Brian Tracy offers seven concise, practical tactics to reduce telephone interruptions and use the phone more productively at work. Key recommendations include treating the phone as a business tool, screening calls, scheduling uninterrupted work periods, setting callback times, batching and planning calls, and taking thorough notes of phone agreements.
Hello there. Here are seven ideas to help you deal with the tyranny of telephone interruptions. Use the telephone as a business tool. Get on and off the phone fast. Don't socialize on the phone when you are working. Make your calls as efficient as possible. You see, when you were a teenager, when we were all teenagers, the telephone became your primary social tool. It was your connection to your friends and to members of the opposite sex. As a result, you became accustomed to spending a lot of time on the phone in idle conversation. As an adult, however, you still associate the phone with socializing, with idle chatter, so it's become a habit. However, when you enter into the world of work, you have to break that habit and begin to view the telephone as a means of business communication. You must discipline yourself to use the telephone as a business tool during the hours from 9 to 5. The second way to avoid the tyranny of telephone interruptions is if you're in an office setting. Have your calls screened. Find out who is on the phone and what he wants before you answer. Overcome the natural curiosity that wells up in you when people you don't know call you. Find out why they're calling before you take the call in the first place. A third way to avoid interruptions in your work is have your calls held by someone else whenever possible. Set aside periods of the day when you take no interruptions. Turn off your phone, turn off your cell, turn off your computer. Don't become a slave to a ringing phone or to a bell. One of the best tactics you can use is to actually disconnect your phone when you are working on something important or turn it off if it's important enough. Whoever is calling you will call back again later. A fourth key is to set clear callback times rather than spending telephone tag when you call people and they're not there. Leave a message and the time you will be available to take the return phone call. When somebody calls you and you can't take the call, make sure that your secretary or receptionist gets a call back. Time. This is the time when you can get a hold of the caller so that you don't play telephone tag back and forth day after day. A fifth way to control your telephone calls is to batch your calls. Use the learning curve. Make all of your telephone calls at once. Don't spread them throughout the day. Sometimes you can accumulate your phone calls up to 11am and then return them all between the hour of 11 and noon. Or you can accumulate them up to 3:30pm and then return them ALL by 4:30pm and save the rest of the time for your work. Another great tool is to plan your calls in advance. This has been so helpful to me over the years. Think about a business call as a meeting and write out an outline or agenda for your telephone meeting or discussion. Don't waste time by picking up the phone and calling and then forgetting the reason why you were calling or forgetting some of the things that you wanted to discuss. A seventh key to telephone effectiveness is to take good notes. Take complete notes of telephone conversations. The power is on the side of the person with the best notes. Never answer a telephone without a pad of paper and a pen in your hand. Keep careful notes of the things that you agree to. Write down what the other person agrees to, including the numbers, times, dates, amounts and so on that are discussed on the phone. These notes can be extremely important to you in the future.
