Thanks to globalization, business executives are more dispersed than ever before. And yet, the value they place on face-to-face interactions persists, according to Cisco's London-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which last week released the results of a new survey showing that business leaders — despite their global distribution — want more collaboration in person when it comes to activities such as brainstorming for new ideas, managing a specific crisis or making presentations.
As part of its survey, titled "Business Leaders' Views on Interaction," EIU asked 862 global senior executives to describe their preferred communications with colleagues, suppliers/partners and customers. In so doing, it found that 89 percent say communications where the parties can see and respond to each other benefit internal business functions such as employee coaching and training, as well as communications with partners and customers. What's more, it found that:
• 75 percent believe in-person collaboration is critical;
• 54 percent agree that gauging engagement and focus is critical to communicating; and
• 82 percent felt they were better understood after in-person encounters.
Other key findings, according to Cisco:
• Top Motivations for In-Person Meetings: The No. 1 reason to have a face-to-face meeting, according to survey respondents, is to resolve major problems more efficiently. That's followed by generating long-term relationships and resolving a problem or creating an opportunity quickly.
• Effective Communications: Executives cited engagement and focus on shared content (92 percent), tone of voice (81 percent), facial expressions (81 percent), words someone is using (72 percent), subconscious body language (72 percent) and conscious movements or gestures (67 percent) as being key to successful communications. According to Cisco, four out of these six cannot be achieved without face-to-face interaction.
• Business Processes: Business leaders said in-person collaboration is key for more than 50 percent of key strategic and tactical business processes, including project kick-offs, initial meetings, brainstorming sessions, managing problems with groups, crisis management and coaching team members, all of which were identified as having a "high need" for in-person collaboration. Also cited as needing face-to-face interaction were contract renewals, strategic planning, meeting new clients, co-development of project plans and contract agreements or expansions.
• Technology: Although 60 percent of modern communications are non-real-time, 73 percent of business leaders believe in-person is the most impactful communication. What's more, a majority of executives say in-person has a higher impact than email, phone or web conference when it comes to interacting with customers (79 percent), colleagues (72 percent) and partners/suppliers (66 percent).
• Telepresence: When in-person meetings aren't feasible, videoconferencing may be a good substitute, as many executives strongly agree that video enables richer and more productive relationships (53 percent), saves time (45 percent) and saves money (35 percent).
For more information, visit EIU's website, where you can watch a video about the importance of in-person collaboration and download an infographic illustrating survey results.