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Click Board! After Action Review Source The After Action Review is a extremely highly effective technique that helps teams and organizations learn how to achieve excellence. This .pdf file has the basic idea. http://www.fireleadership.g ov/toolbox/after_action_re view/aar.pdf The Art of Conversation Here is a guide for the shy person. What do you say after you say hello? What would you say after you said hello to Paul McCartney? Michael Jordan? Be prepared. http://www.entertainmates. com/experts/conversation. asp |
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Well-Spoken
"Good teaching is
one-fourth preparation
and three-fourths pure
theatre>"
Gail Goodwin
"No one realizes how
beautiful it is to travel
until he comes home
and rests his head on
his old, familiar
pillow."
Lin Yutang
"Good teaching is
one-fourth preparation
and three-fourths pure
theatre>"
Gail Goodwin
"No one realizes how
beautiful it is to travel
until he comes home
and rests his head on
his old, familiar
pillow."
Lin Yutang
Zine Archive
14. Are You Still On? Conference
Call Etiquette
In just a few years, the conference call has
arguably become the most significant
communications medium in the business world.
Booking a conference call with a call-in number
and password has become easy, too easy.
Remember when you had to call the “operator” to
get more than two people on the line? With the
same aura created by the typewriter, telephone,
fax and then email, people in companies are
wondering how they survived without the ability to
get many people in far-flung locations all on the
phone at the same time for sometimes
excruciating lengths of time by simply ordering it
up on the corporate phone system.
Conference calls can be useful when people need
to connect with other people. We prefer people’s
voices to emails. It is natural to want to talk things
over. We want to hear personalities, jokes,
accents, and how people express themselve; we
like to listen between the lines; we crave the
community feeling of people huddled around the
spider phone in a conference room, as bizarre as
that image is.
The conference call is an electronic meeting. It
certainly has taken the place of the business trip.
In the past, instead of one set of attendees
getting on a plane and traveling to another city,
staying overnight, and showing up for a two hour
meeting, we have the call. Same people, different
setting, much less dimensionality in the
communications channel, but huge savings of
time and money.
Unfortunately, too many conference calls are a
total waste of the time and resources they are
supposed to save. In all honesty, who wants to or
has the time to be on a two and a half hour
conference call with 13 people trying to make a
set of decisions? When not used well, a
conference call can be frustrating, painful and
demoralizing. One day, a researcher is going to
define the impact of grumpiness caused by
boring, long conference calls on the quality of
decisions being made.
Why is this so? As with many new ways of
communicating, we really haven’t paid attention to
how to most efficiently use this electronic
meeting. Because it is relatively new, many
people view the conference call as a panacea for
communications, just as emails are overused as a
channel for just about everything. Well, it’s time
to think about what we really want conference
calls to do for us, rather than blithely reaching for
the 800-number whenever we need to chat with
colleagues.
Here are some thoughts about how to think about
the conference call.
1) Remember the limitations of the conference call
medium
Think about the characteristics of the conference
call as a communications medium. It is a verbal
channel, although it is often enhanced with
emailed graphics or documents. But, people can’t
see each other. The ability to react and relate to
comments is much more limited than a meeting or
a video conference where non-verbal
communications play a huge role. Also, there is a
definite fatigue-factor in making the effort to pay
attention. Long calls make listening
dysfunctional. Attention drifts off because it is
often just plain hard to follow what’s going on,
who is saying what and where the call is going, not
to mention multi-tasking during the call. Attention
also drifts because your eyes have nothing to
process.
The normal social rules for conversing are also
changed. How do you make a response to
broadcast questions presented to a group?
Should you be the first to respond? How do you
make a point? What’s the protocol for dealing
with conflict or registering disagreement? There’
s a bit of the feeling of walking on eggs or at least
waiting for an opening that is subtly different than
in a face to face meeting. The point is this
unusual setting makes some people feel
uncomfortable about contributing at all.
So, the purpose of a call should fit a mostly verbal
medium where short-attention span is the rule
rather than the exception, where some people
aren’t going to engage and others are turned out
because they’ve lost the thread. Reaching a
decision is certainly a valid purpose, provided the
attendees are informed beforehand about the
facts underlying what needs to be decided. It isn’t
efficient to launch into a series of decisions
where the background information has to be
explained to callers or where they have to
simultaneously read emailed documents.
It also doesn’t make sense to use a conference
call to do what a group email can do, unless there
are special circumstances. Sharing important
information from selected people who know; a
major announcement; a need for a quick touch-
base with attendees to ensure a key message is
clear; a regular project status meeting are all
legitimate reasons for an announcement type call.
The proviso is they are kept focused on the
purpose and do not digress into looping
discussions and opinion-sharing with no end.
2) Structure makes it work
Wall Street is famous for daily early morning
squawk box calls where important information
from different sources is funneled through a
conference call attended by hundreds of traders,
analysts and investors. These calls last a very
short time –maybe 10-15 minutes--, but they are
run incredibly efficiently. Contributors to the calls
need to post their news to the call coordinator
beforehand; their times are rigorously constrained
and monitored. Think of the old fashioned
vaudeville shows when performers were pulled
off stage with the “hook” if they went on too long.
There are some lessons here for all kinds of
conference calls. Format makes a difference.
Open-ended and looping decisions don’t work.
Brevity makes a difference. Hours long
conference calls aren’t that effective. If for some
reason a long call is required by fate or
circumstance, it better be well structured with a
clear agenda and a facilitator. Having an agenda
and a number of discussion points sent to the
group before the call also works. A facilitator who
enforces the format definitely works. Someone
has to pay attention to the process of the call, how
progress is being made in the agenda and
whether the rules are being followed is a simple
way to turn a jumble into clarity. The facilitator has
to be able to decide how much discussion is
enough and when to call the question, if a
decision has to be made. A facilitator can poll
attendees for get opinions, act as a neutral party
in finding middle ground when conflicts arise, and
ask specific people to voice concerns. Finally,
taking summary minutes ensure that even the
most unstructured call will yield a tangible
outcome. Someone has to be designated minute
taker, otherwise, details can be lost.
3) Watch your behavior
Announce you are on and when you go off.
We’ve been on conference calls where the team
is discussing an individual thinking that individual
was not on when, in fact, she was, quietly
monitoring what people were saying about her.
Not nice for everyone concerned.
Use your mute button.
How distracting is it to hear someone breathing
into their phone mouthpiece when all you have to
do to cut down background noise is switch on the
mute? We’ve been on calls with dogs barking in
the background, babies crying, all manner of
shouting, airport announcements and the like all
intruding on everyone else’s attempts to
concentrate. It’s hard enough to maintain
attention on these calls; why make it harder for
everyone with background noise.
Take notes to control multi-tasking.
Everyone on conference calls multi-tasks. Please,
don’t make it obvious. We’ve wondered why we’
ve heard people speak in a highly distracted way,
not pulling their thoughts together, adding a lot
of ahhs and uhs, and we wondered what was
going on with them. Obviously, they were writing
or reading emails at the same time they were
talking. Taking notes gives you something to
focus your eyes on while you’re on a call, and if
you are diplomatic, it doesn’t preclude sneaking a
look at your computer screen.
Like most meetings, conference calls can benefit
from a little planning, a little preparation and some
common courtesy. The acid test of whether
conference calls work or not is whether attendees
look forward to them before they occur and regard
them as successful when there are over.
© 2007 Singularity Group
14. Are You Still On? Conference
Call Etiquette
In just a few years, the conference call has
arguably become the most significant
communications medium in the business world.
Booking a conference call with a call-in number
and password has become easy, too easy.
Remember when you had to call the “operator” to
get more than two people on the line? With the
same aura created by the typewriter, telephone,
fax and then email, people in companies are
wondering how they survived without the ability to
get many people in far-flung locations all on the
phone at the same time for sometimes
excruciating lengths of time by simply ordering it
up on the corporate phone system.
Conference calls can be useful when people need
to connect with other people. We prefer people’s
voices to emails. It is natural to want to talk things
over. We want to hear personalities, jokes,
accents, and how people express themselve; we
like to listen between the lines; we crave the
community feeling of people huddled around the
spider phone in a conference room, as bizarre as
that image is.
The conference call is an electronic meeting. It
certainly has taken the place of the business trip.
In the past, instead of one set of attendees
getting on a plane and traveling to another city,
staying overnight, and showing up for a two hour
meeting, we have the call. Same people, different
setting, much less dimensionality in the
communications channel, but huge savings of
time and money.
Unfortunately, too many conference calls are a
total waste of the time and resources they are
supposed to save. In all honesty, who wants to or
has the time to be on a two and a half hour
conference call with 13 people trying to make a
set of decisions? When not used well, a
conference call can be frustrating, painful and
demoralizing. One day, a researcher is going to
define the impact of grumpiness caused by
boring, long conference calls on the quality of
decisions being made.
Why is this so? As with many new ways of
communicating, we really haven’t paid attention to
how to most efficiently use this electronic
meeting. Because it is relatively new, many
people view the conference call as a panacea for
communications, just as emails are overused as a
channel for just about everything. Well, it’s time
to think about what we really want conference
calls to do for us, rather than blithely reaching for
the 800-number whenever we need to chat with
colleagues.
Here are some thoughts about how to think about
the conference call.
1) Remember the limitations of the conference call
medium
Think about the characteristics of the conference
call as a communications medium. It is a verbal
channel, although it is often enhanced with
emailed graphics or documents. But, people can’t
see each other. The ability to react and relate to
comments is much more limited than a meeting or
a video conference where non-verbal
communications play a huge role. Also, there is a
definite fatigue-factor in making the effort to pay
attention. Long calls make listening
dysfunctional. Attention drifts off because it is
often just plain hard to follow what’s going on,
who is saying what and where the call is going, not
to mention multi-tasking during the call. Attention
also drifts because your eyes have nothing to
process.
The normal social rules for conversing are also
changed. How do you make a response to
broadcast questions presented to a group?
Should you be the first to respond? How do you
make a point? What’s the protocol for dealing
with conflict or registering disagreement? There’
s a bit of the feeling of walking on eggs or at least
waiting for an opening that is subtly different than
in a face to face meeting. The point is this
unusual setting makes some people feel
uncomfortable about contributing at all.
So, the purpose of a call should fit a mostly verbal
medium where short-attention span is the rule
rather than the exception, where some people
aren’t going to engage and others are turned out
because they’ve lost the thread. Reaching a
decision is certainly a valid purpose, provided the
attendees are informed beforehand about the
facts underlying what needs to be decided. It isn’t
efficient to launch into a series of decisions
where the background information has to be
explained to callers or where they have to
simultaneously read emailed documents.
It also doesn’t make sense to use a conference
call to do what a group email can do, unless there
are special circumstances. Sharing important
information from selected people who know; a
major announcement; a need for a quick touch-
base with attendees to ensure a key message is
clear; a regular project status meeting are all
legitimate reasons for an announcement type call.
The proviso is they are kept focused on the
purpose and do not digress into looping
discussions and opinion-sharing with no end.
2) Structure makes it work
Wall Street is famous for daily early morning
squawk box calls where important information
from different sources is funneled through a
conference call attended by hundreds of traders,
analysts and investors. These calls last a very
short time –maybe 10-15 minutes--, but they are
run incredibly efficiently. Contributors to the calls
need to post their news to the call coordinator
beforehand; their times are rigorously constrained
and monitored. Think of the old fashioned
vaudeville shows when performers were pulled
off stage with the “hook” if they went on too long.
There are some lessons here for all kinds of
conference calls. Format makes a difference.
Open-ended and looping decisions don’t work.
Brevity makes a difference. Hours long
conference calls aren’t that effective. If for some
reason a long call is required by fate or
circumstance, it better be well structured with a
clear agenda and a facilitator. Having an agenda
and a number of discussion points sent to the
group before the call also works. A facilitator who
enforces the format definitely works. Someone
has to pay attention to the process of the call, how
progress is being made in the agenda and
whether the rules are being followed is a simple
way to turn a jumble into clarity. The facilitator has
to be able to decide how much discussion is
enough and when to call the question, if a
decision has to be made. A facilitator can poll
attendees for get opinions, act as a neutral party
in finding middle ground when conflicts arise, and
ask specific people to voice concerns. Finally,
taking summary minutes ensure that even the
most unstructured call will yield a tangible
outcome. Someone has to be designated minute
taker, otherwise, details can be lost.
3) Watch your behavior
Announce you are on and when you go off.
We’ve been on conference calls where the team
is discussing an individual thinking that individual
was not on when, in fact, she was, quietly
monitoring what people were saying about her.
Not nice for everyone concerned.
Use your mute button.
How distracting is it to hear someone breathing
into their phone mouthpiece when all you have to
do to cut down background noise is switch on the
mute? We’ve been on calls with dogs barking in
the background, babies crying, all manner of
shouting, airport announcements and the like all
intruding on everyone else’s attempts to
concentrate. It’s hard enough to maintain
attention on these calls; why make it harder for
everyone with background noise.
Take notes to control multi-tasking.
Everyone on conference calls multi-tasks. Please,
don’t make it obvious. We’ve wondered why we’
ve heard people speak in a highly distracted way,
not pulling their thoughts together, adding a lot
of ahhs and uhs, and we wondered what was
going on with them. Obviously, they were writing
or reading emails at the same time they were
talking. Taking notes gives you something to
focus your eyes on while you’re on a call, and if
you are diplomatic, it doesn’t preclude sneaking a
look at your computer screen.
Like most meetings, conference calls can benefit
from a little planning, a little preparation and some
common courtesy. The acid test of whether
conference calls work or not is whether attendees
look forward to them before they occur and regard
them as successful when there are over.
© 2007 Singularity Group