Face to Face

I recently found that an old acquaintance had found a new job in a company which is setting up a location in Krakow. We met to discuss training needs for the company, and she told me all about her new job. She explained to me that the top management of the company flew in almost weekly to meet the new hires and see how the team were progressing with the new office. Each time they arrived in Krakow, they met everybody who had started work since they had last been in town, and got to know them. They were able to have regular progress meetings with their managers in person while they were in Krakow, too, and were on site to give advice, support, or help adjust targets when needed.

This reminded me of a contrasting e-mail I once received from a friend of mine who works in a Shared Services Centre in Dublin. She said that she didn't know if she was doing a good job, as she hadn't seen her direct supervisor in weeks, but because of that, she presumed her work was satisfactory. In the same conversation., she told me she was looking for a new job. She didn't say if the two facts were connected, but I am pretty sure they are.

Human beings are social animals. We need to interact (despite what we might tell others!). Besides, there is so much more that we can convey with a facial expression, tone of voice, a light gesture of the hand, that it's no surprise that we generally prefer to talk to people face-to-face than on the phone or by e-mail.

If you have a message to give, try to consider delivering it face-to-face, in person, wherever possible. I like talking to people. I'm sure you do, too, and so probably do your colleagues!

Don’t Try to Help!

Try this with your colleagues at work: Tell them you got a phone call from your parents, saying that they need you to help them in their house this weekend, but that you have already agreed to help another friend move house. Then tell them that you have called your friend and changed the date, and they are fine with that. Before you explain this last fact, though, take a sip of coffee. By the time you swallow the coffee, you will have two or three solutions presented to you. Often, when people start to tell us their problems, we immediately start looking for solutions. This is the ‘default’ human nature, to instinctively try to help. This impulse is increased if we spend our time in work solving problems (and most of us do work with people, and so spend all our time solving problems!)
However, as with our experiment, most people have already thought about their problems in a little greater depth before they relate them to us, and so our automatic response can seem at best overenthusiastic, at worst, dismissive. When people tell us what has happened to them, we must first of all decide if they are in fact telling us about a problem. They may be relating an interesting story, or gauging our reaction, or perhaps even boasting, if they themselves have already worked out a genial solution. Until we know what is expected of us, it may be best to delay reaction.
How can we tell what the other person wants from us? Why not ask them for clues? “How does that make you feel?”, “Have you any idea what you will do?” “How do you think I can help?”. Questions like these will clarify the issue without being too aloof. You might also avoid volunteering to do something you don’t need to.