Whatever happened to picking up the phone? While email and text messaging have grown more prevalent, it amazes me that people are so phone adverse when it comes to getting things done.
Sure, email and text are great ways to communicate. Fast, reliable, and share information quickly with many people at once.
But, as soon as it becomes a shield you’re hiding behind to avoid a candid or difficult conversation, email/text ceases to be an effective tool. Pick up the phone to deliver the message even if it might feel uncomfortable to do so.
When you’re dealing with a time sensitive issue or client escalation, pick up the phone. You can coordinate a response much faster.
When it’s clear the other party doesn’t understand what you’re saying after a couple emails, pick up the phone.
When urgency is a factor, pick up the phone.
Different situations call for different methods of communication. Don’t rely on just one.
I’m going to say this politely. If your “meeting” is reading every word on every PowerPoint slide, with no decisions needing to be made, please just send me the deck with a recap email and let me save my 30 or 60 minutes on work that truly matters.
Yesterday’s example was extremely painful. The setup:
Over 100 people invited at all different levels from Senior VP’s to front line managers.
Introducing the rollout of 2 new tools that will automate a lot of the heavy lifting we require clients to do today (reducing overall implementation timeline and greatly improving quality)
Great! Can’t wait! Except…
30 seconds into the presentation, we’re interrupted because apparently the conference bridge doesn’t have enough lines available and folks can’t get in.
Presenter talks to the operator and gets it fixed.
Presenter restarts the presentation, literally reading from a script, and with zero energy. Why am I here again?
3 minutes later, we’re interrupted again. People still can’t get in.
Presenter talks to the operator and gets it fixed. Again.
After spending 10 minutes on technical difficulties, he goes back to lifelessly reading the script again. Ugh.
30 minutes later we find out neither of the tools are even ready yet…
…which means another meeting to be scheduled in a couple weeks after everyone forgets what they heard on this call.
For as many people who claim to hate meetings, we certainly have no shortage of them.
Meetings with no purpose. No agenda.
Sent to attendees who don’t need to be there (we don’t want anyone to feel left out!).
With little to no preparation beforehand.
Too many people multitasking and missing major pieces of the discussion (although they checked out and don’t know it yet).
Too many people on the phone “forgetting” to take themselves off mute (they were multitasking and not listening).
Too many people not saying anything – why were you invited in the first place?
Whatever happened to picking up the phone? While email and text messaging have grown more prevalent, it amazes me that people are so phone adverse when it comes to getting things done.