Never ceases to amaze me that so few people understand how deep our communication crisis is right now in the country. There’s so many ways to communicate, and so much information coming at us, that we are literally drowning. And, perhaps not surprisingly, as one drowning, in that life-threatening feeling, we narrow our focus down to simply surviving.
In the meantime, as it relates to communication, we simply don’t. Today, the average person misses far more communications sent their way than they respond to. This is a massive change. Not less than 20 years ago, the average person got phone calls at home and written mail from the Post office. That was it. In 1994, there was some email via early AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy, but most didn’t have that. Almost all of us were on dial-up service still and, well, email was just weird.
Back then, if you didn’t respond to a message sent your way, especially a phone call, well you were just rude. If you were in a business, it probably meant the loss of clients and sales. The truly busy executive might have more calls than he or she could reply to, but they’d probably have their secretary or assistant make some calls back.
Today, we have gone the other way. I would guess that probably 75% of legitimate communication sent your way, and probably 40% of even personal communication (information from someone you consider a friend) goes unanswered. It’s just too much.
In that “too much,” though, lies the crisis. The person who reached out feels ignored or worries that “something is wrong” between you and them. As more time goes by, a narrative gets built about the exchange. Later, a points negative interactions between the two can be traced back to the failure to respond.
I don’t have a great solution. My strategies are very time-intensive, and many of my peers, most of whom are techy people too, say they can’t do what I do. So, let me say that at the very least, you must set up constraints for yourself that ensures you get back to your friends and important clients. Whether that is an email rule or some sort of special tone on your phone that alerts you to a communication effort from a small set of people, at least with those people you must stay focused.
If you are new to a job, it behooves you to take the time to find out the rules for communication in your place of work. If everyone there really ignores each others’ emails and calls, then you don’t want to be the pushy person angrily demanding why they didn’t get back to you. Similarly, if your personal habits are to respond only to whatever interests you, ignoring everyone else, you will need to make a change if you land in a place where the culture of the work is to never miss an email from within the office.
At the very least, be aware of the communication crisis as it exists today. Make sure you are building good relationships with your close friends and clients so that they can at least trust that when you ignored their communication, there isn’t anything wrong between the two of you.