Quick — what do you get when you cross EQ with IT?
Growing up, you may have heard the expression, “Put yourself in the other person’s shoes”. The much heralded realm of Emotional Intelligence centers around this very type of empathy (the other half being self understanding).
My point today is that we always have opportunities to do this — whether speaking to a boss, reviewing an employee, pitching a prospective customer, and on and on.
Sometimes they’re “big things” and other times not. The question “are they sandals, boots, clogs, or moccasins” is a mental trigger for me to ask whether I’ve really imagined how the other person is experiencing our interaction.
Two great example of how this can happen every day, at a very small level, whether we’re conscious or not, came to me today in playing tag to schedule a call with another businessperson.
- He was scheduling with Outlook, and putting notes into the “email portion”. I was receiving with Mac Mail, which only shows that text if I drill all the way into the calendar.
Yes, it would be nice to have Apple and Microsoft get their act together — but I think we might have better luck moving to the South Pacific the island where I live! And it’s really bigger than that — just understanding that all the different systems (Google Mail/Calendar, Blackberry, Palm Pre, iPhone, Android, ….) may or may not do things the same was as our system does.
- More significantly, he titled his meeting request as “Updates”. Now his memory may be phenomenal so that when he looks at his calendar, he thinks “Paul Travis”! But all that happens for me when I look at my calendar is to wonder, who was I supposed to have updated and how was I to have done that? It feels like an incomplete, and puts me into worry mode — what was I thinking that I would have made such a note?
My suggestion for this, on both the receiving and initiating end, is to entitle the appointment with both (a) parties involved and (b) responsibility. My standard format is “Travis calls Smith”. Yes, a couple more characters than “Updates” but dramatically more helpful for both parties in recalling the discussion.
Bottom line: people are people, online or offline — so remember to ask yourself what kind of shoes they’re wearing the next time you’re interacting with another person.
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