Communication Tip: Never Sacrifice Clarity for Brevity
Concise is good. Clarity is better. I hate those four-minute voicemails as much as the next person. But some people have an annoying habit of condensing details at the wrong time, resulting in incomplete information, errors, and hours of rework. A simple illustration from this week’s travel makes my point:
I checked into the hotel for my five-day stay, unpacked my bag, and discovered I was short on clothes hangers. Housekeeping didn’t answer their extension, so I dialed the operator. When she answered, I said, "I need one more skirt hanger and one more jacket hanger in Room 909, please."
"Okay," she said, "I’ll ask Housekeeping to bring them right up."
Forty-five minutes later, there was a knock on my door. The maid stood at the door with an armful of more than two dozen hangers. I said, "Oh, thank you, I was just about to call again to see what happened. I only needed two hangers—a skirt hanger and a jacket hanger." I pulled those two from her arms and left her with the rest. She looked exasperated. "Only two? That’s what took me so long! She didn’t tell me that! I’ve been all over several floors, looking in closets to find enough. The operator just said you needed ‘hangers.’"
In much more serious circumstances than this, providing incomplete details spells disaster for coworkers and customers.
Do you have your own tales to share? I’d like to hear them.
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