Should I Stay or Should I Go?
This week David Cameron did not seem to mind quite so much being dragged off his holiday in Cornwall. After the first holiday attempt when he had to cut down his family holiday to Tuscany following the riots in London which seemed to spread like a summer crush across the major cities in England, this time he was called back to share in the limelight over what appears at the time of writing to be the final curtain for the Gaddafi regime in Libya.
Elbowing his way into the diplomatic race to gain the credit (fighting off Sarkozy and, bizarrely, Berlusconi), Cameron is hoping to improve his status both home and away.
For us mere mortals hugging ourselves to keep warm behind the wind breakers on the British beaches in what has again been something of an August wash out, almost mesmerized by the terrible red blink of the Blackberry, the question of “do I need to be there?” is a little more prosaic.
There are of course occasions when being there is essential. David Brooks in his book “The Social Animal”, tells the story of an academic study at Stamford University when 3 separate teams of randomly chosen students were selected to solve a complex math’s problem, that required group interaction.
One of the groups met face to face, one group communicated by telephone and the other group could only communicate via email. The group that met face to face solved the problem in 3 hours. The group that communicated by phone solved the problem in 2 days, and, you’ve probably guessed, the group that communicated via mail did not solve the problem at all.
I am often asked by negotiators who do much of their negotiation on the phone is the negotiation process the same. The short answer is yes. But sometimes the process is much easier to read and resolve when you can see the whites of the other sides’ eyes.