I recently got a frantic call from my 11 year old that I had to drop everything and come to the school and sign some kind of permission form. I arrived and introduced myself and stated my intentions I was asked to have a seat and wait, as they called my son to the office.
As I waited I noticed several students coming in and out of the office for various issues, office aides running errands, students in line waiting to see the school nurse, etc. Also during my tenure in the office several parents dropped by and delivered forgotten items, be it a lunch, glasses or medication.
I was getting a little antsy waiting on the form to arrive, until I decided to sit back and enjoy the human interactions going on around me. Glad I did.
One of the Secretaries was visiting with a student inline to see the nurse. This child had his shoe off and was kind of moping around as he rubbed on his bandaged foot. She asked, “Did you step on something?”
The child nodded his head negatively and that was it.
Moments later one of the coaches entered the office, you can always identify the coaches because they walk around like they own the place sporting the latest athletic fashions that are at least 15 years out of date with Adidas shoes. He walked behind the counter of the desk and promptly parked it in the chair with the best view of everything going on in the office. As he sat there, he surveyed the entire office, which I could tell he had done countless times before and identified the individual with the weirdest situation and as tactfully as a coach can asked the kid with the foot “What happened to you?” All coaches have a little bit of a snarl in their voice and generally all seem a little pissed off. No real surprise if you ever attended a public institution. Did I mention he had a whistle around his neck?
The student looked up you could see that the child liked the coach and enthusiastically said “I dropped a bowling ball on my foot!” You could of mentioned “EF Hutton” and it would not of gotten any quieter. I looked around the room and I could see everybody mentally chewing on this bit of information. It was not 3 seconds before the questions started flooding in.
“Did you do it at school?”
“Did you break it?”
“Did you go to the hospital?”
ETC ETC. a good 10 questions in the next 30 seconds that were all answerable.
Lesson 1: One good question in the beginning can set the stage for the entire meeting, seminar interaction whatever, you can prepare like I would or you can wing it like the coach. You will get better at this as time goes on.
Lesson 2: Your first question should not be one that can be answered with a yes or a no.
Final thoughts.
I guess if you have a bunch of resumes for a SM Guy, Sales or other public face of the company, and on his resume he states he was former High School football coach you might want to grab him before he goes. Unfortunately 99 percent of his time in your office will be wasted, talking about how good the coffee is, The local sports team, etc. Somewhere in all that rambling he will spout off some real jewels of information and as long as you are listening you might be able to put it to good use. Plus everybody he meets will like him.
Best of Luck,
Chris Dunlevy is a partner in IT Service Station LLC, and an IT Consultant serving the Greater Oklahoma City area and beyond for the better part of 10 years. He believes in shooting straight with his clients, returning his calls, keeping his appointments, and generally being available to his clients. Chris realizes that if you treat your clients like gold they might share some of it with you and if you don’t they might blog about it. Chris can be reached at 405-843-8324 or you can drop him an email @ chrisd(at)itssok.com