On the last morning of my visit to my brother and his family, I'm sitting at breakfast with my nieces. I have a mid-morning flight. As I spoon some cereal, the eight-year-old asks, "Uncle Ricky, when you were little, did they have airplanes?"
I suddenly feel old. "Yes, we did," I reply. "But there were some things we didn't have." I search the room. "Answering machines, for one."
"Really, no answering machines? Who answered the phone like when you weren't there?"
"Nobody."
There's just no end to the curiosity of an eight-year-old. "What happened when someone called and nobody answered?"
"Well, I guess it rang for a while, and then they gave up. If it was important enough, they called back later."
You probably know how it went from there — I almost missed my flight.
What did we do without answering machines? Today, we have answering machines and voice mailboxes at home, at work, and on cell. Some of us even have assistants who take messages.
And the people we call are similarly equipped. Whenever we call, except in the rare event that we actually reach someone, we have an opportunity to leave word. And we almost always do leave word.
Make answering the phone
a choice. Consider turning off
the ringer when you're
doing something important.We play phone tag, leave messages, listen to messages, replay messages, jot down what people say in messages, and track whose turn it is to call. And if we're owed a call, and don't receive it in a timely fashion, we sometimes feel angry, frustrated, ignored, or unimportant. When we owe a call, and somehow don't get around to it, we can feel guilty. Too often, it's all a waste of our time and our energy.
We've let call-answering technology get out of control. Here are some reminders of the choices we sometimes forget we have.
- Decide whether to answer
- When the phone rings, we answer without even thinking about not answering. Make answering the phone a choice. Consider turning off the ringer when you're doing something important.
- Decide whether to leave a message
- Before you phone someone, consider what to do if you get a voice mailbox. Make a conscious choice: do you really want to leave a message? Or would you rather call back later, send email, or do nothing?
- Decide how to set your answering system
- You can turn it off altogether, or set it to announcement mode: "I'm not taking messages or calls just now, please send email or call back after 4 PM." This reduces both the number of messages you have to listen to, and the number of calls you have to return. Close friends and family with urgent business probably have your cell anyway.
Your comments are important to me, so please send me email. My voice mailbox is full. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Games for Meetings: IV
- We spend a lot of time and emotional energy in meetings, much of it engaged in any of dozens of ritualized
games. Here's Part IV of a little catalog of some of our favorites, and what we could do about them.
Team Thrills
- Occasionally we have the experience of belonging to a great team. Thrilling as it is, the experience
is rare. How can we make it happen more often?
Recalcitrant Collaborators
- Much of the work we do happens outside the context of a team. We collaborate with people in other departments,
other divisions, and other companies. When these collaborators are reluctant, resistive, or recalcitrant,
what can we do?
Coping with Layoff Survival
- Your company has just done another round of layoffs, and you survived yet again. This time was the most
difficult, because your best pal was laid off, and you're even more fearful for your own job security.
How can you cope with survival?
Be Choosier About Job Offers: II
- An unfortunate outcome of job searches occurs when a job seeker feels forced to accept an offer that
isn't a good fit. Sometimes financial pressures are so severe that the seeker has little choice. But
financial pressures are partly perceptual. Here's how to manage feeling that pressure.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming March 29: Time Slot Recycling: The Risks
- When we can't begin a meeting because some people haven't arrived, we sometimes cancel the meeting and hold a different one, with the people who are in attendance. It might seem like a good way to avoid wasting time, but there are risks. Available here and by RSS on March 29.
And on April 5: The Fallacy of Division
- Errors of reasoning are pervasive in everyday thought in most organizations. One of the more common errors is called the Fallacy of Division, in which we assume that attributes of a class apply to all members of that class. It leads to ridiculous results. Available here and by RSS on April 5.
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