Long conference calls with people you haven’t personally met have one problem: once you hang up, you tend to forget who said what. To fix that, look up photos of everyone on the call so you associate voices with names and photos.
Inc recommends using LinkedIn profiles, but you could get creative and bring up any photo of that person. Open up a few windows, with each person’s photo and name, and tile them across your screen so you can see them all at the same time. Here’s how you make the connections:
Immediately before the meeting, review each attendee’s profile. When the meeting starts, as each person introduces himself or herself, look at the photo and “anchor” that voice to that face. This is easy because your brain does this automatically anyway.
You’ll find that, as the meeting progresses, you’ll know exactly who’s speaking, even if the interchange gets a bit chaotic. Just as important, because you have the profile on screen, you’ll be better able to assess where each person is “coming from.”
It’s that simple. And, while you’re on that conference call, you should adopt these etiquette measures for smooth communication.
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