There's someone on the phone
Here’s another interesting situation. As with many companies, a friend of mine conference called in to a meeting. Except for her, all the other participants were located in a conference room gathered around the phone.
She dialed in to the meeting before most participants entered the room. Except for herself and her manager, there was only one other colleague in the room so the three of them started sharing project updates. While her colleague was presenting some minor issues she remained quiet and listened carefully. In the meantime, other participants trickled in the room.
After a few minutes, the official meeting began and since no items were assigned to her, she put her phone on mute while she continued typing on her laptop. She has enough experience to keep paying attention to the conversation while working in order to avoid potentially tricky situations.
The meeting went on for an hour and in his typical fashion, the chair person thanked everyone for attending and left the room with his colleague.
My friend stayed on the line waiting for someone to end the conference call but that didn’t happen. Instead, it appeared that everyone in the room ‘forgot’ she was on the phone and started talking about her manager and her colleague – the comments were not flattering!
There she was hearing a conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear. What should she do? Should she stay on the line and listen in the conversation or hang up?
What would you do?
She realized that eavesdropping was entertaining but wouldn’t contribute any value to her work so after a few minutes she decided to hang up. Although nobody ever brought this situation to her attention, she keeps wondering if anybody noticed her presence on the phone. Especially when she hung up and the people gathered in the room heard the sound of a phone hang up…
You might be interested in these related posts:
- A few simple rules to make meeting more efficient participants need to respect the time box allocated to them...
- Do you wonder why your boss doesn't show up at your meeting? This is not an un-usual situation. You call a meeting...
- Facilitation Approach used to Define a Commercial Vision A few days ago, I had the opportunity to organize...
- Someone is looking for a job I received an email from a former colleague a few...
- Called for a second meeting I realize I haven’t posted anything on the blog for...
