Once again, Mark and Mike at Manager Tools hit a very important pet peeve of mine, how to use voice mail effectively. It amazes me that we still have to educate people about this, but anyone who has received voice mail knows that there is a problem.

My favorite tip from this show, "Move the conversation forward!" For me, this is the main issue. No more "Call Me" voice mails would be top of the list for Christmas this year. (SMILE)

How to Leave a Voicemail

This cast describes how to leave an effective voicemail.

If you’ve ever gotten a voicemail which sounded like, “[your name], this is [their name], call me,” you know why we’re doing this cast.

Phone manners have been steadily decreasing for decades. When boys used to call for Mark’s daughter Kate, they would slouch verbally through, “Is Kate there?” and Mark would answer, “Yes,” and hang up. He safely assumed that any person who asked that question was a boy, and not enough of a gentleman to be allowed to speak with her. (At first she rolled her eyes, but later she liked the hurdle that Mark’s demand created: those boys that never got it ended up being…well, boys.)

What about at work? The “Bob this is Joe call me” is only one example. It ranks right up there with “saw that you called, what’s up?” answered with, “did you, errrrr…listen to my voicemail?”

In this cast, we have recommendations for how to leave a voicemail. We think of this as the first cast on phone skills…out of several hundred to come.

(Via Manager Tools.)

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One of the most important parts of any job, whether you are an employee, manager or executive is communication. Without regular communication among all the parts of your company, projects will fail, tasks will go incomplete and business will suffer. Furthermore, as an employee, if you are not communicating with your manager enough to know that you are doing the most critical work of the moment, you risk your job, as well. Have you talked with your manager today? Managers? Have you talked with your employees today? Does everyone know the critical path through this day, this week , the month? If not, why not?



Next Friday: March 3, 2007: Playing "the enforcer" could put your career at risk

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