When you were a kid you probably used to use the telephone for socializing. You’d talk to your friends. You would shoot the breeze and discuss who’s going with whom, and what was coming up, and if there was a game tonight, and what we’re doing, and what’s on TV, and let’s go to a movie, and on and on. It was a way of building rapport. It was a way of building your social circle and enhancing the connection you have with the people around you. That was a very good thing.
The problem is that all too often at work, people still use the telephone as a social medium. Now you do need to spend some time building rapport with people. When you call up it’s nice to ask how they’ve been, what they’ve done, etc. That’s wonderful. That’s part of the building rapport process.
But you don’t have to spend a half an hour doing that and then one minute on business. You spend one or two minutes on the social, and then the minute on business. You get on and you get off fast. Do not over-socialize.
If possible, have your calls screened so that you can batch your calls. Having calls screened means oftentimes instead of just picking the telephone up every time it rings let it go to voicemail. Very few are so important that you must answer every single phone call every single minute when they come in. Most things can wait a little while.
I suppose there could be life and death situations. If you’re a dispatcher on a 9-1-1 you probably want to pick up the phone when it rings. But unless it’s a life and death crisis, let it go to voicemail and check it in an hour or two hours or later and decide when you’re going to return the call. You don’t have to always pick it up.