Happy & Healthy

these are the new rules of communication

Calling is the new face to face, business apps work too

I recently had to tell someone I would no longer be making use of their services. I did this by giving the person a call. I made sure to send the person in question a Whatsapp beforehand to inform them that it wouldn’t be a pleasant call so to let me know when they would be available to talk.

However, the person was still rather outraged that I hadn’t discussed this face to face. Just to make myself clear, this wasn’t someone who had a ten year contract with me for ten years, but we were talking about a freelance contract. Anyways. I’m not one to avoid self reflect, and so I considered whether or not it would have been better to meet up in person.

“Of course not,” a good friend of mine said. “It’s not like you have time for that?” “Besides”, she continued, “you called her didn’t you? And calling is the new face to face meeting and sending apps: something that we used to only do for private matters, has turned into a form of business communication too.”

“It’s about taking the time to build up substantial reasoning”

That same friend has recently finished an insane construction project and had made a deal with the contractor to do all communication through apps. Worked perfectly.

Her conclusion: don’t attack each other’s means of communication. It’s about taking the time to build up substantial reasoning for wanting to end a working relationship. Doing it through an e-mail would have been too easy and cowardly, but through calling them you’re actually taking part in a live conversation making it a lot harder.

Besides the fact that it might save both of you about three hours; hours that you, both of you, can spend doing better things. Schedule in a lunch date when both parties have calmed down and then plan things you can do together that make you happy, for example…