Telephone Excellence by Mike Mitchell

Communicating Without Words
By Mike Mitchell

I recently had the opportunity to visit with a technical manager for a growing interconnect company in Atlanta. As we entered his office, I noticed he had three Cisco certifications framed and hung neatly on the wall (visitors could see them easily). There was a white board hung on the wall across from his desk. Available in the silver tray at the bottom of the board were several different color markers that actually worked (yes, I checked) and an ‘official’ eraser. A Dilbert cartoon enclosed in an inexpensive frame was hung on the adjacent wall next to a straw Panama hat pinned to the wall which represented the current sales initiative. A row of about 14 Cisco certification course books sat uniformly atop his credenza. On his desk, just to the right of his computer monitor, was one stack of papers neatly organized and directly in front of his upscale desk chair (at least upscale compared to my desk chair).

Later on that day, as I replayed the events of our meeting, my thoughts turned to what he had communicated to me about himself without saying a single word. During our conversation, he confirmed my first positive first impressions of him. He is organized but not fanatical, neat but not obsessive, supportive of his company but not to the point of clutter, and had a sense of humor but not outlandish.

Have you ever taken an objective look at your office or work area? What do you see? What impression does it give your coworkers, staff and visitors?

One exercise I have done is to walk into my office, sit in one of the chairs where a visitor would sit and look around the room. The first time I did this, I was appalled at the view. There was dust on my computer monitor (which I couldn’t see from my chair). The three stacks of papers behind me were very distracting as were the two piles (not stacks) of papers on my desk which contained current vendor proposals, contracts to be reviewed, an equipment inventory, and three industry magazines from last month. It was not a very encouraging sight! There was even one time when an employee came into my office to discuss a personal problem and I had another employee’s evaluation plan on my desk which I had been working on and not yet filed.

Now keep in mind that being neat is not necessarily the same as being organized, but there is a definite advantage to having a neat office and desk. It gives the impression of being in control of your environment and yourself.

Harriet Schechter, in her book Conquering Chaos at Work, gives the following six points to determine if you are an organized person at work:

• You live by the motto, “A place for everything and everything in its place”
• You use a time management system to plan your daily schedule and ‘to do’ list
• You straighten up your desk at the end of the day
• You are on time for appointments and meetings
• You don’t let piles of paper develop on, or in, your desk
• You rarely spend time looking for misplaced things (unless misplaced by someone else)

We all know that first impressions are lasting impressions. Let’s all make sure that visitors to our office have a positive impression of us and we are perceived as people who are organized and in control of our environment as well as ourselves.

Mike