Over the weekend, I almost changed my mind about the subject of this post, after watching Andy Murray win his second Wimbledon Singles title. Aside from the fact that his joy and relief radiated off my TV screen, for me, it was a reminder of the role of sport as the positive power of tribalism (most of the time anyway!). When it goes well, it cuts across so many other divisions – including politics. No, let’s not get into examples of when a mix of sport and politics becomes doubly devisive – that’s another post, for another time! !
Last night, I nearly changed my mind again, after watching a brilliant TED talk; but I’m about to invite the speaker to be part of Programme 5 of the current series. If he can do it, I’ll tell you all about him then. If not, I’ll find an opportunity to talk about him anyway!
So I’m sticking with my original topic, mentioned at the end of the last post – phone manners – particularly two trends I’ve spotted, which appear to be moving in opposite directions. The first operates on a one-to-one level and the second on a many-to-one basis.
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it was perfectly normal to pick up the phone spontaneously, to call a friend or colleague. In fact, making an appointment to chat would have seemed pretty weird! Of course, before email, it would have been a lot harder, wouldn’t it?
Now, increasingly, I find myfriends and I email to ask:
‘When would be a good time to give you a call?’
Yes, there are exceptions – but that’s the point: they used to be the rule.
This ties back to our growing reluctance to interrupt – and be interrupted – which all flows back to how we meet the challenge of attention overload.
One person’s ‘reluctance’ is, of course, another’s ‘consideration’. Whichever it is for you, it only seems to apply to voice calls. We text and email each other at all hours of the day and night! Last week, I was woken at 4:20AM, by a text thanking me for a bank transfer. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was glad to know the money had gone through ok – but I wasn’t lying awake worrying about it – at least not til the phone whistled at me when the text came in!
The sender assumed my phone would be off and I’d pick up the message when I switched on; but I, like many of us, use my phone as my alarm – and my new model has no standby option. So if you happen to have my mobile number, PLEASE don’t send me anything between 11pm and 6AM – you WILL wake me up – and although you won’t hear me growling, rest assured, I will growl something I can’t write here!
Going back to voice calls, most of us now have some sort of voicemail facility and caller ID, especially on the mobile. So the vast majority of us should, in theory, have no fear of gate-crashing into someone else’s day – or having them gate-crash into ours. The trouble is that years of conditioning mean that when the phone calls, we feel compelled to leap on it, regardless of what we happen to be doing at the time. For instance, it’s becoming perfectly normal to drop a face-to-face conversation mid-sentence to turn our attention to a remote caller – whoever they might be. That said, we’re just as easily distracted from a distant conversation – even one which has been carefully pre-arranged – by something happening in our immediate physical environment. That’s why lots of people find voice-only phone meetings so difficult to focus on (I teach a technique to help with that, but still, nothing beats a face-to-face – provided it isn’t constantly interrupted by the phone!).
This Pavlovian response is what drives the other trend I mentioned – cold calls, from businesses, charities – and criminals. While you and I are worrying about (or, if you prefer, putting some thought into) whether we should ring so-and-so now, or whether he or she might be too busy, all kinds of organisations, legal and otherwise, feel free to bombard us with calls at all sorts of odd times – a lot of them not even from a human being in real time! I know people who hate pre-recorded cold calls even more than the live variety, but they do have one clear advantage: you can swear at them without worrying about abusing a real person! Last weekend alone, I had one at 9PM on Saturday evening and another at 8AM Sunday morning – both equally welcome …! If I tell you how welcome, I’ll have to put an obscenity warning on this post! No, I didn’t take either call – I let the voicemail take them.
That brings us back to where we started. I don’t know about you, but I’d choose a good game of phone tennis any day (the swapping of voicemail until we make contact properly) over fear of intruding – or irritation that I just let you intrude (it’s worth remembering that if an unexpected call feels like an interruption – you chose to pick up!). Some people are very good, but most of us need to get a lot better at call screening – and returning. One reason we jump on the phone the moment it rings, I’m guessing, is because we know we’ll forget to check our messages later! Like this year’s Men’s Singles at Wimbledon, every game of phone tennis is won by the best returner.
And there’s another huge benefit of voicemail, which very few of us really exploit: If we all made more effective use of it, just think: we’d never have to deal with any more cold calls – and if no-one answered them they would eventually die out!
Perhaps we’d all be inspired if phone tennis had its own championships … How about it as a new Olympic sport. We’re too late for Rio, but …
Back on a sensible note, there’s another aspect of this which I want to pick up next week – how well phone manners travel – or don’t, as the case may be. In the meantime, if you have any:
Questions
Comments or
Feedback
come and talk to me! All the details are on the website – but right now, got to run – the phone’s ringing! You think I’m kidding, don’t you ……?!
speakforyourselfblog 
Recent Comments