Pick up the phone!
I often work with my adult son on his latest business endeavors. My son Josh is a musician, producer, song writer and recording engineer currently working in Nashville. To say that he works hard is an understatement. He often works 16- to 20-hour shifts, working all hours of the day and night.
While working on one of his latest projects recently, I was having difficulty communicating with one of the project participants. I would write an e-mail to this young person and receive back some responses that were a bit curt and, frankly, a bit disrespectful. I was confused about why I had seemed to have gotten off on the wrong foot with this young person. After all, I was always polite and very businesslike in my dealings with him.
As I discussed my challenges communicating with this young person with my son, he pointed out that he himself is often somewhat offended with my e-mails, and he often interpreted my e-mails as rude and forceful until he realized what was happening.
“You see, dad,” he told me, “young people don’t e-mail any more, they text. And texting has become somewhat of an art form.” He explained that the use of punctuation in e-mails is considered rude and forceful in the texting world. Instead, e-mail statements are broken up and punctuated with smiley faces, acronyms like LOL (for laugh out loud) and other emoticons to keep the conversation light hearted and respectful.
He said that it is OK if I don’t learn the art of texting (and this is where I was proud of Josh’s insightfulness) but he suggested that if I had a hard time communicating via e-mail, that I should have picked up the phone and called him.
He said, “Dad, if you had picked up the phone when you first started to have the problem, you would be getting along just fine right now.”
Thank you, Josh, for teaching your publisher dad a business lesson. If there are any questions at all about written documents, texts, e-mails or any other form of communication, pick up the phone — or better yet, go see your customer and talk with them face to face.
It’s a lesson that we should all keep in mind. E-mails are subject to interpretation and there is so much information missing (tone, inflection, emotion, etc.) that can’t be communicated unless you hear the person’s voice or see their body language. In this high-tech age with multiple forms of communication, there is still no equivalent to the spoken word, or better yet, face-to-face communication.
On a lighter note, as we wrap up this last issue of 2013 and approach the holidays, we would like to thank all of our readers, supporters and sponsors for making this the best year yet at D.O.M. magazine. We are stronger than ever and are continuing to grow.
And don’t expect us to stop here. D.O.M. magazine has plans to provide access to our magazine to more readers in more places, using ANY type of device or computer.
In the near future, D.O.M.(and our sister publication Helicopter Maintenancemagazine) will be accessible via new apps for Apple (iOS) devices, Android devices and web browsers.
We will continue to make D.O.M. magazine FREE to our readers, and we are confident that being able to access our publications via these new apps will give access to more readers around the world.
We will not be declining our print circulation with this change. Our objective with this new app launch is to allow our readers to access our publications any way they please.
We will update you on our website when these new apps are available — so check back often for the announcement.