Stop iPhone Listening to Me in a Meeting!
It's a crime almost every manager has committed. And the penalty can be that you lose influence with your team.
Call it "iPhone listening."
You've been there—you're allegedly listening to something, but what you're really doing is scrolling through your smartphone, checking your email or your Twitter feed.
Sometimes you're not even looking at your mobile device—you just have it in your hand. But the message you're sending out is deadly: this phone is more important than you are.
The fact is that listening is a highly underrated management tool. Money talks, but silence can be golden. So listen up—and learn to listen the right way. That's the focus of a recent story in the Harvard Business Review by WeWork Senior VP of Talent Melissa Daimler.
Daimler writes that listening can be tough to master but "creates an environment of safety when done well." Daimler has found that by listening closely to her team members, she finds that they often come up with ideas she hadn't thought of.
Daimler came up with three ways to make yourself a better listener:
1. Ask more questions. Make sure you know what a colleague is really asking for.
2. Create space in your day. Shrink your total number of meetings. That way, when you do talk with someone, you can spend more time listening. "When I strategically create space on my calendar to reflect on a conversation and prepare for the next one," Daimler writes, "I can be more present for others."
3. Look people in the eye. Personal attention makes people feel important and can infuse even the driest meetings with meaning and energy.
Bernard Ferrari, author of Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All, says that most people focus all their attention on ways to communicate their own ideas effectively. By ignoring the other half of the equation—listening—they end up missing potentially amazing ideas and opportunities.
So stick the iPhone in your pocket. And lead by listening.
Learn how entrepreneurs prevent iPhone listening (and other meeting mishaps) in this Radiate Advice video:
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Senior Business Applications Developer at The Florida Division of Rehabilitation and Liquidation
8 年I agree with your assessment of the effect of cell phones during meetings. I hate meetings, so when I have to be in one, I want it to be productive. I also want to feel that it was important and one of the cues that it is not important is that management allows other priorities to interrupt it. Why not just hand off the meeting to someone who takes it seriously and is excited about working with a team to make something great happen? That would increase the credibility of the manager and grow the usefulness of emerging leaders.
Stay tuned
8 年Yes, my iPhone goes into meetings with me. 90% of the time it's face down on the table or tucked in a pocket. But every now and then it comes out, I scroll through notes or reminders or calendars or whatever and there's that relevant little gem that's entirely appropriate to our discussion, or a new action trapped for me to follow up on later. Sometimes I've even sent emails and got replies to questions we've been asking while the meeting is in progress. The issue isn't using your phone - it's using it appropriately.
Receptionist with the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association.
8 年Looking people in the eye can be culturally inappropriate.
Reliability, Maintainability, and Safety (RAMS) Senior Engineering Specialist (Consultant)
8 年In some regards the worst invention ever...After I leave those hours of meetings with people scrolling through their cell phones. Then walk down to the street and avoid another 80% texting and walking into traffic. Then I get on the bus and look over at the semi-truck drivers driving pass while texting and over 50% of the other car drivers doing the same...get on the bus and 97.3% of the passengers looking at their stupid phone. Then walk past 10-15 more people on my mile walk home all walking by looking at the stupid thing. I mean it is just a monolithic silicon substrate, polyimide printed circuit card, a bad battery, glass, solder, and plastic. Not to mention the 50-80 of the drivers texting as I walk home.
?? The Retained Recruiting Leader in Construction, Real Estate, Engineering, Architecture, HVAC/R ???? "Construction Over Coffee" Series Host ?? Partner @ INC 5000 Recruiting Firm ??? Top 1% Search and Recruitment
8 年When the meeting starts, phones should go on silent and in your pocket. No questions asked.