Be More Responsive – Step #4 – Respond Appropriately

At some point, you will either have the answer your colleagues need or realize that you do not. If you have the answer they need – great! However, once you know that you are unable to help, let your colleagues know as soon as possible so they can go elsewhere. Avoid becoming the “black hole” or “bottomless pit” that exists in so many organizations by responding no matter what. In order to help your colleagues make progress, consider the following messages:

“I’ve tried to figure out what is wrong with the spreadsheet you asked me to look at and I cannot find the problem. Rather than keep you waiting any longer, I think you should call Frederick in Accounts Payable who knows more about these types of spreadsheets than I do. His extension is 455.”

“I gave this my best shot and I still can’t figure it out. Have you thought about going back to the client for more information?”

“I was able to make some progress. I forwarded this to Debbie Smith in marketing asking her to see if she can help as well.”

Be More Responsive – Step #3 – Update

Once you have set expectations and quickly acknowledged your colleagues outreach, you need to keep your colleagues updated on the status of their outreach.

You may not have started working on it yet, or you just started working on it and you aren’t ready to respond, or you have been working on it a lot and you don’t have a response yet. By keeping your colleagues updated, you will benefit in the following ways:

– You continue to manage expectations that reflect your calendar and workload.

– You continue to reduce some of the frustration that your colleagues may experience as time passes without a next step or conclusion.

– You provide your colleagues the information and opportunity to change how they are working to satisfy their outreach. For example, your colleagues may decide to speak to someone else to get a resolution.

Be More Responsive – Step #2 – Acknowledge

There is a big difference between acknowledging an outreach and providing an answer to the outreach. You may not have the answer or you may not have the time to provide the answer at that moment. Regardless of the situation and in order to help your colleagues make progress, you do need to acknowledge them. By acknowledging receipt of an email or a phone message, you will benefit in the following ways:

– You ensure that your colleagues know that you received the message, reducing the likelihood that your colleagues will send another email looking for an update or call again to confirm that you received the message in the first place.
– You are able to set new expectations that reflect your calendar and workload.
– You reduce some of the frustration that your colleagues may experience as time passes without a response.

What does “quickly” mean? Regardless of whether it was Plato or Shakespeare who popularized the often quoted “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” quickness is also in the eye of the beholder. Attempting to meet all of your colleagues’ expectations for quickness is as unlikely as all of your colleagues thinking the outfit you have on today looks “fantastic!” Your goal is to set an expectation that you can follow consistently so your colleagues know what to expect from you.

If you can’t commit to the “24-hour rule,” (don’t commit to something you cannot fulfill) the next best strategy to set expectations around response time is the “24/48/72” model. Regardless of the number of daily outreaches you receive, you should respond to the majority of colleagues within 24 hours, and you should have contacted the vast majority of them within 72 hours. This does not mean all of the topics have been resolved; this means you have contacted them in order to keep things moving.

Be More Responsive – Step #1 – Set Expectations

Although you cannot control the number of inbound outreaches to you, you can set expectations regarding how your colleagues will hear back from you. Expectations are the boundaries you create which reflect your unique style, calendar and workload. Here are some ways to set expectations/boundaries with your colleagues:

– Establish, communicate, and honor a 24-hour response rule where you say in your emails and voicemails that you will respond to your colleagues within 24 hours of your receipt of their outreach. It is generally understood that this means Monday if the message is left from Friday to Sunday.

– Schedule time on your calendar specifically to respond to voicemails and emails.

– Utilize the “out-of-office” functionality embedded in your email system when you know you will be unable to access email or voicemail (i.e., you are attending a three-day offsite meeting or you are on vacation), and ensure you include when you will be returning to the office, when you will be able to start responding to outreaches you have received, and the name, phone number and email address of an individual your colleagues can reach during your absence

– Update your voicemail to let your colleagues know that you are out of the office, when you will be returning, and who they can contact in your absence if they have an urgent need.

How Can I Be More Responsive?

You may feel that you should not respond to colleagues until you have the answer to their questions or requests. You may assume that others know you are working on their problem and you don’t feel a need to keep them updated. You may rationalize that you are so busy, you don’t have time to get back to anyone other than your boss.

While these are reasonable perspectives, days could go by before you have an answer (especially if you are dependent on others for information) and colleagues who originally reached out to you may feel forgotten. Without a response or an update, your colleagues are unsure if you received their email or if you are working on their request at all, allowing frustration to grow and progress to stall.

Harry Ebbighausen, a former President at Iron Mountain Incorporated has mastered the ability to be highly responsive. Despite his voluminous workload and hectic travel schedule supporting a $3 billion enterprise, Harry possesses a reputation throughout Iron Mountain and the records management industry as an person who “gets back to everyone,” whether the individual reaching out to him is a fellow executive or a truck driver at a distant facility.

Harry’s reasons for being responsive are clear. “It’s a matter of respect,” says Harry. “If a colleague or an employee is taking the time to reach out to you, there must be a good reason. You demonstrate respect to others by responding to their outreach as quickly as you can.” At the same time, “if you don’t respond to others quickly, they will either not reach out to you again or fill-in their own answer to their problem. Sometimes, it may not be a good answer.”

Have You Been Labeled Unresponsive?

Responsiveness is the degree in which you get back to colleagues and foster progress.Your colleagues also do not have a lot of time. Their world is as frenetic as yours. When your colleagues do reach you, they need your help in order to keep moving forward.

Have you been labeled as unresponsive? Do your colleagues use the phrases “black hole,” “bottomless pit” or “it’s like pulling teeth” when describing you? Your colleagues are reaching out to you for a reason. Most of the time, your colleagues are contacting you to obtain something from you (i.e., information, an opinion) in order to make progress on whatever is important to them. Some colleagues may be reaching out just to say “hello,” yet even those colleagues are looking for something – opportunities to build a professional relationship with you. If you have been labeled as a black hole, you are injuring your visibility in two ways –

– Your unresponsiveness impacts negatively on the progress of others.
– Your unresponsiveness impacts the desire for others to reach out to you in the future.

These behaviors are visibility decelerators – your unresponsiveness creates frustration and damages relationships. You become an obstructionist of individual and organizational progress.

How Responsive Are You?

In the Raise Your Visibility model, the third visibility accelerator is responsiveness. Responsiveness is defined as is the degree in which you get back to colleagues and foster progress. It is the other side of the revolving door for the second visibility accelerator – accessibility.

Do any of the following characteristics seem familiar to you when you think about being responsive to others?

– You never return phone calls or respond to your email.

– You have to be caught “live” in your office or on the phone in order for your colleague to connect with you.

– You don’t recognize (and in some cases, don’t care) that you are unresponsive.

– When you do get back to your colleagues, you mask your behavior with self-effacing humor or by overusing happy face emoticons? For example “I totally forgot to get back to you on this! Another topic for me and my therapist …! Anyway, still working on it…”

Being responsive is not about always getting back to everyone instantly. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “You can get back to some of your colleagues all of the time, and all of your colleagues some of the time, but you cannot get back to all of your colleagues all of the time.”