Hi Michael - Funny you should mention this. I was at a PR conference in Chicago last week in which this very topic was discussed at length (as you can imagine, a salient issue in my world). But even in this presentation I saw people checking their Blackberries & mobile phones. I am constantly aware of people half-listening to me, "scanning" my e-mails, and generally being less and less able to process the sheer glut of communications with which we are all swamped daily. PR people are some of the worst offenders, ironically, as their lack of consciousness of this issue renders many of them unable to craft any sort of communications that will actually punch through the considerable noise.
Hi JGS,
That was Anthony posting, not me. He's my blogpartner but it took awhile for him to become regularly active here.
I laughed at your description of professional communicators.
Regarding the PR types, if they're profession is based on intrusion, there is really no need for listening.
(You're not a PR guy, right? Just joking).
By the way, last year Anthony and I sent candidates out to see a VP of Sales who read email while interviewing them. A very speedy guy. As I understand it, hyper-active people with attention deficit disorder need to operate like this, so they might even find it impossible to work with communication skills that might suit other people.
If it was your company, would you want a hyperactive guy with ADD to be your VP of sales???
My experience with these sorts of "advanced" multitaskers leaves me cold, for a couple of different reasons: Productivity - Would you want your surgeon to work this way? Like all-season tires, at best these folks may be good at the various things they do, but I would be willing to bet any sum that they are great at nothing. More often than not this frenetic activity is just a smokescreen for some glaring inadequacy. I am equally wary of people who over-employ business jargon or tell me how hard they work; I just stop taking them seriously...
(Continuning my lunchtime post here...)
And (2) Elitism - When I was a student the mark of professionalism was to make things look easy, i.e. waltzing into an exam all pretending you'd been on a bender drinking until 4am when in fact you had all worked like dogs. "Making it look easy" is still the hallmark of athletes but evidently in the business world we have to Look Burdened. As my Aunt would say, it all has more than a Whiff of Vulgarity. A while back I attended a wedding rehearsal dinner where the groom, a low-level office functionary, wore a cellphone on his belt. Why? In case he had to run out during the toast to modify a power point slide????
Perhaps he was hoping for a call from the governor with a reprieve?
Seriously that is a good point. I know some people who are defintely off the chart in terms of their "multitasking" abilities or at least the appearance of those abilities.
More often they are lousy time managers.
I think there may be more than a listening issue here. See my post "Ambition and Opportunism" and the IBD's suggestions for the detection of opportunists:
http://www.blogger.com/app/
post....846402267071758
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