Every Day Is Labor Day; Are You Listening to Me?

As we rub the late summer sand, sunblock and slumber out of our eyes today, let’s remember what yesterday’s Holiday was all about—taking a break from work during a “work day” to honor those in the workforce.

While these three-day national holiday weekends can easily stretch into four or five days, I know I’m not alone when I say it’s getting harder than ever to get back into groove. Funny thing about it—most of us were checking email, posts, tweets and fairly tethered to our mobile devices over the long weekend, so it should be easier to get caught up, not harder, right? Not so fast.

We may have been “checking in” while out of our normal work routine, but we weren’t trying to hold back the information deluge.

Also, the so-called work day has lost its conventional boundaries and the pressure to stay in touch has never been greater. The pace of doing business is also faster than it used to be and the amount of information that the typical worker must manage is infinitely larger than before. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO or the summer intern.

I’m not sure if all this technology is making us more efficient, but at least there are more ways to communicate with each other and connect with someone if they’re ignoring you on one of their phones. Problem is, you never get a break and your brain never has a chance to recharge for optimal efficiency and fresh ideas.

Understanding different communication styles

I recently did a piece for Association Adviser, which has a following of over 5,000 trade association execs. While working on the article, it became clear that workforce communication styles are changing and we’re never going back to the “command and control” top down style in the association world. It seems the same holds true in the corporate and government sector.

Jeff DeCagna, chief strategist of Principled Innovation, told me that 21st century [association] leaders increasingly rely on “collaboration, listening and nurturing,” rather than command and control.

At a big association gathering I attended last month, Susan Cain, best-selling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, said that introverts are increasingly finding their way to the corner office. She also said you need to understand that introverts on your team aren't "lesser contributors or less successful in social interaction." Instead, they process knowledge and interact with their surroundings in a quieter way. "They tend to be passionate, but somewhat shy and value periods of solitude which allow them to be [optimally] creative."

Getting personal

My wife and I had a heated debate the other night about who’s not paying enough attention to the other. She claimed I no longer have the ability (or willingness) to listen to what she’s trying to share with me. I claim she no longer has the ability to summarize information or divvy it up into digestible chunks that I can handle after a long day of being communicated to. I’m try to follow what she’s sharing, but get overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of details and nuance she can pick out of things that happen to her during the day

Does any of this sound familiar?

Conclusion

Whether it’s in your work, your family or volunteer settings, we could all do a better job of respecting each other’s personality types (i.e. introverts vs. extroverts) and communication style (free-flowing conversational vs. bullet-point and concise; emphathy vs. problem solving).

If you naturally dominate the room, learn to let others into the conversation as they may have great insights to share with the group. If you’re naturally shy, learn to speak up. If you’re a great story teller, maybe you can work on giving the abbreviated version first, and reigning back on the details unless your conversation partner truly asks for them. And if folks are telling you that NOT everything in life can be condensed into 140-characters or a few terse bullet points, then maybe allow those around you to share a few details and some color. It’s not only how they communicate information, it’s how they tell you they’re feeling.

Make each day about doing great work, not about laboring to communicate.

More tips can be found on the FREE Resources page of our website.

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Tags: Association Adviser, Jeff DeCagna, Susan Cain, Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking men vs. women communication

Live Events Still King in B2B—But Reasons Not So Obvious

Keep your antennae up in the elevator and on the shuttle bus. Make time to engage an introvert

A new study from ABM (The Association of Business Information & Media Companies)  reinforces what many of you suspected, but may have been reluctant to express to your peers. B2B marketers still place a higher value on live events than on any other media channel for lead generation and for promoting new products. Researchers found that 89 percent of B2B marketers considered face-to-face events a “successful” channel for them. Rounding out the top five were: Sponsored white papers (75%), sponsored video (69%), webinars (64%) and e-newsletter advertising (64%). TV, radio, outdoor and mobile brought up the rear, with less than one-in-three marketers advocating their use.

As I head off to one of the biggest annual events in the association world this weekend, it’s hard to argue with the power of face-to-face interaction in this digitally dominated world. But where I’ve personally gotten the most value is not from the trade show floor, planned networking events, “meet-up” destinations or social events—it’s from the chance encounters on hotel and convention center elevators, in the fitness center and especially on the shuttle busses to and from the convention center.

More on that in a minute.

At the end of the day, everyone at an industry or professional conference shares common interests with each other—or else they wouldn’t be going there to network, learn and associate with their peers. They’ve taken time out of their busy schedules (and dollars out of their budgets) to make the commitment to attending. And you never know if that chance encounter will end up being more valuable to your business or career than any of the planned meetings you had on your schedule.

Macro View

Despite a lackluster jobs report, home prices jumped 12.2 percent over this time a year ago, marking the largest annual gain since March of 2006, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case Shiller 20-city home index. Researchers said home values are rising as more buyers are bidding on a relatively tight supply of housing with the prospect of rising mortgage rates on the horizon.

Meanwhile, and index we created of business and entrepreneurship magazines (Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur, Wired and Fast Company) was down 1.5 percent over this time a year ago according to min/min online data suggested a mixed bag on the B2B advertising front. On the midsize front, Inc. was up 39 percent, while big company Fortune was down over 17 percent. On the entrepreneurial side, Wired was up 9 percent, but Fast Company was down 17 percent year-over year.

Conclusion

You never know who you’re going to run into. But if you don’t get your face out of your screen and your fingers off the keyboard once in a while, you’ll never find out. As Susan Cain, best-selling author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won’t Stop talking,” quipped in her keynote address today at the ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo in Atlanta, “some of the best ideas come from serendipitous interactions.” Long live the serendipity of live events!

More tips can be found on the FREE Resources page of our website.

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Tags: Live events, serendipity, power of live events, B2B marketing, ABM, Association of Business Information & Media Companies, Case Schiller, Susan Cain, power of introverts, ASAE annual conference