The Lost Art of Communication

by James Beauregard, Executive Vice President

How many times does this happen to you? You send an email and/or leave a voicemail detailing the items required to complete a task at work. This can be within your own organization or with another organization. The email or voicemail goes unanswered, sometimes for days at a time. Why?

Is it that difficult to hit reply and provide a brief follow up to your email? Can one not find 5 minutes in a day to return a phone call? Communication. It cannot be completed one sided, it needs a ying to my yang. Yet time after time you can be left waiting and waiting for the other side to respond. I get it, it’s not the President of the United States calling or emailing you and people will respond when they are good and ready. I’m not asking people to jump to attention when someone sends an email or leaves a voicemail but am I hoping for too much to get back to me within a day?

Communication in business seems to have lost some of its shine, although no one will argue that communication in social media is slowing down. People will text, tweet and post in a millisecond about the latest happenings in their own life. However, hoping they respond to a business email or phone call in a timely manner, you have a better chance of seeing Bigfoot.

Why can’t we treat business communication in the same way we approach our social media communication. When business people communicate in a timely manner things get done. Deals get done.

Please return that email in your inbox or voicemail on your phone before leaving the office for the day instead of waiting until tomorrow. You’ll be doing your part to improving the lost art of business communication.