What are your Pet Hates with communication?
Mine include:
- A presenter saying “you won’t be able to read this, but…”
- Or one who starts running out of time, so races through slides that nobody understands
- A long, complicated email that should’ve been a phone call
- A meeting that wasn’t needed … or I wasn’t needed at
- Meetings overrunning, making people late for their next thing. Often accompanied by…
- …people turning-up late for a meeting and then expecting to be briefed on everything they’ve missed by the people who arrived on time
- Watching presenters read their wordy slides to me
We all hate these things. But people keep doing them. Which begs the question…
Why do we communicate with others, in ways we hate them communicating with us?
Examples:
- We hate being an audience member watching a presenter read out wordy slides. But, when we’re the presenter, we often use wordy slides to remind us what to say
- We hate it when someone sends us a long ranty email – especially on a Friday. But, when we want to clear our desk on a Friday, it’s all-too-easy for us to send a long ranty email
- We hate everyone’s looooong updates in meetings but – when it’s our turn – think our looooong update is fascinating
So a simple Tip this week: Don’t do things you hate people doing to you!
Of course, this Tip is so obvious that we all think it doesn’t apply to us.
But someone is doing these things we all hate! It’s unlikely to be only ‘everyone else’.
This mindset reminded me of something I read recently: ‘I only have two problems with emails – (1) finding time to craft my perfect ones and (2) having to read everyone else’s rubbish’
Action Point
- Identify your communication Pet Hates
- Ask yourself “do I do any of these?” (be honest!)
- If you do … STOP!