(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net/adamr)
A few weeks ago, I was meeting with a few members of an executive committee of a law firm about doing Rainmaking Training for their partners and associates. During the meeting, two of the lawyers were busy looking at their phones. Whether they were reading emails, on social media or surfing the internet, I am not sure, but the one thing I did know is that I felt slighted. They were more interested in what was going on in their hands than what I had to say.
In fact, I had to repeat something I said a few times since they were not listening to me the first time.
I have been to networking events where I have seen groups of people standing around just looking at their phones and not actually meeting one another.
I have been to restaurants where I’ve seen entire families on smart phones, tablets and video consoles and not talking to one another.
We have become a society of people who have lost the art of connecting with others because of the devices in our hands. And while we think we are more connected than ever – we have a ton of followers on Twitter, we are LinkedIn with hundreds of people, we have more “Friends” on Facebook then we actually know in person – these connections are mostly superficial.
People do business with people they know, like and trust. You heard this before. You’ve read numerous blogs of mine and from others who have said or written this.
The only way to do this is to create relationships with people and this requires that you have actual conversations. Conversations in which you carefully listen to what the other person has to say so that you can actually interact with them by asking intelligent questions thereafter.
So use the phone to connect with someone to make a lunch date, but then when you get there….
Put the phone away
and create a relationship.
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