I once talked to a manager who shared this story: she’d been interviewing a young hiring candidate when his phone went off. He answered it, and it was his wife who wanted to wish him success at the interview. She told me she’d felt it was immature of him to pick up the call, though luckily for him she did not hold this against him when she made her decision.

But this story made me think: did the young man do anything wrong? Or was it the right thing to do?

Pros:

• By answering the call, he was showing respect for the caller (and, since it was his wife, marital affection as well). Surely that is good?
• By answering, he avoided potential harm related to missing an important, possibly urgent, call.

Cons:

• By answering he’d shown disrespect for the manager he was talking to – and, in this case, might have risked his interview outcome, had she been more annoyed than she was.
• More generally, he acted rudely. Or did he?

Behavior in these situations is morphing rapidly. A few decades ago it would have been unthinkable for an interviewee to give the interviewer any less than full attention. Of course back then we were not all living in a flood of interruptions and distractions from our digital devices. Today people answer their phones – for voice calls and for countless apps and social networks – all the time.

What is needed is an accepted etiquette – a set of widely known norms that regulate our responses to the ringing phone. But what should these norms be?

Before we discuss this, we need to remember some established facts (established by ample research, that is).

• Any interruption – even a ringing phone that you decide to ignore – has a seriously adverse impact on your mental processing. It drives down concentration and creativity, raises error levels, and impacts productivity at whatever you’re doing – including forging an effective relationship with the person you’re trying to talk to.
• A phone call (or WhatsApp conversation) that you actually do reply to derails the conversation you’re having, and for longer than it lasts in itself – your brain, and the other person’s too, need time to recover the “thread of thought” and to reach peak efficiency again – which can take long minutes.

In other words, picking up that call is not a “victimless crime”; it creates significant damage to what you were trying to do. And that’s on top of offending the other person.

Given all this harm, it seems appropriate to edict a norm that forbids answering a phone during a conversation; but of course it is much too late for that. People are so addicted to their cellphones that they won’t go with such an edict. We need to think of more subtle norms.

Here are some thoughts:

• When entering a more or less formal situation – an interview, a lecture, a performance review – put the phone on vibrate. Silent is better but vibrate will do.
• When you switch the device to vibrate, explain why you’re doing so. If you expect a truly urgent call, or need to be prepared for an unexpected one, say so – “I’m keeping this on vibrate because I expect a call from my child’s doctor”, or whatever. This shows you would prefer to switch off but can’t, and preempts offense when the call comes.
• When the device does vibrate, you may glance at it to see who’s calling, then do one of two things: ignore it, or reply. Make your choice obvious to the other person in either case: if you ignore the call, say “it can wait” (showing the other that you value them more); if you need to answer, apologize in a way that shows you’re truly sorry but can’t help it. Either way, you acknowledge the other’s existence and preempt their potential offense.
• Keep in mind the context. The harm of the interruption to mental processes applies to all cohorts, but the offense is generation-dependent; in particular, a younger millennial – like in the case my friend cited – would offend a baby boomer but not a fellow millennial. And interrupting a job interview is riskier than breaking a casual conversation.
• If a call comes in that you must pick up, consider excusing yourself out of the room, or to a far corner. This is the lesser of two evils.
• Don’t hesitate to tell the caller, while in the other party’s hearing, “is this really urgent? I’m in a meeting with people”. Demonstrate you’re trying to minimize the interruption.
• When done with the call, apologize briefly again: “Sorry about that”.

What is common to all these is that you are not being casual about answering calls during the conversation; you make it clear to the other party that you’re aware it’s a problem, will only do it if you have no alternative, and are feeling the guilt. It will do wonders for the other person’s perception of you!