When I first told people about my blog, they asked of course what type of things I would write about. I said without hesitation that the first blog post I was going to write was going to be called Pick up the Phone! As it turns out, I lied. The first blog post was on the importance of being nice. This is the second in the series. And when I sat down to write it, I realized that Pick up the Phone! may not be specific enough. Everyone is constantly picking up their phones and sometimes it is best (me included for sure) to put down their phone! That is for another day and another blog post.
What I mean to express here quite clearly is to the use the voice function on your device. It is there for a reason, and sometimes I believe that users forget that it is embedded in the technology. Evolution has not yet removed our ability to verbally communicate, although that may come. While we still have a voice, I humbly suggest that just as you were taught from a very young age, use your voice.
I have often found myself on a seemingly never ending email chain of back and forth where people are not following one another, and confusing the issue at hand. All can be avoided if people (we are all just people) reach out and sort it out quicky and professionally. You cannot convince me that email is always most efficient or subjectively “better”. I have quite literally seen people get physically uncomfortable when I suggest to them that it is far beyond the time to pick up the phone to sort something out. We are losing the skill to communicate orally. Pick up the phone, please.
And return a call as well. Within a few days if not the first day of starting back at Smith Lyons as an associate in 1988, a then young Partner, Steve Coxford came into my office and made it clear that as the junior on the original Franco-Nevada, that were Seymour Schulich or Pierre Lassonde ever to call me and I were to have missed the call, the call would be returned within 30 minutes. Expectation duly made (that is a lesson for another day) and noted. I only had to be told once. This was the time of the pink message slip. Technology may have changed, but the importance of a prompt reply has not.
Most of us enjoy personal interaction and engagement. And as busy as we are (or think we are) engage with your colleagues and clients. What a wonderful way of getting to know one another a bit better than the perfunctory “Trust you had a good weekend” at the beginning of an email. And maybe, just maybe it will lead to something else, perhaps a conversation about another topic, a business meal or drink and even more important, a better understanding of the person you are engaging with. Business and professional service, let alone life in general, is all about engagement.