The Respect in Responsiveness

Every day, issues arise to challenge our problem-solving and coping skills. Our response to the problem and responsiveness to the people solving it determine our effectiveness.

Poor responsiveness is rarely a one-time event. It is an insidious habit that saps team productivity as silence stops forward motion. This is especially harmful if the non-responder has decision-making authority. As a recurring theme, it eventually undermines the relationship between the receiving and non-responding person.

And once restoring relationships becomes the primary issue, everything gets more challenging. Frustration builds in the absence of open and effective communication. Anger ensues as the lack of responsiveness keeps us from serving a client, finishing a project, reaching a sales target, or earning a bonus.

Poor responsiveness shows up in our behaviors, often through the media of voicemails, emails, text messages, Slack, or other collaboration platforms. We send a message and get crickets.

It also shows up in processes. For example, a website generates contact forms from interested prospects. However, nobody monitors or checks the inbox, and no workflow rules exist to forward the contact to the right person. This results in an ignored lead or return call days after the prospect moves to a competitor.

Whether poor responsiveness happens due to behaviors or process inadequacy, the resulting reputational loss, missed opportunities, reduced trust, and relationship damage make this an issue worth tackling.

Tips to Improve Responsiveness

1. Act your way to a new way of thinking. As a team, department, or company leader, practice the skill before expecting it from your team and peers. This is an opportunity to be a role model and show the way. Call clients and peers back within a few hours. Set a sundown rule to respond to important emails. Stop unnecessary meetings to make room to respond. Schedule a time in the morning and end of the day to close the loop with people.?

2. Set the expectations. Set a standard for timely communication. Respond the same day to any correspondence related to projects and customers. Respond to other peer-to-peer contacts within 24 hours or less, even if it’s a note that “I’m working on it” or “I’ll get back to you.”

Use whatever standard and language works for your culture, but set the rules, model them, and enforce them.

3. All communication isn’t equal. Establish standards for simplifying and reducing non-essential interaction. Use a different Slack channel for philosophical discourse, food truck recommendations, and personal discussions. Check spam filters across the business to limit junk mail. Agree with the team on response times and triage the critical and necessary vs. the nice to have.

Turn off the auto-notifications on email to avoid being distracted by the shiny, noisy object. Set three times per day to check email and stick to the schedule. Use texts, calls, or a dedicated IM channel for critical communication to stay on top of urgent requests.

4. Coach the reluctant. Some people correspond when they feel like it. As a leader, set the standard and explain the importance of responsiveness to collaboration and delivering results. Why? The responsiveness clock started ticking for the customer when they hung up the phone or pressed send on the email. For employees rushing to meet a deadline, a similar expectation exists. For an owner, they are wondering why you didn’t anticipate their question and answer it before they sent it.

5. Consider tools to assist. We don’t respond due to a lack of tools. If anything, most organizations have too many apps, creating a related but different issue in managing our workflow. If you find that adding a collaboration tool removes obstacles to responsiveness, it may be worth the investment.

Tools don’t change behaviors but may help enable and reinforce the desired ones.

6. But I receive 700 emails a day. Any version of this answer starts with policing your email traffic. Remove yourself from all distribution lists that don’t require your input or decision directly. Unsubscribe to all outside services and move the important ones to a personal email address.

Set up VIP flags for the people counting on you and focus on those first. Delegate portions of your work to others on the team so that you can be more effective.

Be ruthless with the inbox; it doesn’t have feelings. The sense that you may miss something is a control issue and rarely anything else. If someone needs your eyes on something, they’ll ensure you see it.

Finally, if a person, project, or situation is a top priority this month, set up a communication channel that immediately gets your attention (e.g., texts, calls, assistants interrupting as needed).

7. Personal outreach. When working with a serial non-responder, it is worth reaching out, explaining that you want to find a communication method that works for both of you and trying that approach.

For example, if the individual says they will never use Slack and prefers email, then agree that you will consolidate your emails around 10 am daily to send to them. They will respond in a reasonable, agreed-upon period.

Think about how you feel when someone doesn’t respond to you on a project question, a nagging issue, or a vacation request. You may experience a sense of disappointment, irritation, and frustration, perhaps culminating in anger.

Over time, we view a non-responsive person as unreliable, and reliability is a crucial element of trust. Allowed to continue, it impacts our relationships, making collaborating challenging and getting things done more so.?

Taken to its extreme, we give up on the person and find ways to work around them. This type of dysfunction diminishes our teams and limits our results.

Takeaway:?Responsiveness is a form of respect. It builds reliability and contributes to creating trusting relationships. It’s critical to team cohesion and consistent high performance. For these reasons, it is a skill worth improving.