You are in a meeting and suddenly you
get an e-mail on your BlackBerry.
What should you do? a) Turn it off and answer it later; b) read it but don’t
answer it; c) discreetly answer it during the
meeting; d) excuse yourself and answer it
outside in the hallway.
While cell phone etiquette during business meetings is well established, PDA
technology is still relatively new and etiquette does not have hard and fast rules —
yet, says Terry Phillips, vice president of
Robert Half Management Resources in
Akron. Robert Half recently conducted a
survey on the topic, which asked 150 senior executives across the country how
common it is for professionals they work
with to read and respond to e-mail messages on their mobile devices during business meetings.
Smart Business spoke with Phillips
about survey results and some tips on PDA
etiquette during business meetings.
What did executives in your survey have to
say about PDA use during meetings?
According to the survey, 86 percent of
senior executives polled said it is common
for professionals they work with to read
and respond to e-mail messages during
meetings. However, ironically, close to one-third of this group (31 percent) disapprove
of the practice. Thirty-seven percent of
respondents feel it’s okay to respond to e-mail as long as the message is urgent; 23
percent of those polled said professionals
should excuse themselves from the meeting before responding to e-mail.
What kind of signal does it send to meeting
participants if someone checks e-mail during
the meeting (and also responds to the e-mail)?
Well, it does gives the impression that
you are not paying attention — and it
could, in fact, be a distraction. That said, it
does depend on the type of meeting and
the number of people in the meeting. In a
smaller group — let’s say a company board
meeting where participants are engaged in an intense strategic planning session — a
participant who is constantly checking and
answering e-mail can be considered just
plain rude. However, in a large group, such
as a lecture or a meeting with a couple hundred people, it may not be disruptive to
check and answer e-mails.
On the other hand, what kind of message
does it send to a client or a boss if you are in
a meeting and don’t respond immediately to
an e-mail, urgent or otherwise?
It is rare that an e-mail needs to be
responded to immediately. Often a person
can wait until after the meeting to respond.
Of course, it depends on the circumstance
and that ought to be agreed to ahead of
time. For example, before the meeting you
can announce that you are waiting for an
urgent e-mail from a client and that you
may need to step out and respond. You can
also make sure that your client or boss
who may potentially e-mail you knows that
you will be in a meeting during a certain
time and may not be able to respond immediately to a message. Doing some proactive
work is often the answer to the e-mail
dilemmas that arise during meetings.
Do you have some etiquette tips on using
mobile devices during meetings?
- Be discreet. Set your device on
‘vibrate’ to avoid disturbing others during
the meeting. - Respond only if it is truly urgent.
Remember, that there is no need to
respond right away — most issues can usually wait an hour or so for a response. - If you are expecting an urgent e-mail,
make sure that participants in the meeting
know ahead of time that you may need to
step out of the room to respond. - Know when to let go. Spending a considerable amount of time checking e-mail
will make those you are with feel unimportant. It’s better to bow out of a meeting altogether than be distracted during most of it.
What can meeting leaders do to set the etiquette tone about PDA devices?
Some of the better meetings I’ve seen
have leaders who ask participants to disengage their PDA devices, much like asking
people to turn off their cell phones. While
the etiquette for cell phones is a good
example for PDA devices, cell phone are,
of course, more disruptive. However, it is
easier to get caught up in an e-mail trail
because it is less disruptive — but it is still
a distraction in a meeting. The verdict is
still out how to appropriately use the PDA
devices but, just like cell phones, the dos
and don’ts will become clear as time goes
on.
TERRY PHILLIPS is vice president of Robert Half Management
Resources in Akron. Contact him at [email protected] or
(330) 252-1820.
