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          Most stories of how people got their job includes one or more methods that reach out and touch someone.  Particularly useful in a job campaign are contact development in person or on the phone and telephone follow-up.  They are among the high quality and high leverage ways to discover job openings, whether directly or indirectly.  For those without call reluctance, training is straightforward. 

Scenario one:

          Be bold.  Take a chance.  Prepare your lines and dive in.  In order to get through to someone, tenacious persistence pays off.  Call the organizations you want to contact and get through to hiring managers.  Deliver a benefits oriented presentation.  Ask provocative questions.  Initiate networking questions.  Maintain conversation with people in companies with which you want to associate yourself. 

          Don't waste time waiting for someone call you back!  Very often calls are not returned.  It often takes at least 5 or 8 calls to reach someone of importance, even then you will only get a good fraction. 

          How about dropping in to a hotel at coffee break time.  Over by the meeting rooms, help yourself to pastry, spill a little cream–and you’ve got a conversation!

          Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative…. You will find greater poise and confidence by gaining competence which leads to accomplishment. 

Scenario two:

          Some people are naturally modest or introverted.  This inheritance can make things a bit harder.  Whether introducing yourself to someone at a meeting during a break or calling an expert on the phone for information, lack of practice has contributed to the uphill grade you climb.  All of this applies to describing your accomplishments.  Telling a flattering story gives some the heebie-jeebies.

Remedy two:

          Lean into your comfort zone.  You are swimming against the current, genetically speaking.  But swimming hard does work well enough, to overcome enough, to achieve the objective.  Determination in sufficient to expand your range of capability and competence.  The new comfort zone expands your range.

Scenario three:

          If your heart is pounding, the phone seems to weigh 200 pounds, your palms are sweaty as you grip the handset, your mind is reeling with vague catastrophic expectations as you ask to speak with an executive about a job prospect … you may have phon-a-phobia.

          If uncomfortable does not adequately describe your feeling about of calling strangers to sell your strengths.  If you would just rather ignore the required phone calls altogether.  If you procrastinate and decide to do other things, even when they know that a phone call would aid your job campaign … you may be phon-a-phobic.

          It is possible to completely overcoming this debilitating aversion!  Contact development and the telephone in a job campaign are much too crucial for you to allow obsolete counter-productive emotional reactions to hinder your progress.  You can unlearn your reactions.  You can break free from the bummer of anxiety with courage, a steadfast will, and some psychological techniques.  There are three methods which have been successful. 

Remedy two:  Toe-in-the-water.

          The gradual, one-toe-in-the-water-at-a-time method, is where you slowly do what is slightly difficult, and get used to that.  Then, after you can make safe calls, you do something a bit more difficult and then make continuous progress little‑by‑little.  Go on to the next challenge, and do that until you can do it comfortably, and so on.  Progress will not be continuous.  Keep going!

          Here is an exercise to try.  Make some calls to inquire for information, but not job information.  Don't even bring it up.  Here are some suggestions for safe calls.  Warm up and keep going. 

§       Contact a research librarian or, newspaper editor and ask about how to investigate your particular industry.

§       Call an investment relations department to talk about a company.

§       Talk to a politician such as someone in the mayor's office about a current issue such as what efforts are being made to promote the city to outside businesses.

§       Call an industry association executive and find out about people on the local membership list.

§       Call some recruiters and screen them on their qualifications to help you.

          When you can make these calls while breathing slowly and deeply.  Calm yourself and persevere.  Preparation helps too, but more preparation than calling is something else again. 

          Now, move on to more important, but still easy calls.  Relax, breathe deeply–you've got it made in the shade.  Don't scare yourself too much, but do keep on making progress. 

          Keep on until you hit the big time and then take 'em by storm!

Analogy:  phobias are like allergies.

          In a phobia, your fear is vague and the origin of your anxiety may be lost.  One thing is sure, it always feels better to avoid the anxiety provoking stimulus than to enter the gauntlet of the dreaded.  Typically, perspective is lost, rationalizations are invented, and your range of free action is diminished.  Uncertain fears and erroneous beliefs keep you away from the problem and thus safe from the terror–but there is a price, you become paralyzed, unable to act.  It is a little bit of jail in your life.

          A phobia is just like an allergy.  In an allergy, the natural defenses that fight disease have gone haywire.  Here the defenses work even though there is no real threat:  there is only a phantom threat.  For example, sinuses naturally produce mucous to wash the nasal membranes of foreign matter such as viruses and germs; this is very useful.  However, in allergic reactions this defense mechanism goes wild.  It over-reacts to harmless material such as pollen and produces uncomfortable side effects.  Like a head full of mucous, pounding with each beat of your heart.

          Like that, anxiety is a natural defense that protects the ego from psychological pain.  Anxiety warns us when we might be hurt by rejection or ridicule.  The natural defense is to simply avoid the source of pain–in this case the phone.  However, a phobia exists when you are over‑sensitive to the potential ego threats from phone calls.  When your aversion to the phone gets in the way of effective, adaptive behavior, you need to change.  Whenever the threat is more imagined than real and your natural defenses over-react, it is time to take control of your erroneous emotional reactions and eradicate the phobia.

          Biological defenses, even flawed ones, are inherited; all phobic behavior is learned.  What is learned can be unlearned.  There is no basis in reality for the fear.  Your anxiety, the emotional reaction, and your aversion to the phone are all based on antiquated learning. 

Remedy three:  Afraid of water and heights?  Try the diving board.

          The next technique is scary, on purpose.  The "Diving Board" approach.  If you can, here you deliberately scare yourself with your worst fears while actually doing the most dreaded thing.  Then, look around.  “It feels dry where there should be blood.  There is no blood.  It can’t be, but, I must be okay.”  The payoff is the realization and confidence that if I can do this, I can do anything anytime.  The liberation can be exhilarating.  You are free to call without fear.  Now get some more skill.

Remedy four:  Systematic Desensitization:

          The third is simple, but sophisticated.  Today, phobias are cured by systematic desensitization.  It has been well understood for 50 years.  P Systematic desensitization is very, very good at curing phobias. 

          It works for fear of lions and tigers and bears, telephone paralysis and call reluctance too.  Conveniently, you don’t need to believe in it, for it to work.  However, you must do the all steps. 

          Start by imagining several specific examples of phone calls or personal approaches that what would be hard or impossible for you to do now.  Then rate the discomfort from one to 100.  You need to make up your own, but for example,

1) Situations that would make me uncomfortable.

“I don’t care if the CEO is in with Chairman, I need to speak with him now!” 

 “I’m following up on a letter I send last week.  He is expecting my call.”

“Pat Henry suggested I speak with him about the industry.”

“I understand you are an expert on urban lipid sprawl.  As part of a job campaign I wanted to learn some more about the kinds projects that will be part of the solution in your view.”

“I’m creating a position proposal for Candy Barr at Hershey’s and another for Jim Crackhorn at Nestlé’s and I wanted to get your input on the slide in ice cream.” 

“I’ve done some reading, but can’t find the answer to…”       

 “I want to know if you’ve gotten your 5-18% profit enhancement yet from optimizing your supply chain.”

He asked me to return his call.

I want to schedule a meeting with Henry Honcho.

2) Rate the SUDS, one to 100.

Now for each one put yourself in the scene, check your viscera, feel the trepidation, and assign a number to the Subjective Units of Disturbance.  Get a good range of 8 to 12 items not too many clumped together. 

3)    Move in to your safe peaceful place.

          When you were a kid, where would you go to feel the most protected?  In the bed, under the covers?  Can you get that comfort by imagining a nest for yourself in the forest or overlooking the beach?  Do you prefer the meadow?  Get good vivid detail in your mind’s eye and invest your safe peaceful place with calming and nourishing powers in abundance.  Make it comfortable. 

4) Wash those SUDS with soothing water.;

The theory is that you can’t be both relaxed and anxious at the same time.  Gathering peace to spare, next launch into a visualization of a scene low on the SUDS scale.  Say two presentations of 20 seconds each.  Return to the cave if you become upset, the purpose is to remain calm, very calm.  When ready move up the hierarchy to a somewhat more difficult item on the list, but don’t push it too hard.  Reprogramming the emotional circuits occurs as you see yourself do something scary while your body is calm and your mind peaceful.  We are wired such that the emotional reaction to visualization is directly linked to behavior. 

5) Keep on, keeping on.

          That’s it.  Start with just 6-12 short sessions over a period of time.  You will first notice that the sense of charge is diminished, the stabbing spikes are gone.  As more becomes possible, then skill kicks in to grow competence and confidence. 

          You may never like snakes or spiders, but you won’t have to stand on the chair if you know they are in the next room.  You can defeat the feelings that make initiating a call too difficult to handle.  The research is solid that this technique works! 

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