Would you PLEASE pay attention . . . ?

You my full and undivided attention! Thanks for the reminder, Doug ... great post.

Some great comments coming in through Facebook on this blog here: http://www.facebook.com/profil...3231983582

Doug, as other people have noted, I think your blog is dead on. Great post!

(MFI blog posts are syndicated through my Facebook page, to reach that audience, as well. If somebody is on FB and wants to get blog notifications that way, feel free to send me a friend request!)

Doug - Great post, I read it all the way through without FB or Tweetdeck beeps. At the end of the day, when your residents are screaming "Listen to ME!", it makes sense to do it. Hearing being VERY DIFFERENT than actively listening.

Amen, Doug! I only have eyes (and ears) for you. It's what actors call 'being in the moment,' but there's no need for acting here. We just need to actually BE in the moment. It's perfectly appropriate for managers to set a standard and coach their teams that when a customer, co-worker, supervisor, vendor, anyone is speaking to them, all other activities must come to a halt. The fact is that many people simply are unaware that multi-tasking during a personal interaction appears rude. Good stuff!

Oh absolutely - active listening is the cornerstone of every effective communication, and it means being able to drop everything else and really hear the person speaking. My mother used to do this with us as children by calling us "front and center," which meant that we were to drop whatever it was we were doing and come stand right in front of her so that we would pay attention to only her. As we got older and needed advice, we developed a system in which we could let her know that we needed her undivided attention and she'd let us know when that would be possible (usually after dinner) and then she'd drop everything to pay attention to us. It was, and still is, a wonderful feeling!

woah... wake up call! What a great post!

Great blog Doug. Did you see this report out last week? Science is on your side! http://bit.ly/22oFas

I've read hundreds of posts in this forum and this is by far the best, hands down. It's pure common sense and courtesy, yet a lot of people overlook it. I think not paying attention to who you're meeting with is disrespectful and outright rude. Thank you Doug for speaking up on this.

It is a fact that you can only think about one thing or person at a time.
I make it a point to get up and walk away from my desk and phone (distractions!)when someone walks in the door. There really should not be a stack of filing or a ringing phone between you and your guest. A seperate,relaxed seating area is conducive to getting to know your prospects needs and developing a relationship with them.
It can be very helpful to send your entire staff out to "shop" occasionally, including the porter and housekeeper. If they get an actual tour of another property it is a wonderful tool.

Thanks for the reminder.

Doug,
As usual, you are spot on--thanks!

Doug,

No one can argue that our onsite folks should be focusing their attention on providing individualized and focused attention on residents and guests. And, many of our problems, today, are a direct result of their “multi-tasking”. However, I suggest that the problem is not the result of an indifference or lack of desire to serve on the part of our employees. Remember, these individuals were recruited, selected and trained to be our “face to the public” and, with a few exceptions, I am convinced that they want to do the job they were hired to do.

Over the past several months, we have spent a good deal of time analyzing activities at site and have come to the conclusion that this growing trend is a result of the continuing practice of putting further burdens on the site staffs. While we may say that the primary focus at site ay be customer service, leasing and property preservation, our actions; many of the tasks we assign to and expect of our people, are not in true alignment with these goals.

In doing our studies, we have divided on site tasks into two categories: “heads-up” and “heads-down”. A “heads-up” task is, for the most part, “dealing with people”, while “heads down” are computer and paper tasks as well as “conference calls” and other meetings or reporting required by “corporate”.

If you spend a few days at a site, you may be surprised to see how much time our people are spending on “heads down” tasks which leads to treating our customers and residents as interruptions. If there were time to do both, our staffs wouldn’t be working early or late, as they are. And, if they actually had a lunch break, that sandwich wouldn’t need to be set aside.

I cannot agree with you more that we need to treat every visitor, resident or caller as our only concern but I suggest that its those of us who wrote those Mission Statements that have made it difficult for those we expect to “live them” to do so. This problem has been built into our increasingly “more effective” (cost-conscious) management operations, incrementally, over the past few years.

@Michael - You bring up an excellent point. We've found in our productivity studies that you're absolutely right. "Heads down" tasks take up an inordinate amount of time for leasing team members in particular. Often, our desire to generate more data for upper management to review has created more of these heads down tasks. I commend you for taking the time to identify where your teams are truly spending their time so you can take a step back and re-prioritize. While we would like to think that on site teams spend 80% of their time on customer service or "heads up" activities and 20% on the other, the reality is often the reverse.

Jen, My guess is that you have seen a direct correlation between the amount of time and emphasis available for “heads-up” activities and resident satisfaction.
Nothing effects satisfaction more than feeling ignored or marginalized by someone to whom you are paying a thousand dollars or more every month.

A psychological examination on the effect of multitasking found that people loose an average of 8 IQ points per extra task.

In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.” The psychologist who led the study called this new “infomania” a serious threat to workplace productivity.

This article can be found on Google Scholar, or just follow the link. It is a PDF document.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20080605_TNA20Rosen.pdf

A side note to this is that according to the article, the younger generation is not affected by multitasking as much as the older generations.