When news breaks in my brother’s case, there is often a deluge of attempted contacts by media. I do my best to manage it. One challenge is that, while communication runs two directions, it may not occur in the same medium. We are experiencing that at work too. As staff at the law library shift to a hybrid model, it has introduced less certainty in how and with which tool to communicate. Chat? Email? Virtual calls? Synchronous? Asynchronous? When?

We are going to pull together a small group to make recommendations. Our challenge is heightened because we have, like many law libraries, recently adopted new technology (Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365). But we have not yielded our old communications methods (SMS, email). Not only do we have a lot of tools, we have individual preferences on how to use them.

This post isn’t about work so much as my personal experience as seen through working with media. We make assumptions about how other people use communication tools based on how we use them. I am perhaps an extreme use case, which colors both my perceptions of how to communicate with others and how they’re likely to communicate with me.

Choose Your Weapon

I have a phone. I can receive texts and calls on it and it also is wi-fi enabled. This means that I have a portable means of unlimited access. Skype? Got it. Teams? Sure.

What a lot of people who interact with me don’t realize is that the phone number I share publicly or on business accounts is not my phone’s number. I use a Google Voice number for most interactions. If you’ve asked me for a phone number, there’s a good chance it’s a (312) Chicago area code number.

At first, I got the number for convenience. We’d just moved to Canada and I wanted a non-international number for US family and friends to contact me on. After my brother’s case, it has been a lifesaver because it provides a central platform for me to use for communications. No matter that I’ve moved locations and have a new phone and new phone number. This phone number stability has been really useful.

Another benefit of a Google Voice or VOIP number is that it’s disposable. When Paul is home, I will probably discard the phone number. It’s not my goal to continue to interact with media or anyone else that has that number.

Media sometimes asks what type of phone I am using: landline, mobile. That’s like saying you watch TV. The format and the content are distinct. I just acknowledge some method. The reality is that, 99% of the time, I am on a PC computer using a hard ethernet line. No landline. No mobile.

No difference. Just as on a mobile device, I can have Skype or Teams or whatever on my PC. And email. And social media. An unending list of potential communications options.

Offensive or Defensive Communications

I prefer to communicate in writing. It provides a couple of benefits to me. They include:

  • a slower pace, allowing me to think about what I want to say and craft my message
  • an asychronous approach, so that I can consider the other person and when they will receive my message, and to give them time to react
  • a written record of what I’ve said and, often, especially with lawyers, any replies that we share

Of the written options, I lean on email the hardest. Mobile keyboards are small for my large hands. And most SMS and social media platforms have text character limits that unnaturally limit communications.

This preference colors all of my other choices. For example, since I do not use synchronous phone calls or asynchronous text, I often turn off my phone. Or leave it in airplane mode or in a Faraday bag to stop it from receiving or sending transmissions.

A tweet about creating my own Faraday bag with aluminum-reinforced fabric for my phone

With my phone turned off, communications are substantially within my control. I can turn off device notifications on any other devices. On a PC, I can keep open the apps that I want to notify me. If I don’t have a tab open in my browser for Google Voice, I don’t see phone calls or texts.

If you want to, you can have Voice calls or texts emailed to you. You can then read the SMS or transcribed call memo at your leisure. I sometimes turn this on. If, like me, email is central to your communication strategy, it means you can also file those SMS texts and call transcripts as emails.

The Illusion of Access

A phone number creates an expectation of access by those who have it. A social media account can as well. You can run private social media accounts. Or you can inhibit contact by, for example, turning off the ability for people to direct message you.

My experience is that, if you do not, there is an expectation that you will be accessible. In the case of media, and I’m sure it is not limited to that case, it can create the illusion that you will be accessible in all the possible methods. Therefore, someone who wants to reach you should reach out to all of those access points.

It makes a bit of mathematical sense. If I have 5 contact points (Skype, Twitter, phone, SMS, email), and you contact me on 5 of them, you theoretically increase the chance of reaching my attention. This was my recent experience, with some people contacting me with the same message on multiple platforms or access points.

An alternative approach is to assume all of the access points mean equivalent access. In this case, the person who is attempting to make contact chooses their own favorite. Some people will use SMS and only that. Some will email only. Some will call and text, living off their own phone. A few people even call my work phone number (something that I never, ever use for anything that isn’t work), having been unable to suss out a better, acknowledged, access point.

The math fails, though, if the access point isn’t accessible. People who text me or phone me will get to a dead end. It may be days before I check those resources. The same goes for social media DMs. If they have only chosen one of those routes, they’re completely out of luck.

One thing I have realized is that, if you use Twitter’s Tweetdeck app, you don’t see DMs unless you have created a column for them. Out of sight, out of mind. Since I rarely use Twitter for interactive or social purposes, there have been sometimes months between me looking at DMs, even though they’re open.

They may not realize it, though, unless they are self-aware about their own communications choices. They may assume that a person with a phone takes calls or accepts texts. I was even added to a group chat with someone I barely know. I am confident they always communicate in that way but I found it really intrusive. The group effect meant I was even less likely to engage with them.

It’s not really fair. I would not mind interacting with someone who had cc’d a bunch of people on an email. I think that I feel more at liberty to choose whether to reply-all in that case, though. I may only reply to one person, something you can’t do on chat without starting a new chat.

The Point is Communication

One thing I recognize in my own focus on narrowed communication tools is that it can’t frustrate the purpose. If I need to communicate a message, I need to find a way to do it. The same at work as in my personal life. If the only way to reach someone is to use a tool with which I’m uncomfortable, then I need to accept some discomfort.

In my dealings with media, I can choose to a certain extent how to communicate. It’s not that they need the communication more than I do. It’s just that they may be more flexible because their information gathering has expectations around it. So, unlike me, they may be more accustomed to communications from an individual coming in an individual method.

One of the things I think we’ll need to work out at work is to understand how the person receiving the communication wants to receive it. This post is all about my preferences. Ideally, we would know how people want to communicate. I do not understand people who default to a phone call – and voice messages and playing voice mail tag – but perhaps it’s an efficient tool for them.

This can be complicated in a work environment because not everyone will want the same thing. Even at work, I find a lot of emails could be avoided. Microsoft Teams offers some really good options for information management. A lot of library-wide communications that I make are made on a Teams channel. This way, I stay out of people’s inboxes and also create a permanent record for after I’m gone. It’s knowledge capture as well as information sharing.

But that isn’t the way everyone else works. They may save all of their emails and so be able to manage their own knowledge retention. And if they use chat or SMS outside of work, they may be more comfortable using it at work than older, less synchronous tools.

And my own extreme position will need to slot in to whatever our staff decides works for them. If anything, I don’t want my personal choices to drive the group discussion. It’s worth it to have strong communication with staff, even if it comes at the need for some personal discomfort or change.