Walt Shiel – Writer

©2011 Walter P. Shiel. All Rights Reserved.

Common courtesy and politeness seem all too rare these days. Even a minimal effort can go a long way when you’re trying to get somebody’s attention or want them to act on your proposal. With that in mind, herewith one of my pet peeves.

On our business phone line (for Jacobsville Books and Five Rainbows Services), we typically receive three types of incoming calls:

• Calls from customers wanting to buy a book
• Calls from clients, or potential clients (i.e., they have a problem and want to know if we can help them)
• Calls from authors (i.e, “Will you publish my book?”)
• Calls from salesmen (i.e., they want me to give them some of our cash for some “indispensable” service or product)

The first two types — calls from clients and customers — are ones I accept right away and usually stop whatever I’m doing to listen and respond. After all, that’s what Five Rainbows Services is all about.

The other calls are always an interruption, but the caller almost never asks if this is a good time to talk. If you want me to publish your book or buy your product or service, you can start by demonstrating that you recognize my time is valuable and you don’t intend to waste it. You might get the most mileage from your initial question by also giving me a hint as to what you want:

Do you have a moment to discuss buying Ace Widgets?

OR

Do you have time to consider publishing
my historical novel about the Roman Empire?

In either case, I might decline, either by saying we don’t use widgets or don’t publish that particular genre of book. I might suggest you send me an email pitch (something I can consider at my convenience).

I don’t like being rude but, even more, don’t like having somebody waste my time with a pitch in which I have no interest whatsoever.

I realize that when many people think of sales, they think of the salesman jamming his foot in the door to get the target from slamming said door. I think that’s a lousy, and very rude, approach to using the phone. Besides, I can always just hang up. If you had been more polite, you might have gotten a very different response.

Manners may seem passé to you, but how does the person on the other end of the call feel about it? After all, that’s what will determine the outcome of your call.

It wouldn’t even hurt you to address me as Mr. Shiel until we get to know each other.

I just read an interesting article on the Time Management Ninja website titled Why The 1-Hour Meeting Is Too Long. The author makes a lot of excellent points, and his article brought to mind a solution implemented by one of the squadron commanders I worked for in the USAF something over 25 years ago.

Meeting Time - ©2004 Walter P. Shiel. All Rights Reserved

In his squadron, as in most AF squadrons, the CO held a weekly staff meeting attended by his flight and section commanders and a few other key staff members, usually 12-14 total attendees. We met in the CO’s office in which the furnishings included a small couch and a couple of overstuffed chairs. He usually had a couple of his enlisted men move chairs into the office for the staff meeting so everyone could sit down.

So, we would all get comfortable and settle in for a relaxed exchange of statuses and current issues, mixed with a healthy dose of minimally related banter and good-natured joking. The staff meetings usually seemed like a pleasant respite from the high-pressure of daily squadron operations and personnel problems. However, they did tend to drag on…and on…and…

In the military, we held regular meetings at various levels that were called “stand ups,” but usually the only one standing was the person addressing the group with a more-or-less formal presentation of statistics, performance, and problems. This particular CO decided to redefine the stand-up meeting.

One day, we all showed up for the staff meeting and found

so sofa and only one chair…the CO’s office chair in which he sat comfortably behind his desk.

We all turned around to retrieve some chairs.

“Not so fast, guys! Get back in here.”

We all returned to the office and waited. The CO informed us that there would be no sitting down for future staff meetings. We were taking up too much of his time with useless chatter and pointless bitching.

One thing you need to understand about the USAF, at least 25 years ago — a squadron commander could be a virtual dictator within his domain, at least concerning how he handled his uniformed members (civilians were often unionized and presented a different problem). Not all COs operated in a heavy-handed manner, but this particular one did (for reasons that would take a small book to explain and which made the overall environment, shall we say, less than pleasant on the best days).

He did accomplish one thing with his no-chairs meetings.

The once-lengthy weekly meetings tended to run no more than 15-30 minutes.

After a few months of this, the CO did relent and allow us to sit for the weekly staff meetings. But the tone had been set. The meetings still tended to be short and to the point.

So, was the CO’s method effective? I guess I’d have to say it was.

Was it the best way to handle it? Maybe, maybe not. As the CO, he certainly could have taken control of the meetings, kept them on target, and enforced time limits. It always seemed to me that he took a manager’s approach rather than a leader’s approach…but then, that seemed to be his style for the brief nine months he served as CO.

After 13 years on active duty, I spent another 8 in various AF Reserve and ANG units and 20 years working for major defense aerospace companies. Meetings abound in all bureaucratic environments and can too easily become time-wasters. I ran my share of meetings in all those environments and worked hard to keep them short and focused. I wish I could say I was always successful, but I can’t. I can assure you that I always tried.

Are long meetings a problem? Of course. But whoever’s running the meeting should accept the responsibility to make sure the meeting is not creating more problems than it is solving.

Got any good long-meeting stories of your own?

OK, probably nobody really cares about this but yrs trly, but here it is anyway. A short video clip of me riding my 3-year-old Palomino gelding Dooley. Although I’ve been ground training him since summer 2010, I only started riding him two weeks ago.

This video was taken three days ago. It was the 8th time I’d been on him (nobody else has ridden him yet). He is such a calm and willing horse that he is a real pleasure to ride. This was our longest ride to date — about 20 minutes. He’s just about got this whole steering concept down pat now. He’s even starting to respond to neck reining and leg pressure cues.

And, most important of all, he always stops immediately on command.

Enough of that. You can all go back to sleep now!