Social Media is nothing we can hide behind. It exposes us in areas we didn't know we even had areas. I wanted to introduce you to what I call the "coffee shop syndrome" of Online Social Media:

Remember those times we skived off from school pretending to be sick so we could have a day off. Remember then how your parents would tell you "well if you're too sick to go to school you're defiantly too sick to go to the shops." You tended to agree only because if someone from school saw you out and about they would wonder why you were not in class. Well the coffee shop syndrome relates to this concept but I just wanted to set the scene offline first.

"The Coffee Shop Syndrome" relates to our level of Emotional Intelligence and how we act upon these skills in the world of Online Social Media. Remember that Emotional Intelligence refers to how often we demonstrate certain behaviours.  It's a set of skills that define how effectively we perceive, understand, reason with and manage our own and others' feelings.  It's all very well believing we demonstrate a high level of EI but if we don't have an outward display of this behaviour then others may have a different opinion!!

In the Offline world let's say that you are trying to develop an important business relationship. To date you have had one good meeting with the prospect. You believe that everything is on track to develop the relationship further. You call them and try and set a time to meet to discuss their current projects. They let you know in no uncertain terms that for the next two weeks they are really busy. Apparently numerous things in the office which need to be clear off their desk, as well as a number of deadlines to meet, asking you to call back in two weeks time. Getting the picture? Now we get to the interesting part. Over the next two weeks you happen to walk past a particular coffee shop near their office and you see them on a number of occasions in what looks to you to be informal business meetings and sometimes sitting just reading the paper. You start to build up a feeling of resentment quite quickly. If they could not meet with you due to their so called busy schedule how then did they have time to sit in that coffee shop doing practically nothing. Your whole perception of the so called relationship potential starts to falter and you begin to build and harbour negative feelings, such as "the person is untrustworthy" or "not genuine in their communication" which will most certainly stifle any potential to work effectively together.

Social Media in its proliferation is building a number of these coffee shops. I recently had a friend explain to me how she had been sent a request following a business introduction to send a proposal through to a new acquaintance on Facebook. She knew the person was busy and was not expecting an immediate reply. Over the next week, however, she saw the person was interacting with a number of their common contacts in what looked like lengthy informal chats. She was not getting any response and saw the person on several other Online Social Media platforms replying to Group discussions.  She told me that each time she saw in interaction it made her wonder how they had time to engage on Facebook et al in what she evaluated as far less worthy interactions than getting back to her on a rather important business matter. I'm not saying she couldn't have e-mailed this person but the person had explicitly asked to interact on Facebook. Each time she saw an interaction it was like walking past that coffee shop I spoke of earlier, looking in and seeing what was perceived as a less worthy meeting. When we interact on Social Media we expose ourselves as being active and it is therefore imperative that we are even more conscious of how our communication may be perceived by the recipients in our network.  In other words, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, we must be more conscious of how we are demonstrating emotionally intelligent behaviours so that we foster trust, build on-going relationships, and enhance buy-in to different business initiatives.