Pick up the dang phone!

The telephone.

A tool of communication that has been with us for well over one hundred years: from the trenches of World War One to the New York Stock Exchange, from the President of the United States to the leader of the Soviet Union, the telephone has been there through it all and has had a massive impact on transforming world history and in furthering the speed and efficiency of human communication. This has been most especially true for business professionals.

From bankers and lawyers to accountants and engineers, the telephone has served to connect them and their business interests in a manner unimaginable to anyone who had ever conducted business before the telephone's introduction to the modern world in 1876.

However, in today's business climate, some companies do not even provide employees with an office landline. Cell phone allowances and email and text messaging are all the rage. This can be a terrible, terrible mistake.

Quite simply, many forms of business communication are not made for the written word. Any communication which has any inkling of emotion or non-verbal stress should be made via the telephone. Any communication which details any intimate or sensitive fact or opinion should also first be made on the phone.

The written word is usually flat, lacking in transparency and is subject to individual interpretation.

Let me prove it to you - think of comfy reclining chair next to an electric fireplace.

Easy, right?

Everyone is surely imagining the same or approximately the same chair, correct?

Well, what color was your chair? The one I was describing was blue. Where was your chair? Mine is in my home office. What is on your chair? Mine has a Pittsburgh Penguins blanket hanging on the back of it.

It would be very easy to go on and on, but as the point shows, we've all read the same words and we've all, individually, reached an entirely different conclusion regarding something as simple as what, exactly, is our comfy reclining chair. How, then, could one interpret a complex business email that is subject to interpretation based upon emotion or the inclusion of sensitive facts?

Let me give you a simple example of an email from a fictional project manager, John Smith, to his team regarding a business relationship issue with an Owner/Customer:

Team,

I took this one on the chin and reached out to make the apology to the Owner/Customer and told them we had this handed but when will we actually figure out what the heck is wrong here? Boy, this Owner/Customer is really a pain in the butt. Do we even KNOW what is wrong?

Firstly, what the heck is John Smith apologizing to the Owner/customer for? John admits he hasn't a clue what is wrong, yet he is already apologizing to the Owner. How many ways could John's email be interpreted if just read, as we are reading them, his words flat on the page? How could a third-party outside the email chain, IE. an outside counsel, use those words against John? Has John manipulated his relationship with the Owner/Customer in this instance or worse still, can John now be suspected to have misrepresented facts throughout the entirety of their business relationship? John's ignorant apology documented via email has opened the door to all of these questions and many more.

Next, John has put emotion into the email - boy, this Owner/Customer is a pain in the butt. Says a lot about John's relationship with the Owner/Customer doesn't it? Or does it? What if that was meant to be sarcastic? What if John just had a bad day and his relationship with the Owner/Customer is completely professional? What if, what if, what if......? We don't know what if because John wrote an emotional email. We, the reader, can interpret and use his emotion in whatever form and manner we may choose.

By choosing to write an emotional email that further contains, if nothing else, a premature apology, John has opened himself up to whatever his reader decides is to be their interpretation as to the intent of John's email. The reader can then use John's email to his or her own purposes. In turn, John's email can then be potentially devastating to ANY business relationship.

So, what, then, is the solution?

PICK UP THE DANG PHONE.

When needing to communicate business information that is sensitive, confidential, emotional, or easily misinterpreted, the telephone is still, well over one hundred years after its introduction, the very best method of communication. Use it!

Communicate like its 1876.