A friend and I were organizing ourselves to meet virtually.

We had had a small chat via LinkedIn where we decided that it would be a good moment to meet. This involved a few backs and forth to find our availabilities, followed by a calendar invite to make sure that he could block the time in his calendar. As I accepted the meeting I mentioned that I couldn’t update it with the details for our call asking him if he would do that for us.

Which he did.

But he also mentioned that this could have been done more efficiently.

I don’t think we could have. And if, it would have been pure luck.

Coordinating time and location always takes a bit of time and several interactions. With a growing number of possibilities, the process becomes only more complicated. We barely notice it when we can organize ourselves speaking with one another. It becomes visible the moment the process is asynchronous.

That is a situation, where it makes more sense to aim for being effective.

That is to do our bit to create a fluid experience. It most often involves sharing more information and asking more questions. It’s how I experienced our exchange. There was a willingness to make the experience an easy one by asking what type of communication app we would use, by sharing what days of the week would be best, by choosing two options, settling on one, and asking if the time of the invite was adequate. It is only once I confirmed, that we reached the last step completing the invitation with the virtual meeting room.

By moving step by step and caring for the other person’s information needs we were effective. It was effective because we could see that it wouldn’t become necessary to go back onto previous steps because of missing details. It was even more so effective because it made the communication fluid and smooth. It created a sense of ease.

It is as Maya Angelou said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”