My Chat With The Phone Lady

The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle.

The phone rang on a Friday morning a couple of weeks ago when I was in the middle of writing one of these columns. I looked down and didn’t recognize the number and hesitated to answer.

In the last few years, I’ve become one of those people who doesn’t like answering the phone, preferring to let it go to voice mail, especially if I don’t know who it is. I answered this time, maybe to procrastinate from writing, I’m not sure.

“Hello, Mark speaking.”

It was Mary Jane Copps calling from Halifax with a question about her new Huddle membership. She spelled her last name so I could make a note for someone who could help her. “C-o-p-p-s. I’ve only ever seen that spelling once before, with the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps,” I said.

“She’s my cousin!” said Mary Jane.

A political junkie myself, we had a great chat about the Jean Chretien/Copps Liberal era of government, and I got her insights on life in politics as a cousin to a longtime and influential Canadian politician.

I continued to write down her information as we chatted. I asked her for an e-mail address: [email protected].

“The phone lady…that reminds me of a CNN podcast I listened to last week about how many people, in particular younger people, are afraid of using the phone,” I said. “The host has issues himself and gets his mother to make calls for him. He also has a phone coach.”

“That’s me! I’m The Phone Lady,” said Mary Jane.

Amid a busy morning, I found myself in a delightful conversation full of serendipitous twists and turns, all based on simple questions and comments about the spelling of her name and her e-mail address.  

In her conversation with Harry Enten, host of CNN’s Margins of Error podcast, Mary Jane says these kinds of conversations, even ones that meander like ours, are the products of skill and experience. Largely because of the advent of the smartphone she says people of all ages don’t really talk on the phone anymore, preferring to communicate by text or other chat or messaging programs.

“I compare conversation a lot of the time to jazz music,” Mary Jane tells Harry. “Chick Corea, who recently died and was a famous jazz artist, said that improvisation was only possible with practice. So, we can’t get good on the phone; we can’t have great conversations if we don’t practice.”

Podcast: Mary Jane’s conversation with Harry Enten

I was raised in a family of people who can talk for hours on the phone, my father the lone exception. “Here’s your mother,” he would always politely say when he answered the phone and had engaged in a minute or two of conversation.  

My mother and aunt had legendary phone conversations, with each other and other members of the family. Even though they lived close and saw each other all the time, they always seemed to be talking on the phone. Once, my father picked up my mother at my aunt’s house on his way home from work.  When they arrived home, the phone was ringing – it was my aunt. “What is she calling about? You just spent five hours together.”

I once sat on a couch beside my nephew, then a toddler, while he had a long phone conversation with my aunt, who didn’t seem at all fazed that he was still learning to talk.

I inherited their “gift of the gab,” an expression my father liked to use back then. I’m also a journalist and though many of us are introverts by nature and anxious about picking up the phone, we’re trained to ask questions and pick up on potentially interesting trains of thought.

We’re also trained to identify good stories.

“I’ll make sure we sort out your membership issues,” I said. “But is it okay if I pass along your contact information to a reporter so he can do a story on your business?”

Over the years, Mary Jane has received high-profile media coverage because her story is so compelling. There was the recent CNN podcast; eight years ago, The Wall Street Journal took a similar interest in her work with people with “phone phobia.”

Related: Halifax’s ‘Phone Coach’ Teaches A Phone-Weary World How To Talk

Huddle Associate Editor Trevor Nichols wrote a story this week about Mary Jane’s Halifax-based business, The Phone Lady, which has a global client base and has done workshops and group sessions with more than 14,000 people in 15 years.  

People clearly need her help learning to properly use a tool that’s still a critical form of communication. The ability to have a good conversation, on the phone or in person, is a soft skill that’s essential for jobs like sales and effective company leaders too, says Mary Jane.

“People are losing their ability to have conversations,” she says. “You can call someone, and you can get the call started. But then you’re like, ‘well, how do I keep this going?’”

This has never been an issue for my mother, and I’m sure her conversational skills served her well when she was a real estate agent. I answered six phone calls as I finished writing this column on Friday morning; the one with her lasted 30 minutes even though she was just checking in about our plans for lunch. If Mary Jane was looking to hire more people as her business continues to grow, my mother would make a great coach.

As always, I encourage readers to give me feedback on this column or anything else in Huddle. Send me e-mail: [email protected]. But better yet, give me a call: 506-654-0393.

Banner images: Mark Leger (photo by Andrew Lamb/Acadia Broadcasting). Mary Jane Copps (photo submitted).