So you're sitting at your desk, typing away when a colleague comes over, interrupts you, and talks to you; they could be passing on a phone message, briefing you on a task, rambling on about the weather in general, or just telling you about their plans for the weekend…at this point it could be about anything because you’re simply just not listening. You’ve definitely nodded appreciatively in the right places, mumbled “yeah” and “no” absent-mindedly. And, then, when they’ve walked away, you wonder what on earth they were going on about because you realise you don’t have a clue what they just said to you.
How many of you have found yourself doing this? I ask the point because after my blogathon, I received a comment which raised this very issue:
Dear Natalie
“Having read your blogathon meticulously, I note most people did not indeed answer the questions asked, only perhaps one of maybe three or five in a section...do you think this a reflection of the employee population ie their attention skills to details and instruction? I see our American friend in particular wrote detailed responses and shone out above the rest.”
I know I find myself switching off to others around me when I’m on deadline to finish off an article or trying to keep up with the flow of e-mails hitting my inbox - where I really just want to get on with the task in hand, without being disturbed....
Quite often I’m in the position of simultaneously finishing off an important e-mail while at the same time trying to listen to my colleague who has cut into my train of thought.
Perhaps, once in a while we should just take a breather, stop what we’re doing and take a break to really tune in to what is going on around us or else, politely inform our colleagues, “sorry, I can’t talk right now, I’m in the middle of something really important...just give me five and then you’ll have my full attention.” It would eliminate the irritation that is caused by being interrupted and also stop any unnecessary confusion when you call over to your colleague, and say, “sorry, what did you just say.” I know I’m guilty of this myself when I’m under pressure – but my colleagues aren’t mind readers.
So, let’s all take a leaf out of HR Wench. If you’re going to take part in something, whether that’s engaging with another colleague, reading a document or listening in on a meeting, shut yourself off to everything else and solely focus on one particular task. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted. Read or listen carefully (whatever is most appropriate) and be observant. On the flipside, if you notice your colleague is deep in thought or busy…don’t rush in, respect those around you and give them space. They are much more likely to respond to you if you’ve been thoughtful towards them.
For example, I applaud one of my colleagues who recently came round with raffle tickets and asked me if I wanted to buy any, I told her yes…but she noticed I was swamped, so she said…”don’t worry, I’ll come back later, I can see your busy…” Two days later, she turned up at my desk in the morning when all was restored to calm and said: “do you still want raffle tickets,” I replied: “yes, thanks so much for coming back,” and then we struck up a bit of banter. What a perfect way to start the day...
Comments (2)
Posted by HRWench | September 27, 2007 3:50 PM
Aw shucks! I'm blushing. :)
Posted on September 27, 2007 15:50
Posted by Jon Ingham | September 28, 2007 8:36 AM
Hi Natalie, I think there's a couple of things here.
One is that there is certainly some degree of truth to this. We face increasing distractions in work and life and our attention is often diverted to other tasks (so 'Constant Partial Attention': http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11899893/site/newsweek/page/2/ ).
This isn't necessarly a problem, as it can help our productivity, but people who are busy on their blackberries throughout their meetings probably need to think how much value they are getting / providing through this split attention.
I was particularly struck by David Rock's presentation at the CIPD conference last week where he was talking about attention driving the quality of our lives - and I wonder how CPA will impact this. Probably not that positively!
But more positively, I do think there is something positive here too. I think we are evolving a slightly different approach to communication when using emails, instant messaging, blogging etc, which given the asyncronous nature of these technologes is probably totally appropriate.
This change is about extending the conversation by building on points that interest us / we believe may interest others, rather than simply responding to specfic points that have ben raised, as you might in a face-to-face conversation.
Anyway, I hope that some of these comments may have some relevance to your original post!
Jon.
Posted on September 28, 2007 08:36