The Power of Picking Up the Phone

October 25, 2013 / in Community Service, General Information, Personal / by Jason Terry

Post written by Jason Terry, Entrepreneur | Social Coach | Web Developer | Scuba Instructor | Guitar Player | Cruise Traveler | Lego Collector

Wow.  It’s been an interesting three weeks since we got back from Vegas!  We had the usual catch up to do with emails and phone calls, but we also faced more challenges than normal….and one of them in particular could have been avoided.

But before I go there, I wanted you to know that there are a ton of great things going on in our world:

• Mic and I are heading out to Hillcrest Country Club with Jason Moxness (Alterra Bank) and Joe Pribula (Wells Fargo) to play in a charity golf tournament for a 2.5 year old boy named Austin Durbin who is battling leukemia. The funds raised will help his family pay for medical expenses. If you’d like to contribute, they’ve set up a PayPal account.
• We recently sold a couple of big projects including additional LinkedIn training classes for current clients and a WordPress website project for a new client that will be completed by the end of the year.
• We’re taking our wives, Trista and Missy, to the Chiefs game on Sunday. Big thanks to our friend and client Jacob Wayman of Kansas City Internal Medicine for the invitation!
• We donated time to a group of MBA students working on a class project studying innovative businesses (we were honored to be chosen for a case study.)

Ok. Now on to one of the challenges I mentioned above. The point of this post is to serve as a reminder about how important it is, in business and in life, to pick up the phone instead of routinely relying on email or text messages.

There was a situation last week where I got an email from a company that we have a TON of relationship with. It was a request for one of the services that we offer, and the tone of the email was “safe and friendly” between friends.

I sent a quick response with challenges about the request without thinking too much about it… and it turned into a MUCH bigger issue than it should have. Too many people got involved (on both sides of the table) and too many assumptions were made about what the messages were really saying.

If I would have just picked up the phone to follow up and ask for more details about the request, I never would have typed what I did in my email reply.

Hours and Hours to Recover

I had conversations with Mic. I asked for advice from one of my peer advisory groups. I had one-on-one conversations with my friends at the company.  It was an emotionally tough couple of days and weekend… because of a single email exchange…all of which could have been avoided with a single phone call.

A Great Reminder

I’ve always liked and believed in the saying, “You don’t know how good your relationship is with someone until you have a big disagreement or argument.”

I’m glad to know that my relationship is stronger as a result of this situation after talking it through. It’s been a great business reminder for me personally and professionally.

Have you ever experienced something like this situation in business or in life? Let us know how you handled it.

And, as always, thank you for your support of Blue Gurus and our blog. We appreciate you so much.