I’m only sharing this because it was pretty helpful for others to hear what I had to say to an astute young professional who has a problem playing on his phone during important meetings and discussions with high-level people. I understand the mystery of why people play on their cell phones all the time, and, in all honesty, I don’t blame them. I also have grandchildren who are entering that teenage phase, and, of course, kids would rather lose themselves in their phones than talk to someone at a kitchen table. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, and it has social psychologists pretty upset because of what it says about human behavior. But I get it. I understand. However, just as with many of the things I have been talking about lately —back-of-the-train people and the essential leadership needs that only a human being can provide —we have to use all the tools available to us. And in my example to the young professional, I explained that I love to wear sunglasses in public, but I consciously don’t when I know I’ll have to talk to a lot of people. By choice, I avoid wearing sunglasses because I want to engage with others and use my eyes to express myself. Even with all that’s going on, I chose to do videos with all my articles to show people that it’s not AI producing the material, but a living person walking with them and talking. People can see my eye contact even though I look all over the place. People can at least see my eyes, and AI programs can’t communicate like I can in a public presentation. I purposely, even though I’d rather not, speak to people without sunglasses so that people can see and trust what I’m telling them.
And that’s why it’s a good idea not to retreat to your cell phones when you are in a group, talking to a lot of people. But why do people do it? Why would they rather communicate with the smartphone than speak to a perfectly good person right in front of them? If you go to a business meeting, half of the people, if the meeting is long, spend a lot of time checking their phones rather than talking to the real people who are present. But why? Well, it goes back to my sunglasses example, and a lot of the things I have been saying lately about social engagement and value, which have been on purpose for my audience. I like to keep noisy people out of my life, who I call time eaters. And when I go out in public, I almost always bump into people I know, or who want to talk to me for one reason or another. So I wear sunglasses in public so that people can’t lock eyes with me and drag me into a conversation I don’t want to be in, because I’m always busy thinking about something important. I don’t ever have leisure time to talk to other people about nothing. So to avoid getting sucked into meaningless conversation, I wear sunglasses to protect myself from making eye contact with anyone who might use their eyes to get my attention and lock me into a conversation. It’s the same reason that you can go to a crowded movie theater and nobody wants to sit next to each other if they can avoid it. People, if they have a choice, no matter where in the world they are, especially in America, where there is an assumption of personal freedom, will choose to have their own thoughts rather than be captured by others’ concerns.
This translates into the new technology of smartphones, which can give you all kinds of interesting information that you can choose to consume or not. When people scroll through their text messages rather than listening to the person in front of them, they select information they control rather than deal with the randomness of another person outside their control. It’s all about personal autonomy with cell phones. People want to maintain their personal space rather than surrender it to other people. This is why teenagers, not yet fully responsible for their own lives, want to lose themselves in smartphone interaction. They can’t yet make all their own decisions in life, so the smartphone gives them that illusion, just as the video game experience does. People prefer to think about what they want to think about, when they want to, even if the text message they are reading is just simple information that doesn’t lead to anything significant. And the live person in front of them might be much more critical and say things infinitely more lofty than anything happening on someone’s smartphone. But the freedom of choice is what people like and why they would rather interact with a smartphone than a real person. People, more than anything, want the freedom of choice. And if given the option, from teenagers to high-powered business executives, will choose choice over a forced engagement with another human being they may not care much for, or want to interact with, such as in my sunglasses story. To protect their own thoughts and keep the world at bay, they look for control over what they think through their smartphones, which are always there to provide a nice distraction.
But as I told the young hotshot executive, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. If you want to be an effective communicator, put the cell phone down when you want to express yourself to other people. Don’t let them know that there are other things more important to you than what they are saying. If you want to be an effective communicator, you have to use everything, even your nonverbal expressions, to sell your ideas. Otherwise, they will tune you out because if you are busy on your phone, you break that one-on-one interaction. Put your phone down and don’t play with it so you can make other people listen to you when you have something important to say. But don’t be surprised if people tune you out for their own protection if you give them an excuse to break social engagement. For the same reason I provide videos for all my written articles, modern technology, especially AI, has made it so people never know if a real person is actually saying things. And in my case, I let people see my eyes while I’m talking, and I even walk rather than sit in a chair for a podcast, because people can see my hands and my pace of walking with a moving background going by, which is very hard for AI to replicate. And once people know that all that information is something they can trust, they can listen to what I am saying in a way they can believe in. And if you are hiding behind technology yourself, you can’t win over that trust to communicate what you need to. So that is why playing on your smartphone while in conversation with others is not a good idea. And it’s also why people do it. I don’t take it personally. I get it. I actually like that about the human race: they seek their own space over shared space with others when given a choice. But if you want to be a good communicator, you can’t hide behind sunglasses or your smartphone. You have to actually look people in the eye and make them interact with you.
Rich Hoffman
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