Learning From the Cap'n

I'm reading about the Best Damn Ship in the Navy and the first thing that I learned that I really want to implement is that it's important that people know you care about them. This sounds like a no-brainer, but the chapter on this really opened my eyes. It made me realize that there are a lot of things we do unintentionally that give people the feeling that we don't really care.

Here's my list of things that I want to stop or start doing:

• Don't let the phone interrupt an in-person conversation. The one exception is if I'm expecting an important call. In that case, I'll warn the person I'm talking to that I may need to be interrupted (so they know it's not because I don't value my time and/or conversations with them).
• If I'm on e-mail when someone comes to talk to me, I'll ask them to wait a moment so I can finish what I'm doing and then physically turn away from the computer screen (and not look back at it while I'm talking to the person).
• When talking on the phone, I will not multi-task by working on e-mail. I can always tell when I don't have someone's full attention, so people can probably tell when I'm not focused.
• Be on time for meetings. This is the hardest one for me, especially when I have things scheduled back-to-back. It means that I will have to set expectations in meetings that I can't run over, because I have another committment. It also means paying attention to the clock.

Those are the things I get to work on because of the Cap'n's advice. let me know if you have any other good advice for sending the message that you really care about people.