Maybe the Slack notification appeared and you had thoughts like “Oh, I will just reply to it.” Perfectly normal, nothing surprising. For most of us who are younger than 35, a phone call is the equivalent of the phone call our grandparents feared most – a text message. Here’s something you should know about communications but nobody told you during the onboarding process. The telephone call is your greatest weapon in professional life and most of your contemporaries are too afraid to use it.
Think of the last time you spent 45 minutes writing the perfect email to your client. Rechecking the words, finding the right tone, making sure that the tone isn’t too informal or too formal. The problem could be solved in 2 minutes with a phone call. No ambiguity, no “as per my last message” and no waiting for the answer which will probably never come, since your messages are hidden under the avalanche of others’ messages.
That’s the problem. Texting and using Slack as a means of communication teaches us that everything is stakeless and that every kind of communication is like that. You send the message, wait for the answer, interpret the tone of the answer based on the commas used. And the recipient interprets your tone in the same way. Two people trying to dig out emotions from each other’s punctuation marks. Frustrating and inefficient in the extreme way.
A phone call solves all the issues. Hesitation, enthusiasm, confusion and relief. Human voice gives data which emojis can’t give me, as a lover of crying laughing face emoji. Worrying whether the “sure, that’s fine” in a Slack message is actually fine? Imagine hearing it from your manager.
Be realistic. Establishing professional contacts with other colleagues, especially with those in other departments/locations, is much easier via a phone call. Your call to the person from finance department concerning an invoice you find problematic turns into a five-minute discussion of something else. Suddenly, you gain the context, the contact and the reputation of an excellent communicator. Reputation that will help you a lot during the whole course of your professional life in ways impossible to obtain by sending Teams messages in a clever way.
The harsh truth, however. I am not going to lie to you and say that it doesn’t exist. A phone call is a vulnerable thing in comparison with typing. You can’t correct yourself in the middle of the sentence. You can’t google the reply while pretending that you think about it. You are just a human being, communicating with another human being, without backspace. Actually, that’s the very point. Scarcity makes things valuable and your undivided attention is the most scarce thing in any office.
Start slowly if the idea intimidates you. Make a call to your liked colleague instead of sending that usual “hey, I have a quick question” message. Make a call to the IT support in your company instead of submitting another ticket in ServiceNow. Give a call to your mother during the lunch break because it is good for her and also because it is good for practice. Each phone call is reprogramming the part of your brain which thinks that live conversation is dangerous.
The professionals who stand out from the crowd in their twenties and thirties usually are the ones with the slowest response times in Slack. They make phone calls where everyone else hides behind the screens. They solve the problems in minutes where other people need days of exchanging words. They establish trust at a speed which typed words can’t match.
Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t take the phone application as an unnecessary decoration. It is a career booster disguised as a tech of past era. Make phone calls before your competitors.
Thanks for reading this post! – MyPlugin