The art of closing a conversation
Get comfortable saying “goodbye” and “you’re welcome”. These two magical phrases seem to be dying from the American corporate vocabulary, and it is getting annoying. First, don’t diminish the value of your work when someone says thank you. You shouldn’t respond with “oh, no big deal”. It is a big deal. They just took time from your life. You should simply say “you’re welcome”. That’s it. You don’t need to drone on about why it was hard or easy. Just wrap it up and move on.
I spend most of my days in meetings and most of them are teleconferences. My job has me talking to lots of different companies and I have found one commonality amongst them all: nobody knows how to gracefully exit a phone call. If there are ten people on the call, it is a non-stop chorus of “ok, well, sounds good, ok, seeya later, thanks”. Seriously, when you are done and the call is ending just say “goodbye”. Get the hell out of there. It’s not rude. It’s not crass. It is short and courteous.
Just watch the senior leadership at your company. I bet they are masters of closing conversations; in fact, I picked up these tips from a CEO.
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Tags: Career Development, Work
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December 14th, 2007 at 9:28 am
I usually end calls with “Later N00bs”
December 14th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I agree. Closing a conversation is a skill that many people do not have these days. Beyond that, rudeness seems to be popping up all over corporate America.
You might enjoy this post - it cites some interesting research on the subject. http://blog.expresspersonnel.com/movinonup/2007/12/showing-respect.html