In all honesty, I can’t imagine communicating with a hockey team without email and online calendars. (It felt like a real hardship two years ago when we couldn’t download the calendars to our iPhones.) But even though we’re spared the phone trees for communicating about schedule changes, team dinners and volunteer requests, email brings new hassles—namely, a barrage of email about things that don’t concern you. Many email users’ default mode seems to be “Reply to All,” so as soon as the team manager says, “Let me know if you can run the clock,” you get 15 emails containing excuses or help offerings. Multiply this times the number of team emails you get a week—and the number of hockey players you have—and, well, you can do the math. So take yourself out of that equation and just respond to the person who really needs the answer.
Editor’s Note: Thank you to Kelly Anton for this real-world hockey parent advice.
Categories: Advice