Stay In Control Of Your Communication: When to Initiate, When to Respond

Have you ever regretted starting a conversation or writing an email, or answering someone, and thought afterwards you shouldn’t have done it that way? I know I have. Many times I’ve rued the fact that I’d ‘put my foot in it,’ or simply should have known better. The truth is we all do it. It’s initiating and responding in communication with others at the wrong times and in the wrong ways.

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This principle is about protecting accessibility. For your own peace of mind and heart you need to protect your accessibility. It’s essential in your struggle for self-empowerment. Self-empowerment is always a struggle because there are so many competing forces for your time. The competing forces are life priorities, the needs of others, and tasks you might need to do. We all need to protect our accessibility to be able to effectively reflect and plan. Without reflection and planning we are never at our best, and this is not only a bad result for ourselves, but it’s also a bad result for others – everyone misses out on the best we can offer.

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I’ve found the best times to initiate communication is clearly when I’ve had time to plan the way (the process) and time to think and cater for people’s responses, which are the consequences of the action. This has left me with a quiet confidence that the communication won’t hurt anyone; in fact, that it might just help, and be appropriate for the time and the needs of others.

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I try not initiate communication when I’m pressed for time, as this has the effect of disempowering me. I just can’t think well. Too much time pressure means I cannot think of ‘the way’ or people’s responses adequately. If I have too much on, and try to do still even more, that’s when people get hurt through my communication as I simply can’t foresee needs and risks as I normally could if I had more time. This is essentially about “communication risk management.” For this reason, we should only initiate one thing at a time, or do things in staged or planned ways. The key reason is we’re talking about people. We need to be gentle and considerate with people, don’t we?

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Responding to communication is not really any different from initiating apart from the fact that we can’t actually control when they’ll come to us. We need to be sensitive first of all, as some people approach us thinking we’re busy already and that already they’ve become an intrusion to us. They can’t leave with that perception. They need to know that we’re approachable. So what happens if we have someone that pesters us, and interrupts us all the time?! We need a specific plan for this type of person; for instance, when they call, let it go through to message bank. Nullify the interruption. In fact, there should be times when you let all calls (other than emergencies) go through to message back. There should be times when you dedicate your time to what FranklinCovey call “Quadrant II” time; time for planning, thinking, and ‘important, but not yet urgent’ work. This is very productive time. It’s our most satisfying work. Sometimes if you don’t get back to a person, you will actually give them the impetus to solve the problem innovatively, or some other way (without you), and this can be empowering for them.

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Knowing about when to respond is an art. It typically requires courage to say “no.” This is not a put off or a rebuff for the person attempting to communicate with you; it is simply holding a red flag as to the timing of their communication. Some issues however cannot ever be avoided. Emergencies and urgent “Quadrant I” activities must be tackled there and then. The key is to minimise the amount of these tasks. No one can ever live at peace and protect their accessibility if they’re continually hounded with Quadrant One’s.

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If you get the opportunity, and you generally do with email and voicemail, don’t respond until you’ve had some time to think peacefully about “the what” of the response, and “how” to respond. Ask yourself, “What’s the wise thing to do?” Take time and muse over drafts; think about your audience... emails often go to “all” or to many people at a time. Don’t press the “send” button until you’ve adequately reflected about the likely effect of the communication on each category of person in the “To” and “CC” lists.

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It all comes down to time and planning. Allow yourself the time to think and to foresee problems you might cause in your communication. Also, if it involves conflict, you have time then to ‘minimise the heat of return fire’ if you’ve given the person (and the communications) time to cool down. It’s great when you’ve played your good part in defusing a situation.

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There is so much blessing involved in communicating this way; the biggest blessing of all though, is that you can stay in control, you protect your accessibility, and you stay empowered; both for yourself and for others.

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Be wise in knowing when to initiate and when to respond.

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© Copyright 2008, Steven John Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.