By The subtitle for this post could be ‘The Lost Art of Phone Conversations’. With the advent of email and then text, the desire to actually pick up the telephone and call someone has declined tremendously. I get why you might think that an email or text is an easier way to communicate.
- You can write and rewrite your message until it is ‘perfect’
- You can write your response at your leisure and even schedule when it gets sent
- The recipient can read and respond at his/her leisure.
Fun fact – I knew a guy who scheduled at least one email each day to his boss (either direct or cc) for after work hours so it looked like he was working late. What a sneaky way to color someone’s perspective of your work ethic!
The struggle with written communication is that we as humans receive messages through other avenues than written. For example, the intonation is lost. And visual cues get lost when you consider many calls involve video. What ends up happening is the written communique doesn’t deliver the intended message. Either the message was lost because the email was too long or a different message was received because the reader read something different from what you wrote (see previous post).
The general rule of thumb I told my team was to call if you’ve had more than 3 back and forth exchanges. And if the message is difficult, consider a call with a follow up email. The benefit of a phone call is real time response to your queries. You typically can get to the root of the communication breakdown faster.
Today’s post is about challenging yourself to use the phone as your first choice in communication. Pick up the phone and call someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. My goal is 7 people – one for each day of the week. So often we email or text because it is ‘easier’, but those aren’t conversations. They’re very one-sided. So I am going to call someone I haven’t spoken to in awhile with no agenda, just to say hi.
Quick follow up: I called Rita on Tuesday. She and I implemented a RMIS for her company years ago and have stayed in touch, but hadn’t talked in awhile. We ended up having a GREAT conversation for over an hour. She’s retired and living her best life and just became a grandmother in December.
To inspire you, here’s a cheesy AT&T commercial with their jingle ‘Reach out and touch someone’. Happy dialing! Trust me, your caller will love hearing from you instead of a robocall!
