The Art of Responsiveness

Near the beginning of chapter six of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, titled “Time Hacker’s Handbook,” Daniel Pink challenges readers to “Reply quickly to email” and shares this:

“Email response time is the single best predictor of whether employees are satisfied with their boss, according to research by Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist who is now a principal researcher for Microsoft Research. The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their emails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.”

Make no mistake, this is in no way exclusive to email, job satisfaction, or the workplace. The ART of responsiveness is crucial in every relationship: personal and professional, mentor or mentee, and everywhere else another person is involved. The way we choose to respond - when and how - sends a distinct message about the value we place on that individual. Oh, and opting not to reply (email, phone, text, whatever) is a definite chosen response, too.

Okay, Wes, did the business card belong to one of them? Nope. The card was from a completely different organization, the organization the team member who connected us with that executive left for after dealing with that same level of unresponsiveness for years. Our friend had started with the organization soon after graduating high school, worked there through college, and had excelled in every role they held. But after several changes at the executive level, including the person our friend reported to, email response wasn’t the only thing that was lacking. Our friend had grown very frustrated by not being able to get responses of any kind. The lack of response that Cindy and I experienced on the detailed proposal we crafted - based on their specific request - was only a snapshot of a very systematic cultural issue within that organization. Our friend dealt with it routinely, and we’ve heard numerous reports where clients have dealt with it as well.

The folks who have known us personally for a while are likely scratching their heads, trying to figure out what company and which friend I’m referring to. Save yourself some time, I could have shared similar examples for no less than a dozen organizations and even more individuals - many of which I care deeply for. My goal here isn’t to throw someone under the bus, even if they’ve earned it, but to emphasize just how much the art of responsiveness impacts every relationship. When it comes to leveraging leadership growth and building strength through the great relationships we absolutely need to develop, our energy is wasted when we choose not to respond in a timely manner. And based on studies I’ve read similar to the one Dan Pink mentioned, choosing to ignore even an email for more than 48 hours results in a significant drop in how much the other person feels valued; the time frame for phone calls and texts is far less.

If we’re only working to strengthen our knowledge network, with just the sole purpose of overcoming our personal leadership gaps, being even slow to respond makes a resounding statement about the value we place on the expert we’re asking questions of. If we’re working to earn influence rather than leading with authority alone, being unresponsive can stop us in our tracks. And let’s be honest, do we ever tie the idea of humility to the person who can’t be bothered to respond to us but is quick to reach out when they need something?

Moving forward, we’ll work through specific steps for mastering the art of responsiveness - starting with a foundation of listening. First, though, I’ll challenge you to audit your response times. Are you sending the message you mean to send - regardless of the actual words you use? We live in a world where everyone is busy, especially those who have accepted leadership responsibility. But being too busy to respond may be sending a reply that says your time is more important than the other person’s time - and that will never leverage leadership growth.

It Starts with Listening

How often have you experienced someone listening to respond (read: recognize when they get to respond) rather than listening to genuinely understand what’s being shared with them? While they do indeed respond immediately, that has nothing to do with The Art of Responsiveness that we’re working through together here. In fact, there’s rarely much actual listening involved when we’re only focused on when it will be our turn to speak and what we’ll say in our reply. Without listening as the foundation, there’s little chance the response we offer will be anything close to artful.

When we carry leadership responsibility, every message we share matters. If we reply to push a self-serving message without listening intently to understand exactly where our team member is coming from or the concern they’re expressing, we won’t earn influence, there’s not much chance of actually developing them through the process, and we won’t be building the kind of relationship that leads to alliance feedback.

Every strong relationship I have today - be that with clients we serve, mentors we look to for support, or just friends we spend time with - has been built on the art of responsiveness. Listening closely to understand exactly what’s being said in each exchange has been the foundation for those relationships. Being familiar with each person’s communication style blend has drastically improved how I comprehend the message they’re sharing. And knowing how to provide a response that meets their individual needs allows me to not just blurt out an answer, but to ensure what I share serves them in that moment.

The timeliness of our response is a tell-tail sign of how much value we place on the other person (whether that’s our intent or not), but how we craft our response plays a critical role in the way it's received. Responding to general conversation (in-person, text, email, etc.) can be difficult enough. Responding to feedback, especially when it’s closer to being constructive criticism than the Alliance Feedback we should all be working toward, is even tougher so we’ll dig into that next. Until then, I’ll challenge you to practice active listening in at least one conversation within the next 24 hours. Be intentional to pick up on the words used, the context behind them, and the communication style of the person you’re interacting with. (If you’re not completely familiar with how to recognize their primary communication style using the science behind the DISC Model of Human Behavior, reach out to me or Cindy directly to learn more.)

Responding to Feedback

Practicing the art of responsiveness requires discipline, especially for a leader working to juggle all that demands their time and attention. Messages can (and do) come at us from every direction and some of the most critical, the ones that determine how the individual who sent it will feel valued at a time where they absolutely need it most, often land in our lap when we just don’t have the time to dedicate to the response they genuinely need. We’ll look at a few things we can implement soon that will serve as relational investments that earn us a bit of grace when we simply can’t respond immediately. After that, we’ll work through a few habits (and systems) we can create that allow us to sustain a high level of responsiveness. For now, remember that even an email response that takes longer than 48 hours can send a message that the person reaching out isn’t important; we don’t have nearly as long with texts or voicemails.

When we do respond, assuming we’ve practiced listening as the foundation, it can’t be canned. If we’re more focused on determining when it’s our turn to talk than what’s been shared with us, there’s little chance our reply will serve anyone involved. Even then, there will be times where we’ll need to use extreme caution in how we respond. We’ve all had outreach that stings. Sometimes that’s from someone with an axe to grind, other times the person reaching out may have an expectation that’s not aligned with what we’re able to provide, but there will also be times where it’s feedback we’ll need to absorb so we can improve.

In looking at harnessing the power of candid conversations, I shared how we moved away from general satisfaction surveys after hosting only a few large public events and have since invested a tremendous amount of energy into soliciting direct, one-on-one feedback from trusted sources. Regardless of how much we trust the person offering the feedback, there’s often still a tendency to justify why we did things a certain way rather than truly analyzing the input and identifying how we can use it to improve. In most cases, we did the best we knew how and even the slightest suggestion can feel like constructive criticism. That was the case when Terry would pull me aside after a group presentation 25 years ago and that same feeling hits me occasionally still today. When we trust the person delivering the feedback, though, and maybe even when we don’t, fighting the urge to push back or brush it off can be a game-changer. Accepting the input with grace not only shows the other person we respect their opinion, it builds the influence we have with them and gives us a chance to improve.

Had I not learned to accept Terry’s input and continued to explain why I thought my way was right, he likely would have found someone else to mentor. The same goes for each person we’ve asked for feedback in the more than two decades since. Adapting to the different types of feedback we receive builds on the relationship we have with the person offering it. A quick response that’s appropriate to the situation enhances our leadership agility. In some cases, though, how we adapt to a team member’s needs will be the most important part of our response so we’ll work through that next. Until then, I’ll challenge you to identify a specific piece of feedback you’ve received recently that you can act on right away. As you do, circle back with the person who shared that feedback and let them know how it helped.

In talking with a friend several years ago, he shared that the executive team in his organization had set an expectation that all team members were to respond to any outreach from a client within 48 hours; coincidentally, the same amount of time suggested in a few of the studies I had read. That seemed reasonable, given the service-driven sector that company operated in. However, he went on to share what had grown into an overwhelming frustration - for him and for several of his peers. That same executive team wildly missed the mark in providing anything resembling this kind of responsiveness to their direct customers; the team they set this expectation for.

My friend shared how he had multiple requests into each of the executives that he had any type of reporting relationship with and had barely been acknowledged. His messages weren’t emails to someone in an office thousands of miles away, he interacted with them personally every single day. While each had commented on receiving the specifics he provided in writing, none had bothered to provide a written reply - and certainly no actual response. Think back to what I shared before from Dan Pink’s book: “The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their emails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.” If you were in my friend’s shoes, how satisfied would you have been? While those ducking him were indeed executives in that organization, I refuse to refer to them as leaders. And I’ll bet you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he has since left that organization…

As leaders, there can be a tremendous amount of pressure to walk through fire to serve our clients, responding to them immediately while pushing the needs of our team members to the back burner. In Know What You’re FOR, Jeff Henderson says that “employees who feel cared for, care for their customers.” If we’re not modeling responsiveness for the teams we lead, we’re leading them to be unresponsive to anyone they deal with. And just like each client will have different needs, each of our team members need different responses.

There will be times where we can provide a blanket statement that serves as a response to many needs at once. More often, though, we’ll do well to tailor our response to the specific individual - based on what we’ve learned about their individual communication style blend. As we do that consistently, and develop a reputation for doing so, each of our responses strengthen team trust and increase overall performance. While circumstances may occasionally prevent us from offering a thorough response right away, a timely acknowledgement at least shows we’re paying attention. But even then, we can’t consider our job complete. We’ll work through what we can do to build a relationship bank through our responses next, with our teams or anyone else. Before that, think about how you can address a need within your team by providing a tailored response.