Get in the habit of setting expectations to help others plan

I was having breakfast with a colleague/friend the other day and we got to talking about how she doesn't use e-mail much. She checks it once, maybe twice a week. For someone who runs her own business that's admittedly not very often and she said she feels kind of bad about it and "knows she should get better".

But when she talked about why she doesn't use it she said it's because she likes the phone better and finds e-mail to be a distraction that reduces her productivity. Those seem like pretty good reasons to me. So we decided that she doesn't have to "get better" at all and in fact, shouldn't feel bad in the least about her limited use of e-mail. What she should do, is create an expectation. Make sure people know her e-mail habits so they don't expect a quick reply if they contact her that way.

I suggested that she might re-purpose the "out of office" e-mail message to tell people about her preference for the phone. She could even put a message on her phone that thanks people for calling instead of e-mailing. She could share her preference for phone calls vs e-mail on her company web site and let people know that e-mails are answered in a week or so unless you call to tell her you need her to review something sooner.

The point here is that we don't necessarily have to conform to some "standard" behavior, but we do have to let people know what to expect. I've been guilty of telling someone what I thought they wanted to hear in terms of getting something to them even though my schedule was going to make that almost impossible. And then failing to meet an expectation I created myself! That, my friend, is pretty dumb.

So whether it's setting an expectation about what you can deliver, when you can deliver it, or how you to choose to conduct business, you make the call and communicate it clearly to the people that matter in that situation. Setting expectations helps you and helps others too.