"Why Successful People Never Bring Smartphones Into Meetings"

"You are annoying your boss and colleagues any time you take your phone out during meetings." (In case this never occurred to you!)

by Ken

Sometimes questions that seem too obvious to be worth asking can produce answers that are surprisingly interesting. For example, would you really think it necessary to ask, as LinkedIn seemed to feel I wanted to, "Why Successful People Never Bring Smartphones Into Meetings"?

I don't go to a lot of meetings myself (thank goodness!), and after something like three years I still regard my smartphone as something like an enemy agent, which I hardly ever carry with me. But if I used my smartphone and if I went to meetings, would I -- barring some sort of urgent pending development for which it was generally understood that I might need to leave the meeting -- bring my smartphone into a meeting?

Short of that, I'm hard put to think of what, if I were attending a meeting, it would even occur to me to bring my smartphone along, assuming that I'm not some pathetic dim bulb who imagines that it makes him somehow some sort of important person. The question did, however, occur to Dr. Travis Bradberry, who is "the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests, emotional intelligence training, and emotional intelligence certification, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies," whose "bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries," etc., etc.

And Dr. Travis says, "You are annoying your boss and colleagues any time you take your phone out during meetings, says new research from USC's Marshall School of Business, and if you work with women and people over forty they're even more perturbed by it than everyone else." In the researchers' survey of "554 full-time working professionals earning above $30K and working in companies with at least 50 employees," they found:

The researchers conducted a nationwide survey of 554 full-time working professionals earning above $30K and working in companies with at least 50 employees. They asked a variety of questions about smartphone use during meetings and found:

• 86% think it’s inappropriate to answer phone calls during meetings
• 84% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails during meetings
• 66% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails even during lunches offsite
• The more money people make the less they approve of smartphone use. [Boldfacing in source. -- Ed.]

The study also found that Millennials are three times more likely than those over 40 to think that smartphone use during meetings is okay, which is ironic considering Millennials are highly dependent upon the opinions of their older colleagues for career advancement.

Dr. Travis goes on to say this his company, TalentSmart, "has tested the emotional intelligence of more than a million people worldwide and found that Millennials have the lowest self-awareness in the workplace, making them unlikely to see that their smartphone use in meetings is harming their careers." He continues:

Why do so many people—especially successful people—find smartphone use in meetings to be inappropriate? When you take out your phone it shows a:

• Lack of respect. You consider the information on your phone to be more important than the conversation at hand, and you view people outside of the meeting to be more important than those sitting right in front of you.
• Lack of attention. You are unable to stay focused on one thing at a time.
• Lack of listening. You aren’t practicing active listening, so no one around you feels heard.
• Lack of power. You are like a modern-day Pavlovian dog who responds to the whims of others through the buzz of your phone.
• Lack of self-awareness: You don't understand how ridiculous your behavior looks to other people.
• Lack of social awareness: You don't understand how your behavior affects those around you.

Whoa! Well said, Dr. Travis! No wonder so many people buy your books and read your articles in the zillion places where they're published!

Now I wonder if anyone is working on a study of people who use smartphones on stairways, on crowded sidewalks, and every other damn place they feel like it.

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