Pick Up The Damn Phone!
We often go through our days and forget what an incredible age we are living in. In our pockets and on our computers there are more ways to communicate than ever before. Video, text, virtual meetings, Slack channels, project management tools, email, photos... the opportunity to communicate through unique methods is almost overwhelming.
The grand irony is that we have more opportunities to communicate, but we are failing worse than ever to actual understand each other.
It's so important to understand which tools are most appropriate and when to use them. An email may be best for an out of town colleague for a request for a slice of data, while it may be inappropriate to send dramatic feedback to a team member that may be misunderstood. The number of times I've been sent video meeting requests for a large group (and don't even get me started on the cluster of scheduling)- when the real solution could have been uncovered by a face-to-face conversation with only a subset of those invited.
It all comes down to not understanding how to communicate.
In my mind there are two problems - first, using the wrong tool, and second not being comfortable communicating.
I've previous written about the tools. Before communicating, know what the message is, the tone is may convey, the audience and other factors before choosing the appropriate tool. Using the wrong tool will overshadow the message. Don't get this wrong.
As important is is to have comfort in using the tools. Don't get me wrong, it's astounding (and I use that as both a positive and negative adjective here) the tools and speed in which communication can take place. The fear I have for the newer generation of leaders is that the ease of communication is overshadowing the importance. When you send and receive hundreds of digital communications a day, each one matters less and less.
When I was running my latest set of companies, we always had incredible interns...all from Northwestern University. Arguably, the cream of the crop.
One day when we were having one of our brown bag lunches about some topic dealing with being a successful business person, the office phone rang. We were in the conference room, and I happened to be on the long side of the table, all the way on the other side of the room from the phone.
After the first ring, I asked one of the interns sitting by the phone to pick it up. They know it was going to be our virtual receptionist as we trained them on these systems before. Looking over at them asking them to pick up the phone was like asking them to walk on hot coals.
They didn't know what to do.
These high octane, a-type successful students couldn't muster the gumption to pick the phone up.
That lead into a great discussion of communication styles, and although they were addicted to their phones...well, they don't like using the actual phone feature. The more I paid attention to this, the more I saw it to be true with every single internship class that came through our firm.
So, I forced the issue.
Part of the mandatory work that every intern had to do was a crash course in phone usage. Yes, cruel and unusual punishment.
For some, who were interested in more public facing roles we pushed them hard. Even those that were more bashful and introverted we made them make dozens of phone calls. The most incredible thing was that in every quarter there were 1 or 2 interns that rose to the challenge. They got more comfortable with it and started to WANT to be on the phone...and they got to talk to some high ranking clients and excelled.
We had a few clients that loved the intern that called them so much that they established relationships. On more than one occasion that lead to renewals or new business for us....and in one case the intern landed a full-time job!
The sad thing is that I am seeing this more and more creeping into my peer group. We think it's easier to shoot off a text or email, when in reality, it's so much better to pick up the phone and have a conversation. You can't establish a true relationship using texts and emails.
So I challenge you to be more mindful of this trend and to kick it like a bad habit.