There were many lessons learned from the antics of my previous post. Here is a short list of the big lessons in the hope you can learn vicariously through my mistakes. Feel free to add your own lessons learned!

1. Check all assumptions and expectations before the call begins.
From the Compact Oxford English Dictionary – an assumption is defined as ‘a thing that is assumed to be true’ whereas an expectation is a ‘belief that something will happen or be the case.’ The vast majority of my challenges on conference calls can be traced back to an assumption or expectation.

2. Create a simple, short checklist and use it before every call.
Any pilot worth her salt will tell you that checklists save lives. The time to discover a problem with the plane is when it is still on the ground. The same applies to a conference call – find problems before you get on the call!

3. A single incident or challenge is manageable. Two or more incidents occurring in a short time frame will trip up even experienced conference call leaders.
When you rely upon technology, an ounce of prevention is priceless!

4. Participants remember how you handled the challenge long after they have forgotten the challenge.
No matter what craziness happens, remember why you are there in the first place – to improve the productivity of the participants. Humility, telling your truth, and remembering to a smile goes a long way towards handling almost any challenge.

5. Most importantly, no matter how good you get at leading conference calls, there is always another lesson just around the corner with your name on it.
This was not my first challenge and it won’t be my last. Learn as much as you can from each challenge and smile knowing that it won’t be long before you get another chance to learn.

What lessons have you learned from watching people face challenges when leading a conference call? Thanks in advance for sharing your insight and wisdom.

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Creator of 6 Principles of Powerful Conference Calls
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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One joy of working by conference call is the ability to work from anywhere at any time, right? It must be just my luck to keep discovering the hard way things you simply should avoid doing! Here is to every other likeminded explorer who continuously finds new and creative ways to challenge and grow your conference call leadership skills! This post is in honor of you!

On Thursday, December 20th, I was scheduled to lead the first teleclass of a 6-month series for a prominent Canadian company. Planning well ahead in my travels, I arrived at Mom’s house on the 18th. I had already prepared for the kick-off teleclass and all I had to do was dial the phone, patch in the audio recording via 3-way calling, and lead the teleclass. Then it was back to relaxing and enjoying time with my family.

Ten minutes before the call, a troubling thought crossed my mind – does Mom even have 3-way calling on her phone? What was I thinking? Why didn’t I check this out WAY before the call so it would not be a last minute issue? With the adrenaline pumping, a quick check of the system shows that 3-way calling is available.

Sailors learn a very important lesson shortly after starting to sail. The time to reduce your sail area is when the thought FIRST occurs in your mind. Ask any sailor to explain why this is the case and you’ll most likely get an ear full of stories of what happens when they didn’t listen to their intuition! Suffice it to say that I should have seen the coming storm on my conference call!

Over the years, I’ve developed a consistent pattern/system that allows me to fully focus when leading a teleclass or conference call. A partial list includes using a binaural headset (i.e. speaker for each ear), calling from a quiet place where I will not be disturbed, a super clean desk, and, most importantly, a corded phone with good line quality (i.e. click here to see why a digital/VoIP phone is not a smart choice). When traveling, I expect to be without one or two of my four requirements. On this call however, 0 out of 4 was a barely acceptable situation for the first 15 minutes of the 1-hour call. The portable phone I’m using starts to make an intermittent beep.

It is one thing to have bad line quality. It is quite another problem to have your phone on a death march that would end long before the call was over. Don’t forget that the call was being recording the call via a 3-way tie in.

Distraction destroys focus, continuity, and effectiveness on a conference call. I go to great lengths to minimize and eliminate distraction. Now imagine me scrambling to find a portable phone with no success. See me working desperately to get the portable phone from the fax machine only to discover it is on a different line. Can’t you just hear the coherent and meaningful conversation that is taking place during this chaos?

The portable dies. The call recording is disconnected. I grab another phone and dial back in only to find the sound quality is so bad the participants can’t even tell if I’m on the line. On top of that, I had to once again go through the approximately 1-minute process to patch in the recording via 3-way calling.

Being an easygoing type person, it truly does take a lot of stress to push me into the danger zone. It was with the greatest of effort that I did not send the portable phone through the wall.

It occurs to me that there is one more option to sort this mess out. While the recording of the call is successfully going on, the participants can’t hear me. I’ve exhausted all phones available with the exception of one. A quick search on my blog for “cell phone” will show 5 entries in which four of them caution you to dial into a conference call with your cell phone ONLY as a last resort.

Expecting the worst, I carefully set the portable phone as far away as possible (to keep recording the call) and dialed in on my cell. And of course, despite all my rants about avoiding the cell phone, it works perfectly. Everyone on the call immediately said, “you sound great – we can finally hear you!”

After the call, I asked Mom if she’d had any problems with the phone battery going dead. She said, in her usual concise and to the point manner, “No – I don’t like long phone conversations.” Within two hours of its near death by crashing through a wall experience, that portable phone had a brand new battery installed.

Fellow explorers – do you have a funny conference call story to share? Please do. As Jimmy Buffet says: “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane!”

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Creator of 16 Secrets to a Great Conference Call
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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