This Episode Should Have Been An Email

We should probably have a meeting about your support of the show.

In this episode of Grossly Competent, hosts Steve and Patrick decide to tackle the everflowing state of meetings inundating our calendars and inboxes. When is it right to host a meeting and when is it best to just make a memo? Each brings their ideas and data to the table to decide once and for all: How many meetings do we all have that should just be emails!?

But before all that jazz, Steve and Patrick share some of their recent successes implementing *gasp* some of their own advice. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. No, Patrick does not get locked in a small room again (sadly).

Here are some links to dive into if you're into that kinda thing:

• Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Deeply Think Again by Johann Hari
• Jen Marr - All-Around Amazingly Nice Person
• Jen Marr's Books - Showing Up and Lifting Up

Come for the chat, stay for the laughs, and run from our faces: we're Grossly Competent!

Hey friends, we love doing this, and if you like what you’re hearing and want to support the show, here are the best ways possible: 

• Give a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts,
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• Give us a shout on Instagram @grosslycompetent

We appreciate you for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hello and welcome to Grossly Competent, the learning, development, and adulting podcast that doesn't claim to be pretty good. No, but we will happily pretend to be slightly competent. I am your host, Steve Council, and I'm joined by my co-host, a man voted most likely to be confused with a blobfish, Mr. Patrick Ailshire. Blobfish. That's that's great. I learned about those on Octonauts.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

There you go. Well, I'd prefer not to fumble over my words and talk like I have marbles in my mouth this week. So I'll just add that it's truly nice to be in your presence. You mask wearing hot sauce loving Ugo.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Wow. Right, you are, Mr. Patrick. Well, folks, we've got a lot of great things to talk about this week, and we're ready to do this for your listening pleasure. But first, we must know, Mr. Patrick, who is our sponsor of the week?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

This episode is brought to you by screen time you don't want to check. You already know you just don't need confirmation. Screen time, awareness without action. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Thanks, big screen time you don't want to check. You know, I I definitely feel like I don't want to check that. Something about like the last week, I don't know why, but I have I felt like I have perused social media way more than I normally do. I I don't know why, but you're right. I don't want to check my my screen time. Do you feel like you're pretty good about that?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

You know, it's funny that you actually asked that because I was about to just share that this sponsor this week, especially, is near and dear to my heart. No, yes. I am not making this up, listeners. Over the last three weeks, three weeks or so, I have limited or uh essentially regulated my screen time over 75% less than what I had been doing on an average week. So that's awesome. It wasn't just something I did on my own. I had a little help. I read a book called Uh Stolen Focus, which essentially is about that, yeah. Great book. Uh author Johan Hari. We'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, please do. Really, really, I loved it. I got a lot out of it. It was essentially about how as human beings, we have been losing our focus over the years. And it's not just about technology and social media. I mean, that's a picture of the book, or just how can we try to get some of that focus back? And some really good strategies and a lot of good research went into this book talking to all these experts that often about their thoughts and beliefs on how we are losing our focus. And again, a lot of it was on kind of the technology and especially the the addiction that these apps create. And that was something I've always really that's really bothered me at times where I you go down the the rabbit hole or you the death scroll, the doom scrolling. And like I wanna, I really not to go on too much of a tangent, but I really need to get my focus back to really improve my reading, book reading, yeah, anything that's so I'm not just getting distracted every three minutes because I need to go check something, or just can't focus on a nonfiction book. And so yeah, it was it was pretty cool to have that sponsor show up kind of out of the blue.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, that that was really nice of them. I I will admit, as you were talking, I was thinking to myself, oh, I should be a dick and pretend I wasn't paying attention because I wasn't focused. But everything you said, like, no, no, this is actually like totally valid and it like a serious topic. So I'm not gonna demean that. So I I do genuinely appreciate that. And um, yeah, I would love to have us put that in the show notes because that's a book I would definitely check out. Maybe we do an episode on it in the future or something. So that's awesome. What were you saying? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

There it is. Oh, I would agree. Uh yeah, we could talk about our lack of well, that could be no, I and this is a serious idea. Lack of focus during training. How do you as a facilitator make sure that your the uh audience is you know fully engaged in in the content? Public humiliation.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Oh, come on, really? Like, are we even having this talk? Wait, come on. No, I do think that okay, look at this. We're just brainstorming live, baby. Like, this is the goods, this is what I'm talking about. Speaking of episodes and topics and whatnot. Um, this past week, so the the episode that we recently released.

unknown 5:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

So, listeners, you can call it vain, whatever you want, but Patrick and I do listen back to our own episodes because we want to make sure that like the audio sounds correct or just whatever. It's not because we just love listening to our voices, um, but there's like an actual reason behind it. And when we were talking about PowerPoint, we we we were talking about presentations last week. So if if you're joining us for the first time this week, I highly recommend just jump backwards an episode when you have the opportunity. It's a great one. It was a completely Patrick's idea, so it has to be better than any of them that I've come up with. But we are talking about PowerPoint as a visual aid, and I'm so kind of mad at myself that I forgot about a very specific instance. We were talking in the episode last week about how PowerPoint is a visual aid, it is meant to aid a presentation. It is not the presentation, the facilitator, the speaker is the one that's giving the presentation. And it reminded me of when I was working with somebody, he was an up-and-coming leader, great guy. I he's in leadership right now, he's amazing, just a fantastic dude, hates public speaking, just terrified of it, absolutely terrified of public speaking. So when I was working with him on like this is how you build a PowerPoint, and this is how you try to you know articulate on these different topics. When he originally gave me something, it was it kind of hit all the things we talked about last week, like the don'ts of what you're you should not do. And I'm like, buddy, they're gonna be paying attention to that and not you. And without missing a beat, he just blurts out, yeah, that's what I want. Like, I don't want them to look at me. I can they just read this? That would be great. And I've just always really appreciated that candor. Miguel, if you're listening, you are awesome.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

But I I too know some really great workers and fellow employees who are really good at their jobs, but speaking in front of people is not their strong suit. Yeah. I can be understanding of that. Of course, it's part of their job. You know, they they need to practice. Absolutely. You know, I've said this before, but a poor speaker is super distracting as an audience member. And I think it can take away from the overall presentation. Sure. So, as strong as information may be, all the ums and uhs do take away from the content. But that doesn't mean that someone that currently does that can't improve. It just has it has to go along with practice and getting in the habit of maybe taking those pauses and practicing out loud in the mirror, whatever you need to do. Record yourself if you have to. As does sound terrifying, but just getting in the habit of not having all those filler words. And that's uh as a facilitator to get used to.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

I'm guilty. I know I still use the ahs and ums from time to time. Feel like it's not as intense, perhaps, but they they still exist. And I'm willing to accept that bit of defeat. I did, I did take some advice from last the our last episode, though. Okay. And specifically when we were talking about handouts, uh, one of the things you mentioned was making sure that if you have a handout that it's actually legible, like people can read it. And normally I would do the stereotypical when you print off a PowerPoint, it's the three sides to the or three slides, excuse me, to the left with the lines on the right. So people can write their notes. Based off of the feedback we had from last week, I decided I'm gonna do the two large slides on um on a piece of paper front back, whatever. I didn't have a single person say a word. And I as I was kind of walking around the room when there was like time for them to write notes. What did they do? They adapted, they wrote in like the margins or they wrote on the slide itself, like circles and pointing and all. I was like, This is this is perfect. This is exactly what we should be doing. So I am totally sold. It was awesome. I'd never thought to do that, so I appreciate that advice. Thank you. Um, so just kind of curious with you, Patrick, have you had an opportunity to make any of those adjustments or change your style or your process into the last chat?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

That is very awesome news, Steve. I think the reason the you know, and again, I'm guilty of this too, but the the so it'll be interesting to see when I am able to do exactly what you just did with printing the two slides per page, they probably weren't complaining because they could actually see what was on their paper. So, you know, when it's three slides per page, you can't even read probably this. Yeah, you're not kidding. Yeah. So, well, I have not had an opportunity to get in front of your audience this last week. I did spend a good amount of time revamping a PowerPoint presentation, and I was heeding the advice and limited each slide to under 10 words. Nice. I heavily increased the font size and I moved everything down that I thought was still vital down into the presenter notes section. Oh, sure. Nice. Why yeah, why do the uh attendees need to, you know, I can I know the content. So as long as I know the content, again, a few words here and there, and then you can expand on it. You know, if you have to carry, and I I think it's okay as a facilitator to carry around a printed packet of the slides too. So you can pay, I do that quite a bit. So if you've got your your notes on there, then it's okay. It's you know, and it can be a kind of a comfort thing too. I feel really good about kind of creating that. And I look forward to facilitating the presentation in the next few weeks or months and plan to do that same revamp with other presentations that we have in our catalog too.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah, that that's awesome. I'm glad you had that opportunity to do that. That's really cool, man. Yeah, it see, we even though we're the ones talking about this stuff, we still learn from it. We can grow and adapt. It's never just one and done, folks. It's a constant refinement. Oh, this is new, this is different, this is something I can implement, this'll improve. And that's that's awesome, man. I'm really happy to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

And Steve, this it goes exactly what we were talking about on a previous episode. How typically, maybe not always, but typically learning and development folks are the last to get learning and development opportunities. You know, you're not wrong. Yeah. I I mentioned this on a previous episode, but my my boss this with this year in our early conversations was like, I want you to go take training. Not because you suck, but he's uh he's newer to the department. But he told our team it's debatable. Jury's out, jury's out. New new to our learning development team at the start of this year, and he said it's so important for us as learning development folks to be able to get those continuous opportunities, learning opportunities, because we're always the ones doing the training. We never get the training. So I th I'm pretty pumped about that. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

I think a nice for those of you that maybe have smaller budgets where you work, an excellent way to get that additional training without it feeling like actual training is, and you're probably gonna hate me for saying this, but networking, like just meeting with people that are in your industry within your area, just meet with them. Grab a cup of coffee for crying out loud, spend an hour to an hour and a half just chatting. You can spend the first half an hour just BSing, like just talk about whatever, and eventually get the conversation into like, hey, so I'm working on this. What do you think? That you learn so much just from those small interactions, almost more so than I would dare say, than some $500, $1,000 course you take in the matter of a day. Like, what why? I didn't need that. I can just talk to somebody, get their perspective, their best practices. I can share mine. We can kind of workshop things and just go from there. Heck yeah, that's that's awesome. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Well, Steve, I'm really glad you were able to incorporate some of those suggestions from last week and hope other LD practitioner listeners out there were able to do the same. But if not, maybe I can send an email out about it. How about that, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah, yeah. My favorite. Yep. My uh it this should have been an email, right? So I suppose what you're saying, Mr. Patrick, is you would like to dive into our topic.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Sure, why not? Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

So I was on an executive forum yesterday with the great Julie Mendon. If uh you're not familiar, you can look her up. I'll I'll put something in the show notes for you. She does these monthly breakout sessions where she'll have a specific topic in either learning and development or leadership of some kind. It's not just learning and development, it's actually probably 90% leadership. And she'll bring up some real challenge or something like that. Well, yesterday was interesting. She ran what were called mastermind sessions, which um the group was broken up into like smaller breakouts. Each of us got four minutes to introduce ourselves, and one thing that we there was a struggle of ours. And then after that, four minutes, the remaining group got four minutes to ask clarifying questions, give their feedback, when so it's just kind of like a steamrolled networking session, really. And what I found really fascinating is one of the people in my little breakout brought up how they're part of an organization. I I believe they might have been a nonprofit, and they said that they were trying to mitigate some risk by taking everybody from 40 weeks or 40 weeks, 40 hours to 32 hours a week without the place imploding by a lack of production. And which I know some of you all there are probably like, give me a break. Unfortunately, nonprofits don't well have a lot of profits to play around with, so they have to try to figure things out in creative ways. And I I love that this individual, when she said this, that the period on the sentence that she said had barely come out of her mouth when somebody in the group just said, cut out all meetings. Like that's that's the way to do it. Cut out all the meetings.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Now, did my company's leadership happen to be on that call? Because I'm gonna say 32-hour work week sounds awesome. Well, I I do, and let me clarify it, 32 hours for 40 hours of pay is what I yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

No, I don't I don't think that's what they were going with here. I think this was a cost savings thing or to keep the organization afloat. But so I was really thinking about this. Like, obviously, I I laughed at it, like, yeah, it's a good joke. We all agree, meetings are a bit ridiculous. I think that's like a real crisis, though, man. Like, there are just too many meetings, and sometimes they are masqueraded as these educational opportunities. And I think I speak on behalf of all corporate infrastructure in the world when I say meetings for the sake of having a meeting suck. Like they do, they're just what a giant waste of time. So, I what I kind of want to start things off with, Patrick, is how do you like I'm curious on your take on this? How do you help leaders or stakeholders, whatever you want to call them, how do you work with them to know when something's a training or if it's just a meeting, or this should have been an email or a Google Doc.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yeah, I've definitely been there in the past. You know, fortunately, in my current role, I luckily do not get sucked into more meetings than necessary. But I I do know what that is like from past. To answer your question, I would let people leaders know that they need to figure out what the purpose is. So, what are they trying to accomplish? So, for example, my team has a training request form that we mandate gets filled out. You've mentioned that. Yeah, right. So by requesting teams or departments, so it helps one, it's a good, it's good paper trail, but two, it helps us, you know, um, it helps us figure out what those departments are really asking for and helps them see what it is they think that they need. So once we get an idea of why they're requesting this and what they're requesting exactly, we'll then set up a virtual meeting to make sure we're in alignment with what they are asking. So it's just those clarifications because you can type stuff out, but then it when it gets really gets to it and in a virtual meeting, like, okay, what's what's the issue here? Sometimes it ends up being a conversation of this may be better as an e-learning versus an instructor-led training. So just as happened a few weeks ago, they a department requested 13 different topics that they wanted. It was a huge request, a large large department. We were able to whittle that down to six oh that's and yeah, that's huge. Because we able to we were able to group a few together to say this is gonna fit under this this one topic you requested, that's not a two-hour training, that's like a 15-minute e-learning, right? So that type those type of conversations, and then oh, those three trainings you requested, we can do that in a in a full two-hour session. That's great. Yeah. And so you just have those conversations that way. Some, you know, sometimes before we even meet, we already know that this team or department needs some coaching from maybe the executive level or their managers, and where it might be an instance where training isn't going to fix the problem.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, that's that's a great idea. And I know you've mentioned the idea of having that form. I what I really like about it, well, there's multiple things I have I really enjoy about it. I like that you're putting the individual in the driver's seat of establishing what do you want? Like what is star, pie in the sky, whatever you want to call it. At the end of the day, what is it that you would like? And sometimes it's just a procedural change. Well, I want people to do that this way. Okay, that's that's an e-learning or like a very simple how-to structure or something like that. If it's soft skills or some form of leadership development, you're talking about a completely different entity. We can have that conversation. Yeah, so I really like that form. I I've told myself this that I need to implement that at my work. I think that would be such a valuable tool.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

It it is really helpful. One, we have it automated. So when someone fills it out and completes it, it kicks an email over. Oh, nice. And so we all then are able to go check the the Google sheet that we have loaded on. So all that information is there. The questions are great. It's it's obviously the basic info of uh name, department. Uh, you know, it's does this training exist, what you're requesting? So, and we say that because do we already it's do we already have it in our catalog? We want to know if it's something that we need to, are we gonna maybe have to create something new or is this something that already exists? And then what's the estimated size of you know the that you need? And then what's the urgency? So our our department has a turn, my team has a essentially a 30 or 60 day window. So for example, if it is something that we've already created, we already have it in our course catalog, we'll say, okay, we can schedule that 30 days out. Oh, cool. So right. If it's something that my team actually needs to develop on a whole new presentation, whatever, we're gonna need probably 60 days to get that you know up to up to speed. So yeah, I can I'll definitely uh have to share that if that it with you off the line.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

And no, that sounds awesome. Yeah, it's been something that I've told myself, like, oh, yeah, I need to do something like that. Because I kind of hearkening back to the original premise, and that is I think with Outlook or Google Calendar, whatever platform you're using, it is so easy just to make a little half an hour or an hour-long little meeting and think that's gonna solve all your problems. Yeah, however, and I'm curious if you run into this because I know I have, where you'll have an hour block on your schedule. Great. Okay, I have this meeting I need to go to. Great. And depending if it's you're remote or if you're physically on premise, you go to said meeting. It's probably worse if you're actually physically walking to this place. You sit down and the meeting lasts like six minutes. Because the individual that's that set it up didn't really have a strategy or a plan. They just want to be like, hey, heads up. That is one of those moments of this should have been an email, and there's really no reason otherwise that you should have done this.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

That yeah, it that would drive me nuts if it was like that much of a waste. Or even, you know, even if it's uh you schedule an hour and you're only going 15 minutes, it's yes. I mean, you're that's you're taking away people's time from yes, if they're virtual, they can go back to whatever they were doing before, but maybe there was something else pressing that they had to reschedule or couldn't get scheduled because they had this other meeting on the calendar. Well, super unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

You raise a really interesting point, and I I'm gonna see if I can't find the actual stats, but there is a real number associated with like the time that it takes somebody to refocus after being interrupted. Like when you start to add that up over time, that becomes a bigger deal than most people honestly realize. So that yes, you had an hour-long meeting and it really only lasted 10-15 minutes on its face. That sounds like Christmas land. Like, I didn't have to be a part of that thing for an hour, awesome. But then you get off of it and you're starting to kind of like you need to get back into that groove. I don't know what better way to put it, but you need to kind of get back into that flow state, perhaps, of okay, this is where I was. And let's say that takes you, I don't know, five minutes to kind of like hit your stride back again. That might not seem like much, but over the course of say a week, two weeks, a month, that could be, I don't know, anywhere to an hour to three hours, depending upon what your schedule looks like. Those are real numbers, those are real lost production numbers that I think really goes unrecognized when you have this kind of um abuse, abuse of the schedule, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

That's exactly what they talk about in that stolen focus book, too. No way, seriously. Oh, I'm serious. It's early. Oh my god, awesome. I'm picturing where in the book that is, it's early on. But he's he mentions that the average, no, get this. The average adult can focus for three minutes. And so that's just think though, so you like kind of come up with a scenario here. I'm working on a PowerPoint for three minutes, right? And then I get distracted by my phone. And so I might be on my phone. So this is very, very in line with what you were saying, Steve. I get distracted on my phone for let's say five minutes, okay? That's not, and then I don't just go back to the PowerPoint because now I've wasted five minutes doom scrolling. I go back to my PowerPoint and I think, oh, where was I? Yes. I've not only that, I've lost my train of thought. I have to get refocused and re-kind of just programmed into what I was doing. So it's not just the eight minute where I was working for three and distracted for five. It adds up over time. Then you then you get up and do something else, and it's why did I leave the room? Where did I go? And yeah, it's a huge, that's a huge deal.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

That is so funny that that was in the book you were just talking about earlier. Folks, I promise this was not set up, like not at all, as a matter of fact. So that just even makes it wilder that that's the circumstance. Oh, yeah. Gosh, that's so cool. I'll have to find that part of the book and get that info to you. It's it was really fascinating. Well, I genuinely think I'm just gonna order it and read it. I I think that sounds really awesome. My to-do list for reading is just getting longer, and the it's not getting I'm not knocking any off. Um, I need to really work on that. Well, if you need help, I can tell you where Waldo is. Oh god, page. Don't even get me started. That guy, like, could you do does he not have other clothes? Does he not? Well, do you the thing that helps is knowing what he looks like? That's true.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

That is true. If you it makes those books a lot harder if you don't know what he looks like.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I'm always like, okay, so he just has a blurry face, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:45

He's got a mask on. That's the frown.

unknown 28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Waldo is an honorary ugly uggo.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

He is, he really is. He is definitely part of the ugly club in his own way. He's not a looker. I'm sorry, guys. Not a looker. And he is anti-me because he's all about being the most crowded places on the planet. Oh, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

They need to do a Where's Waldo and Bucky's at 10 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

on a Saturday. Oh my, without a doubt, that would be a gangbuster seller. Speaking of not focusing, that's exactly what we did. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Talk about real time. Yeah. I have a sorry, go ahead. Question then. So we talked about obviously this thing is like this should have been an email, but I'm curious to ask you, and I want to I'll go on a little tangent for a second, but I want to just talk about the idea of the different modes of communication that we have. So you have you have a meeting, you have emails, you have direct instant message or teams, whatever your company uses. But when do you figure out or when do you know, Steve, when it's time to pick up the phone or to send a quick text or to just email?

unknown 30:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

All right. So my kind of philosophy on that is if it's something that I feel like I need a paper trail on, like, ooh, I'm gonna need to know that information for a later time. I like email. I like email in that sense. If it's something like I'm working on something and I need to know like a specific figure or a number that's just like I need it for this one second, that is a phone call. Like, hey, do you happen to know this? Cool, thanks. Click, and then I just go ahead and do it. Like short, sweet to the point. As you said, there's a time and a place for all of it. Um, weirdly enough, I really am a big fan of like the instant message, like uh teams and that kind of stuff. Um, where I'm currently at, we do not employ it. And I oh I was I find it really fascinating because it is it's a game changer, so it's almost been an odd regression on my behalf. I'm so used to having it, so now that they don't, I I've kind of had to learn to pivot and utilize different functions. Is your employer are they in black or white, or is it color? So the thing is, like, we actually have teams, like we have it, it's it's on our computer, and like we have it, we just don't use it. It's really and I've this so embarrassing. I I found that out the hard way because for like the first month that I was working there, I was sending people messages on Teams, and then like, what the heck? Why is nobody responding to me? Yeah, it's because nobody opens it. Like, no, don't even bother opening it. It just was oh, got it duly noted, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

I would love that they just like let you keep doing that. Like, why is no one talk to me?

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Well, it I genuinely can't remember like the very specific nature of like one of these messages, but I it was somebody I work like very closely with. I'm like, hey, do you know what this is? They're like, Oh, yeah, it's right here. And like they just like turned around and gave to me. I'm like, dude, why didn't I ask for that like a month ago, man? Like, what the heck? He's like, What are you talking about? Like, yeah, I sent you a Teams message, and he just busts out laughing. He's like, Yeah, I never opened that. What you're killing me. That's so like archaic. My goodness. I don't know, yeah. I it stinks because how else am I supposed to write like song lyrics when I'm feeling down and have it as my away message?

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Right? Well, Steve, I'll tell you that, you know, and my employer, each in my department, each division, we do things differently. But my team, especially the team of five of us, we're very good about figuring out if something needs to be an email, a team's message, or a quick call. Just again, to that clip calling to clarify something specific. You know, we we each have our own preference at what we prefer. But occasionally we're able to say, hey, let's get on a call and hash things out if it's something that we just we know there's a little bit of confusion on. Sure. You know, this probably goes without saying, but those uh teams or whatever platform you use, maybe not your organization, in some message, whatever, those shouldn't be paragraph length conversations. Sure. Right? Those are just quick little hits. They should be quick hits, questions, comments, or gifts like my team uses every day, just to keep things kind of fun. Yeah. And I think that so that those are for like those quick little, hey, can you take care of this for me real quick? Or is this program working for you? Just as an example. But email is used for further explanation to make an announcement, and I'm gonna take what you said before, a paper trail of requests, conversations, etc. Then that phone call is really making sure the message gets across to ask maybe a clarifying question, as I mentioned before, so that things don't get misconstrued over that text or email. Because again, you can't the tone you're not gonna be able to tell over email. Or to give your two-week notice.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Yeah, please don't. Please, please don't, please don't do that. Yeah, don't text that out. I do love a good, like, whether it's Reddit post or something like that, of somebody. I the most recent one that comes to mind is it's somebody took a screenshot on their phone of saying, like, yeah, I'm not gonna work this day. I think I'm just gonna quit. Like, and I'm paraphrasing this, sure. And like, obviously, the manager or whoever is like, it is professional to give a two-week notice. And the guy responds, like, you're lucky you even got a text. I think we've all been a part of an organization where, like, you're lucky I was even nice and told you. Like, that is good. I thought that was so funny. Like, well played, sir. Whether it's fake or whatever, I don't know. It just it made me laugh. It's that's that's awesome. Uh yeah, I completely appreciate the way you break those down. Like you could say that instant message is kind of in the similar ballpark as sending somebody a text message. It it shouldn't be this like long drawn-out thing. If you really needed that, shoot shoot a phone call. And this is coming from somebody that sends long drawn-out text messages from time to time. Because sometimes I can't say the things I want to out loud. I need to say them in writing because if I say them out loud, people will hear that and they're gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Why say many words when I I always screw up the Kevin from the office, but it's like why say many words when less work do or less word due or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah, exactly. Yes. Um, I haven't learned that skill set when it comes to text. I just I haven't. Um the amount of people that I send text to, they're always like, I don't like that you add punctuation. Sorry, that's that's the way I that's the way I is. A run-on sentence or what? I don't know. I don't know. They they they feel threatened by it. They feel like they're being judged when they don't do it, when really I don't care.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Well, just don't I want to add to this? Some of you that are listening, it I'm generally interested, would love to hear from people from this, but uh a lot of people listening might be thinking, well, yeah, this is kind of like common sense, but I would argue that it's not. No, it's just because of going back to the aforementioned bridging the generational gap that I've talked about multiple times on here before, different generations have different communication styles and and ways going about things, and so it's different across the board. And some people that are newer to texting or to messaging on on their their laptops, it it's different than just sending the email and picking up the phone and calling. So I think it is really important to talk about this. We we talk about this in training all the time of like email etiquette. And some people are like, oh my gosh, people don't know this. I'm like, no, they don't. You'd be surprised. You're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Uh, and with email etiquette, when you're on an email with many other people, please do not reply all. Don't reply all. Just please don't. Don't do it. It's it's the worst. I don't need to hear your response. I don't, I don't care. Please don't do it.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

I feel like we talked about that before because what I do is if I am emailing a large group, and there's there's times where I don't have to use a lot, but there's times where you are emailing a bunch of different people or different maybe group they're you know, categorized into an email group where you put them in the two box. But most of the time when at my organization, when I'm emailing a bunch of people, I'll I BCC that thing like no other because oh they're not they're gonna just see it go to them, and there's no oct, there's no way they can reply all because there's no one to reply all to. That's a great point. So yeah, that's you know what's what I do, but there's times where I it's you can't, or you it's better to make sure you know who else is on the email.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah, that's that's where I always get hung up because if I'm including somebody on there, I'm okay with other people seeing that, oh, these other folks are on the same informational level that I am. So you you take it as you will, that's fine. You know, I it's funny because we originally started talking about meetings and we've kind of curtailed into this like communications messaging kind of thing. But something that comes to my mind is that we can almost look at this like a hierarchy, right? Where you have your instant message slash even a phone call. I'd kind of put them maybe in the same category of like you just need a quick bit of information fast. Like, hey, do you have this? Great, wonderful, we can move on. An email is something that's a bit more formalized and has procedure to it and follow-up material. A meeting goes above that, and that is like we need to talk through this content. Yeah, like it's I think there should be that hierarchy that maybe it starts as an email just to say, hey, we're looking to do this, and we get we gauge some understanding, and if we're getting some feedback of this person thinks this and this person thinks this, that's time to say, Hey, why don't we spend a half an hour, we sit in the same room or um do a Teams meeting, something like that, and we can hash it out so everybody is on the same page and we can all say, I'm on board, I understand, and we can move forward.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Definitely. It it's almost like it can be a planning session, too, even if it's just an hour, right? It's you can't do that back and forth on an email. It just doesn't, it doesn't oh, it doesn't work. You need to have people be able to vocally and verbally speak in a meeting versus just typing it out in an email, and it's a good way for that back and forth. And yeah, I think that's definitely more powerful than yeah, the alternative for sure. So that's I think the examples that we we give there are like, yeah, these are definitely those in-person meetings and the importance of those. Yes, where you we started with talking about a six-minute meeting scheduled for an hour, and then you're gonna get the you're gonna get the people who go, Well, I I guess I'm gonna give you 54 minutes back of your day.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

No, right? You're not though. And and we actually already covered that. Like there's a hidden cost. There's a hidden cost. You're right that yes, you technically gave me back 54 minutes, but it's really like I mean, so it I know you're remote, Patrick. I am 100% on site, and the where I work, it's a big campus. So if I need to get from point A to point B, sometimes I can take me a 10-minute walk. Like that's not unheard of. So in the summer and spring and stuff, it's fantastic. Like, I love that. But I will tell you right now that if you schedule me for an hour, I come to your meeting, I walk across campus, I go into your meeting and it lasts I don't know, eight, 10 minutes, something like that. And now I'm trudging back, I'm annoyed. And I am definitely saying some things about you and your ability to plan a meeting. Like that's that's ridiculous. No, have a strategy, have a plan. And if your strategy or plan can be summarized nicely in an email, my God, please do that and save the world from another pointless meeting.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Please, exactly. And you know, you you can tell that you can and Steve, you're fortunate because you can tell them off as much as you want out of Teams because they're never gonna read it.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

I will write a strongly worded Teams message that'll be in the ether. It sure will. God, it'll be a year before somebody's like, wait a minute, uh, what is what are these messages here? Oh here we go. It was a joke. Don't worry about it.

unknown 43:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

This who's this guy? Oh, good lord. Yeah. No, Patrick, do you know whose meetings should never be an email?

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Spinneroski.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

Dang right, it's the spinneroski. It is indeed, folks, while my co-host buyers up the wheel, a very, very wooden wheel, may I add. A reminder for all of you listeners out there, each episode we spin the spinner roosky. It's a wheel of names that might belong, hopefully, to the woman who so generously shoved Mr. Patrick and I into the ugly club all those years ago. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I highly recommend circling back to our original episode, The Story of Us, where we talk about that. Um, the goal of this. Is that eventually we'll land on her name so we can thank her properly. Patrick, are we ready to uh do the roosk? Let's uh do it.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Let me uh that rooskey today. Wooden wheel.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

There should Claire.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Oh, Claire! Oh my gosh, Claire. I used to work with a Claire. She was very pleasant. It this she's not the one that pushed us into the ugly club, though. She's far too young to have done that. But Claire, that I think could very well be the name of the woman that did push us into the ugly club, though. Because that's a pretty common name, Claire. Right.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Yeah, you'd think you'd think so that we've got to be getting close. We have to be. I mean, we're we're already with this this spin number 32, I believe, 31, something like that. Yeah. Ooh, this would be 32 because remember the doubler that we had.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Oh, yeah, Hannah and Miley. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. May we never forget. Uh, well, Claire, thank you so much. Thank you for living rent-free in our heads. Thank you for all that you have given Patrick and I. Without your push, we wouldn't have we wouldn't be here right now. So thank you so very much. Hey, Steve, should we do some shout-outs? Yeah, bruh, we totally should. What do you do you have any? Oh, uh, you want me to start? I'll start us off. My shout out is going to go to Jenmar. Um, and if you're not familiar, I'm gonna put her info in the show notes. She is amazing. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting her in person less than a week ago. Um, she and I are doing the disrupt HR event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin coming up at the end of this month. And I am just I'm gonna go on the record right now. She is an absolute delight, but I think she doesn't give herself enough credit because she is going to be a formidable speaker. She is going to crush it. If it interests anybody out there, she actually has two books. I don't know if you know what that feels like to meet somebody for a first time, and you're like, hey, I get to share a stage with you. How cool is that? And she's like, Yeah, I think I'm gonna take some um some information from one of my two books I've written. I'm like, Yeah, yeah. So I do a podcast where I talk about how ugly I am. Like, do you have any idea how out of my depth I am on that? Like, God. Um, so she told me about her two books, showing up and lifting up. And I already said I was gonna add them to my reading arsenal. So now I'm just like compiling books. I I feel like I'm that kid that has like this stack of books at the library, and I'm gonna set them on a counter. And then once my time's up, I'm just gonna hand them back to the library and pretend I read them. Um, but folks, if you I'm gonna pop, like I said, I'm gonna pop her contact info in the show notes. If you decide to venture down that pathway and get in touch with her, please, please, please make sure you say Steve says hi. She is wonderful. I I can't talk about it enough how how wonderful of a person she is.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

That is amazing. I will shout out those managers that host and hold a meeting that ends about a minute or two early. That's a perfect amount of time. It's 30 minutes or it's an hour, and you end it like a minute or two early. That is that is awesome. Yeah, that's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah. What was the there's an acronym? Always leave early. Ayo. Ayo. Oh my god, how can I not remember that? Always leave early. Today I had a a training I did that was for three hours, and everybody got out, I think 15 minutes early. So I gave them 15 minutes of their time back. No, and you know what's funny is I feel like when I do that, um, people usually just linger around anyway just to chat. I'm always like, sure. That's awesome. Like, I don't know, I love that. That's besides the point. I think that that doesn't, man. Unless is there anything I'm missing? I think we got it all. Sounds awesome, folks. We love you. That's it for this episode. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll uh we'll see you next time. Please don't copyright us.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

That's a great ending. This whole thing could have been an email. That's what they're saying on our podcast. I hope not. God damn. Oh man.