With Supper Clubs and with life, the key to success is communication. In today’s multimedia world, we have more tools than ever to communicate. This is not always a good thing. People put things in a text or email, that they would never say in a face to face conversation. As with most things in life, the more people that are involved, the greater chance for mis-communication. We had an excellent example a few years ago. Email was used to communicate a change of plans and a newcomer to the club got upset. If someone had talked to the new person, explaining the situation and past practice, there would have been no problem. Instead, email led to a meltdown. It became a classic case of “no good deed goes unpunished”.
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We had a supper club meltdown caused by cancelations and mis-communication. Our neighborhood Supper Club was quite large with 5 dinner parties going on a given night with 4 couples at each party. So with 40 people involved it can get complicated. The leader of our club does a masterful job of scheduling through difficulties. The rule in our club is that if you cancel, it is up to you to find a substitute. We have a list of 30 or more subs so there is usually a good pool of alternates. If you have difficulty finding a sub, it initially falls back to the host of the dinner party. When we are hosting and we have cancelations I look at it as a recruiting opportunity. The host can call in reinforcements from anywhere. I have been known to pull people in from work, the gym, golf course, or anywhere. My wife has accused me a pulling strangers off the interstate.
The night of the meltdown was caused by multiple cancelations. The leader of the club made a decision to consolidate dinner parties, as was the normal practice. An email was sent out explaining that one party was being eliminated. The hostess whose party was eliminated was new to the club and was very offended. The poor leader thought she was doing the “Newby” a favor by solving the scheduling issue and saving the hostess from all the work involved with hosting. The Newby felt that she was being arbitrarily picked on. Email nasty-grams were sent and quite simply, it got ugly. To be honest it was a case where email was the standard operating procedure, but simply does not work.
New Communication rules to live by:
- Never use email or text if any bad emotion is involved.
- If you are irritated don’t push send.
- Face to face communication is best.
- Direct phone contact is second best.
- If you have two touches of telephone tag use text message to get a person to person meeting or call scheduled.
- Voicemail is next best but dangerous.
- Be really careful what you put in writing. Email and text can be great but you miss out on the chance to read your audience and adapt your message. Plus, they don’t go away and keep hordes of lawyer gainfully employed. The really bad thing about emails and texts is that people will write things that they would never say face to face.
- Blogging will piss off your sisters. As the little brother, I have a history of making “Snarky” comments. I will admit that I can be a jerk. Even when I am justified….Snarky is probably a bad thing. Being Snarky towards a family member on the internet, even when funny…will get you in trouble
Please note that I have broken just about every one of my “Rules” in writing this blog. Oh well…
At the end of the day it is hard to avoid miscommunication and feelings getting hurt. Common sense and sensitivity go a long way. Sometimes bad stuff just happens. Writing a nasty email isn’t necessarily bad. Writing a nasty email and hitting send usually is.
If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.