#42 - Managing Your Air Time
Thoughts on a foundational element of healthy relationships + critiques of this letter (at the bottom)
Tl;dr — If you care about others, make sure you give them space to communicate, too. In most situations at work and in more personal group settings, there is limited time. Therefore, the more you talk, the less others can. Watching your air time is an easy way to make sure others enjoy being around you, and that you’re maximizing your learning together.
Air time is the amount of time you spend taking up the “air” (conversational space) in a conversation.
Like oxygen in a chamber, there is a limited amount of air time available, and yet many people seem to not appreciate this scarcity of space and time. While there are many scenarios where air time mgmt. is not necessary or helpful, you should generally be aware of it when spending time with others… if only because it can be rude to dominate conversations.
Here’s the flow for today’s short letter:
Why does air time management matter?
Some signs of poor air time management
Ways to better manage your own air time, and the air time of others
My personal take on air time management + specific tactics to be more inclusive
(You’ve definitely been the person on the right at some point, haven’t you?)
1. Air time management matters because…
People have limited attention spans and tend to stop paying attention when you ramble on and on and on
Typically the more you talk, the less someone else is communicating (verbally) to you… Meaning you could be crowding out their opportunity to share, connect, and inform you + others
It can be downright annoying to be captive in a conversation that you can’t leave
Getting a reputation for dominating conversations is dangerous to your career and your social life
The more you talk, the more self-oriented / self-centered you may come across
2. You might not be managing your time when…
You can’t answer the questions “how is this person doing?” or “What is their POV on this topic?” after you’ve been in the conversation for ten minutes
People are just nodding over and over while you talk, but not saying anything
You haven’t asked any questions of others
When there is repeated silence every time you finish talking
People start making less eye contact with you
Note: some people aren’t big on overly intense eye contact. You can make too much eye contact (aka laser beams). Anyways, take this one with a grain of salt
3. How to get better at air time management
Let me start by saying that this has absolutely been a development area for me in the past (and invariably we all have times when we deviate and talk talk talk talk talk), but there are some things I’ve done over the years to very intentionally make sure to always keep conversations (including and almost especially in my personal life). Here’s what I’ve done:
Literally try to keep a general “heat map” of group conversations. It’ll rarely be perfectly balanced (and it doesn’t always need to be), but you should make sure that every person at the table / meeting has had an opportunity to contribute at least 2 or 3 times. Give people the option to participate less, don’t make the decision for them by crowding them out / not asking any questions.
Have someone hold you (and others) accountable. In a work context, this might mean someone to facilitate the meeting or “help us make sure we’re running on time”…who has permission to tell someone, “This is a great discussion, but we need to move along to the next topic given the time we have remaining.”
Prioritize a curiosity mindset. Instead of just waiting to say what’s on your brain, lead with questions. Actively try to answer the question, “What is every person here thinking about this topic?”
In a personal context, this means making sure that if you’re in a group conversation you have actively tried to involve others in the group around you. It doesn’t need to be a checklist of just arbitrarily trying to hear from everyone around you, but people appreciate being heard, and when you help pull them into conversations oftentimes they will remember you for your thoughtfulness and genuine interest in their view
Work out your listening muscle. Practice going to conversations with the intent of listening as much as you can. Critically, this does not mean just asking questions and smiling + nodding. It means that your responses seek to build upon / add to what you are hearing. One of my favorite things to say (shout out to my former client Julie) is simply: “Say more (about that)…” in a warm tone
Visualize the warmth others feel when they are heard and validated. Empowering others to be included and to contribute feels awesome
4. My personal take: managing your air time is the foundation of healthy relationships, both at work and at home
I started really thinking about this topic after two things happened:
Years ago, I got feedback on a project that I was dominating meetings (I was in a phase of trying to prove that I could be a strong leader and was just f*cking dominating team meetings to an annoying extent. Ew, past Michael!)
There was a friendship that let fade specifically because every time this person and I spoke, they literally never asked a single thing about my life. We would be on the phone for an hour, we would talk about this person’s life + challenges etc., and then every time at the 55th or 60th minute they would say, “well i’m glad we’re both doing well!” …and I’m like, how the hell would you know?
After I kept thinking on this, I started going really deep into: how to create inclusive relationships at work and at home, and came across the monicker that goes something like: diversity means everyone has a seat at the table, and inclusion means that everyone has a voice (or something like that). It stuck with me, and changed the way I think about spending time with other people.
I’ll close with some calls to action for you:
When you’re at a happy hour for work, bring in other people to your conversations. It super sucks to not be included
When you’re in your next work meeting, make sure every single person in the meeting has either spoken at least once or had ample opportunities to contribute (and if you can’t feasibly do that…maybe your meeting is too large?”)
Make a point of being able to answer “How is this person doing?” and “what is their point of view on this topic (being discussed)?”
But monitor for signs of someone not wanting to engage
If you really struggle with this, wear a watch, and glance down at it before you start talking, and glance down every so often to make sure too much time hasn’t passed
Personal note: I do this at work, especially when covering topics I feel passionate about. Eventually you’ll develop a natural sense for, “i’ve been talking for 45 seconds…”
This is also critical when giving presentations. The best presentations aren’t long monologues, they are punchy points delivered as part of an easy-to-follow story, with lots of dialogue (exception: things like TED talks)
If you feel like you’re talking too much, you just might be… I am pretty sure I had at least two meetings in December where I realized that I had been talking for over 75 seconds and just said, “team, sorry. Lots of words. Let me try to bottom-line this succinctly: (insert point / question)
And again, there are exceptions. If you’re doing a “state of our business” presentation, then yeah: you’re probably going to be talking for 5-10 minutes. As with all things, context matters.
In closing, my most joyful relationships are ones where both people feel engaged and heard. My most fulfilling groups are the ones where everyone is heard, and growing together. I think it is so important to make sure you’re doing little things to make the experiences others have around you more pleasant, because we deserve to feel heard and to learn from others around us. Managing your air time is a foundational element of making sure others actually enjoy spending time with you.
Michael
Critiques of this letter…
I give myself a B-minus on this letter. Not quite sure why, but something is missing. I also think I probably didn’t spend enough time talking about the scenarios where air time management is important, and how to discern the difference. It’s touched on, but …feels like there’s a layer or two more needed. I also don’t know if some things I do — like the “heat map” thing — are feasible / easy-to-implement for others?…Hell, I am certainly not perfect at it...But then again it doesn’t need to be perfect — it’s supposed to just…directionally help you ensure you aren’t totally ignoring / crowding out someone.
Additionally, the tone feels slightly-acidic sometimes here, and that’s not really my tone of voice… So there’s some dissonance between my warmth-as-a-default approach to interpersonal relationships and the snark of writing about how annoying it is to be captive to the monologues of another human. … Omg wait, is this letter a monologue? Is Exonomist one giant f*cking monologue??? …Maybe need to pivot into YouTube interviewing or something more…two-way. Also, I am now thinking about two more conversations I had in December (introductory, get-to-know-each other calls), where I most certainly spoke for 4-5 minutes straight and am now feeling a tinge of discomfort. … You live and you learn!
Welp, will probably come back and re-write this letter when I start mapping out my eventual book. Not satisfied with this one, but not going to let the pursuit of perfection be the enemy of good, and just hit send.)