the number of hours we spend working.
In the pandemic and post-pandemic era, it is estimated that the overload of hours dedicated to labor issues has increased by an average of 2 hours a day. In contrast, more countries are beginning to debate the convenience of shorter working hours, or four days a week, even improving performance and results.
To reach these corporate policies, a total transformation of the culture of the companies, the working modalities -which would become by objectives, and not by “hours sitting in the chair”, among other aspects- is necessary.
2) Meetings and conversations:
Chronemics also manifests itself in the planning of the daily agenda, for example, in work meetings and activities with family and friends. There is a time for everything, and depending on the culture of the country, this changes.
The current trend of meetings in companies is to reduce all meetings to the minimum possible, even concentrating them on one or two days of the week. In addition, with fair common sense, the number of guests is also limited: enough of kilometric lists of people copied in the citations!
I remember just five years ago that a follow-up meeting in a company took an average of two to three hours of meeting. That is why in Latin America approximately 40% of the time is lost in unproductive meetings.
Currently many of my clients implement micro meetings of ten minutes, and they are enough; and business coaching sessions – my specialty – of no more than 20 minutes, and they work wonders.
So, as a good practice, companies can work on finding the timing suitable for everyone involved. In general, if they are topics that require a lot of analysis and debate, it would be convenient to do them when the mind is more active and present -although this depends on another factor: the personal chronotype, which is the time of the morning, afternoon or night in which a person works better.
3) The value of time in negotiations:
Another sample of the daily applicability of the cronomics occurs in the framework of negotiations, where the time factor is one of the fundamental variables.
For example, when negotiating certain things, some concession may appear, which may mean giving up something to obtain something else in return.
And here comes the interesting part: the moment of the concessions can be as important as the concessions themselves. If you make a concession too soon, you can appear desperate and lose your bargaining power. On the other hand, waiting too long to make a concession can make you seem stubborn and uncooperative.
4) The use of silence:
We already know that communication is not only the transmission of data and information, but that it is a complex process between two or more people, a message in between, and the subjective perceptions and interpretations of each one.
This is how another way of realizing the value of chronemics is to analyze the space of silence versus the space of speaking.
watches.jpg
An ideal training to improve interpersonal communication is to get used to listening 80% of the time and speaking 20%. It is not the most frequent thing in today’s world, full of stimuli and almost without the possibility of interruption. It is about promoting more hearing versus oratory and verbiage.
Then remember that silence is a form of non-verbal communication of time. Imagine the case of a silence in the middle of a conversation: it has meaning; it can be awkward, or confrontational, or mark an instance before or after that space.
5) Practicing chronemics to increase productivity
As you can see, you can use the non-verbal communication of time in the most varied aspects of your life. Here are some ideas for you to become aware of your possibility, real and concrete, to slow down so much dizziness, and perhaps, face the frenetic rhythms of the world with more calm and less anxiety:
–Decide the amount of time you will wait before responding to an email or message: this can signal to the other person that you are thinking and taking the time to respond appropriately. As an option, answer in a few words that you will take a certain time, and that you will respond before a certain day and time (thus calming the anxieties of others).
–Temporary frames: An ingrained habit is the absence of concrete and specific references of what is expected in the face of tasks and agreements. For example, it is important to highlight these time frames when you work coordinating actions with others. Instead of saying “I’ll send you the report next week,” I suggest saying, “I’ll send you the report next Tuesday at 3:00 p.m.” I must confess that this is one of the main problems for which very few people know how to delegate effectively.
–What you promise, you deliver: This does not mean being rigid, but responsible, understood as the ability to respond to what you have committed to. If you say you will do something by a certain time, make sure you can actually meet that deadline. When you talk about a future event, use the deadline that the other person has suggested, or, if you know that you will not be able to comply -and this will affect your reputation-, do not give last minute notice: notify in time and renegotiate.
Time is a non-renewable good: we cannot buy it, nor is there a way to turn it back. Hence, the analysis of chronemics as an aspect of non-verbal communication will help you become more aware of its value, which, together with attention, is today listed in gold value.
Facilitator and Master Executive Coach specialized in senior management, professionals and teams; mentor and professional communicator; international speaker; author of 32 books.
Source: Ambito
