We’ve all been there: answering the fifth email in an exchange that easily could have been taken care of over the phone in 5 or 10 minutes. In fact, having a phone conversation, or better yet, a face-to-face conversation, is the best way to increase productivity and reduce stress in the workplace. According to Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle, the art of the conversation is of paramount importance:
“To sum up a large number of studies, face-to-face conversation leads to higher productivity and is also associated with reduced stress. Call centers are more productive when people take breaks together; software teams produce more programs with fewer bugs when they talk more. And Waber’s studies have disappointing news for those who equate email and talk: The ‘conversation effect’ doesn't work the same for online encounters. What matters is being together face-to-face.”
However, a major problem stands in the way of effective interoffice communication.
Step One: The “What”
The irony is clear: the most smartphone-dependent generations - Millennials and Gen Z - are also the least likely to pick up the phone instead of texting or emailing. It is generally recognized, with some exceptions, that young professionals have been conditioned to defer to non-verbal communication like text or email. These are the first generations never to have known life without them. Picking up the phone to have an actual conversation is anathema and counterintuitive to these 180 million young professionals; why talk when you can text or email?
The more senior members of the workforce (Generation X, Boomers and Traditionalists) who spent their careers building relationships through personal interactions, face-to-face conversations, and by speaking on the phone, often grow frustrated by the reluctance of their junior counterparts to engage in actual conversations (although there is some evidence that these more seasoned professionals are beginning to drift away from this ‘old school’ interpersonal communication, but that’s a topic for another day).
Now, we’ve recognized these conflicting methods of communication. Understanding the “what” of the problem is always Step One. Let’s move on to Step Two: The “Why.”
Step Two: The “Why”
Studies by Harvard, MIT and University of Michigan show that our more junior colleagues are simply more comfortable communicating with the filter of a screen and are accustomed to technology that adapts to this method. In addition, this gives them the luxury of being able to proofread, edit and have an email thread of exactly what was communicated.
Phone calls and face-to-face discussion require conversational skills: the ability to respond, ask pertinent questions, think on your feet and practice thoughtful intention of what you want to convey. These abilities require practice, which, paradoxically, these generations don’t get if their ‘go-to’ method of communicating is electronic. This creates a degree of social anxiety when confronted with the choice to speak or type. If the confidence in speaking is lacking, we’re going to default to our comfort level of typing, and down the rabbit hole we go.
Conversational skills can be learned when modeled and expectations are clearly understood, and this falls to the more senior members of our workforce. This is not a ‘we’ versus ‘them’ proposition. Both the young professionals and the more seasoned professionals bear some responsibility.
So why are young professionals so reluctant to pick up the phone?
Habit - they’re just not used to picking up the phone
Anxiety of not presenting their ‘best selves’ - social media has created an expectation of perfection. The fear of not presenting ‘perfectly’ is scary.
Fear of inserting themselves into anothers’ day and crossing an invisible boundary
Feeling incompetent, unpracticed or unskilled - The thing is, young people are SUPPOSED to make mistakes and learn from them; mistakes are our best teachers, but this fear can often be paralyzing and lead to inaction or deferring to electronic communication, which lacks the nuance of verbal communication.
Fear of the unknown - not knowing what the other might say or how to respond. This is a direct correlation to confidence which we only derive from practice, making mistakes and learning from them.
Case Study:
Recently, my marketing manager, a Gen Y (Millennial), had been troubleshooting some issues with our email marketing platform one early morning. She sent me 4 long winded, technically-complicated and (to this Gen X) baffling explanations for what she had discovered the problem to be, and potential solutions. Frustrated and confused, I called her and said “pick up the phone!” then laughed. I told her I didn’t understand her texts and asked if she could simply explain them to me. She did this in about 2 minutes. I understood, felt comfortable with her findings and we moved forward: done and dusted.
This was the impetus for writing this blog.
Upon reflection and after talking through the exchange with Sarah (she gave me permission to use her name! and who is extremely introspective, thoughtful and articulate!), we discovered a few things:
First, had I texted her back and told her to “pick up the phone!” it would likely have been received badly leaving her to think I was angry because texting lacks nuance. I wasn’t; I was confused and by telling her with a laugh, it was received well.
Second, when I asked her why she hadn’t picked up the phone in the first place, she said “it never occurred to me (habit).” Upon further reflection on her part, she said she felt nervous about calling because it might interrupt my morning (as if receiving 4 confusing texts wouldn’t - fear of the unknown) I told her: “Don’t worry about what I’m doing. If I don’t have time for a call, I won’t pick up and I’ll get back to you later. Call me to tell me these types of things instead of texting or emailing.” (Boundaries)
Step Three: “How”
It can be scary to imagine you’ll “get in trouble” for calling someone and inserting yourself during their busy day. Some young professionals may feel they’re being more respectful of someone’s schedule and time if they don’t pick up the phone and call, but text or email instead so their boss can read it on their own time. What many young professionals - and those on the receiving end of the call - don’t understand is that the employee is not responsible for their boss’s boundaries when it comes to phone calls. If the boss, or anyone else for that matter, has done the work to set boundaries on accepting phone calls when they’re busy, the tension is eliminated.
Eliminating this fear takes work on both sides of the phone call. For the call-receiver, it means setting boundaries: letting your employees know it's ok to call, and setting the expectation that if you’re busy, you won’t answer. For the call-maker, it’s understanding these boundaries and respecting them, making an intentional phone call with an achievable goal, and knowing the right times to call instead of emailing or sending a text.
Clear verbal communication takes time but will end up saving you time in the long run - I promise.
Conceptually, Future Image Group’s culture and curriculum is built on the importance of relationships and communication. We focus on why this is breaking down so significantly and bridging these misunderstandings and biases in order to better communicate and understand each other intergenerationally. We teach all generations the what, why, and how of building meaningful relationships through face-to-face conversation, phone calls, and emails and texts (when appropriate) by acting intentionally, with curiosity and boundaries in order to initiate, develop, sustain and nurture these relationships.