Tip #1

Start a dialogue with your team about the use of technology during meetings:

Many work cultures have unconsciously normalized multitasking during meetings, making it easy to avoid direct communication. Ask your team what works about multitasking during meetings, and what are the costs? What guidelines does the team want to make for technology use during meetings?

Tip #2

Before every meeting, clarify the expectations for using technology while in the meeting:

Some sample requests:

• “This is a meeting where many will be taking notes on their laptops. Can we agree that we will only take notes and not perform other computer tasks during this meeting?”
• “Please put your phones on vibrate and refrain from e-mailing or texting during the meeting.”
• “Please be courteous and let team members know ahead of time if you have a really important call (e.g. sick child) that you need to take during today’s meeting.”

Tip #3

Set up specific Team Agreements or Guidelines about how to respond to intra-office e-mails, voicemails, IMs, texts, etc:

Some examples:

• “The Management Team agrees to reply to e-mails from fellow team members within 24 hours.”
• “Team members agree to check their work phone messages at least two times a day.”
• “Please make urgent requests with a directed phone call.”

Tip #4

Reward and celebrate it when your team follows the Team Agreements:

Some examples:

• Verbally acknowledge staff during weekly meetings.
• Give a “Communication Champion Award” each month, where the winner gets to proudly display a gold spray-painted, recycled cell phone on his/her desk.
• Consider implementing a “Caught You At Your Best” card to be exchanged between staff members right at the moment when agreements are upheld.

It’s no wonder that teams are struggling with communication issues in such a quickly changing environment. Our norms of how we communicate and when we communicate have yet to be established using many newer technologies. There’s no “one size fits all” fix for addressing appropriate use of technology in the workplace. However, a fresh perspective and curiosity about technology and your team will uncover the solutions that facilitate clear and effective communication.

In contrast, the virtual reality of borderless, wireless and largely unregulated communications creates more and more opportunities to disconnect, disengage and avoid conflict.

Red Flags for Technology of Avoidance:

• Have you ever returned a phone call, hoping against hope that you’ll be able to just leave a message instead of actually talking to the person?

• Are you using caller ID to screen out undesired incoming calls (think mother-in-law, not just telemarketers)?

• Do you prefer to give criticism to a colleague via e-mail as opposed to face-to-face?

• Does the number of “tweets,” IMs and texts you sent last week vastly outnumber the times you had a non-virtual interaction?

• Have you ever sent an urgent e-mail and suspected that the person who said, “I never got that e-mail” was really avoiding you?

• Have you ever received a critical e-mail that was inappropriately “cc’d” to other recipients?

• Have you ever attended a meeting where people text, check e-mails and even talk on the phone instead of giving full attention to the speaker(s)?

Ironically, as technology advances, our social maneuvers to avoid direct communication— especially around conflict—become increasingly complex.

Avoidance, or “stonewalling,” as coined by marriage researcher John Gottman, is one of four toxic behaviors that show up in our relationships at home and work. In person, stonewalling can have a physicality of crossed arms, turning away, speaking very little if at all, or a fixed “stone-face” expression. But when we add technology into the mix, such clear signals are harder to trace and therefore can go undetected for longer—creating an insidious erosion to the trust in the relationship.

Still, there is a great deal that leaders can do to minimize technology-related disruptions and maximize technology-driven benefits. In Part 2 of this topic, we will offer four tips to eliminate the “Technology of Avoidance” in your organization.