Do you ever find it difficult to remember to keeping in touch with the important people in your life? Try these 5 simple steps!

You have lots of important people in your life.

Do you speak with them enough?

As much as you want to?

As much as they want you to?

If not, here’s a simple technique to make sure you do…

People tell me they usually contact people because of an event. Examples:

• You and your partner have a lovely meal out, after the event of them pointing out you’re working too hard
• A supplier shows wonderful customer care, after the event of a complaint
• You hold your first team meeting for a few weeks, after the event of them falling behind target

And, of course, that’s good. Events should cause things to happen.

But there are two problems if we rely on events as our trigger:

• There might not be one. That means you won’t speak to these important people for ages; plus
• People begin to realise that – every time you get in touch - something bad has probably happened!

So, try this instead – the KITE approach. Where KITE stands for ‘Keep In Touch Every’. Here’s how it works…

• List. Create a list of all your ‘important’ people. This shouldn’t take long. Just look at the contacts in your phone, and identify who you should speak to regularly
• KITE. For each person, write how often you should talk with them. So, should you Keep In Touch Every week, month, quarter, year?
• Group. Group all the ‘weeklies’ in one list, ‘monthlies’ in another, etc
• Diarise. Put in recurring diary entries, reminding you to get in contact with them. So the ‘weeklies’ would have a recurring weekly diary entry; the ‘monthlies’ a recurring monthly one, and so on. 
• Do. When the diary entry appears, contact them

And, when you do get in contact, remember - Person #5 doesn’t know what you’ve said to Person #4. So, you can often use similar messages to all the weeklies, tweaked slightly so each feels personal to them.

KITE means you never forget anyone. After all, your diary’s memory is much better than yours.

Also, it means you’re in control – not the occurrence (or not) of external events.

So, do you keep in touch with people as often as you should?

Action point

Do your KITE five steps.

If you’ve got 20 minutes now, do them now.

If not, identify now when you’ll do it later. It’ll only take 20 minutes. But, once your recurring diary entries kick in, you’ll always be proactively contacting them, rather than reacting to events. Better for both of you.

Know people who'd enjoy reading this post? Please forward it on, and introduce them to our Blog :)

Written by NativeEnglish

Native English Spain is dedicated to make learning English simple, fun and affordable for Spanish people.