Never Hold Your Breath
I’m taking a scuba class right now. One of the primary laws of scuba diving is, “Never hold your breath”. This is because it only takes very small variations in pressure to collapse your lungs.
I’ve been told more than once, by friends, family, and clients that I’m not responsive enough. This has always been a challenge, as my nature is to wait until i can formulate the right response. However, I rarely end up with enough time to think through the perfect answer. So I hold my breath and hope that i can get back to them soon.
The problem here is one of managing expectations. For example…
Client: Peter, could you please tell me what it would take to do XYZ?
Me: — no response —
(thinking: I don’t want to do XYZ. Telling the client that I don’t want to do it is going to take a lot of thought. I have some fire drills going on right now… i’ll get to this later.)
Me: — no response —
(thinking: gosh, it’s been a week and i still don’t have time for this. I wish i’d have made time for this before. I wish i’d have set the client’s expectation and told them that i wouldn’t have time. how do i tell them that i haven’t done anything in a week. maybe if i hide it’ll go away.)
Client: Peter, it’s been two weeks. I haven’t heard anything and i’ve tried calling, emailing, IMing, sending smoke signals, telepathy, blackmail, and Strip-O-Grams. All I asked you to do was XYZ. I’m going to start a national press campaign to defame your service. You suck. I hate you (ok a bit extreme, but I bet they are thinking that).
Me: – no response –
(Shane, I messed up. Can you please fix this mess?)
Avoid the Silent Treatment
I’ve since learned that there is always a right response in that situation that doesn’t require a huge deal of formulation.
I just wanted to let you know that I got your message. My schedule is pretty full right now so I will make time to formulate a thoughtful response before Xxxday next week.
Thanks,
-p
In a nutshell, people need responses more than they need answers. When you scuba dive, you only need to exhale tiny little bubbles to prevent your lungs from exploding. In life, you only need to write tiny little emails to keep your friends, family, and clients from exploding.
P.s: sorry, dad, for not getting back to you.
Great post (and website, by the way). I know exactly what you mean–I too am often paralyzed by over-analysis. The slogan “Just Do It” comes to mind.
To Peter’s Dad: You’re not the only one. I regularly avoid emailing my own father if it requires any level of thought whatsoever. Since it generally does require some thought, I haven’t actually emailed him in months.
To Peter: Dude, I know what you mean. That’s all I’m going to say.
To Shane: My husband, as resident fix-this guy, feels your pain.
haha .. Peter is quite modest. He happens the be the best handler of emotional crises I’ve ever met, when he is not overwhelmed and is feeling calm. I guess that means when I am the one who screwed up, Peter’s my savior. Man’s got the aikido of management techniques mastered. Its good having a business partner you trust and love.
Here is the interesting question. Where is the line between too little and too much. After all, I just got in trouble for opening my big mouth and being too frank.
little bubbles huh?
Another great post - I love the graphic. The bit about acknowledging rather than ignoring is good advice, but sometimes you actually have to say “No, that’s not what I/we do.” I guess that’s where having a referral network is helpful.
What a breath of fresh air!
Shane, i believe there has to be a distinction between tactfulness and responsiveness. What I’m really trying to address with this post is that one has to be responsive. Even in situations where tact will require a bit more time.
For example, someone approaches with a seemingly small project. Our initial reaction is to say, we only do projects bigger than X so we’re not interested. This makes the person feel like their problems are not important to us. If it turnes out that their budget is adequate afterall, well, then we’ve already made them feel insignificant and they will not want to work with us.
If responding takes too much thought, then we can say, “We’ll get back to you on monday about that as we have a lot going on, in the mean time could you please send us more about the budget and timeline.”
Come monday, we’ll have had time to formulate a better response to the effect of “Thank you so much for considering us to work with. As it turnes out, our resources are booked for the time being. Please keep us posted as to how this project proceeds. Oh, and we can ofer some referalls if you’d like. Thanks”
Being responsive is a sign of respect. But it’s not the only sign of respect. Being tactful is also a sign of respect.
All that said, sometimes a little less tact is ok. It keeps us from getting bombarded by small underfunded projects. I suppose there’s a balence.
p.s. thanks for the kind words. really it’s more of a buddy system between us.
this happens to me every once in awhile, usually when i’m not paying attention. For me, I have to work hard to remember to keep those lines of communication open at all times. just can’t hide out. thanks for the tip!
Mario, I hear you man. We just sat down this afternoon to go through all our projects and send email to each person who needed a touch (thats what we call it).
I understand this dilemma all too well for it’s an issue I struggle with on a daily basis. I like your point that you don’t have to answer the person right away, but you do have to at least acknowledge their message with some sort of a response. That’s a much better solution then ignoring the person for weeks or more!