Inc.com columnist Alison Dark-green answers questions about workplace and management issues--everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team well-nigh body odour .

A reader asks:

I run my own pocket-sized graphic design business concern. I work with some regular clients, but a lot of my work is one-off projects for small business organization clients. I'thousand ever open to new clients, though I also have a steady stream of piece of work, plenty to exist comfortable.

Here'due south the trouble: Often, a customer or prospective client will ask if I can "jump on the telephone" for a quick talk or schedule a teleconference. I have terrible social anxiety, and just thinking near talking to a stranger on the phone makes me want to throw up. I get so flustered on the phone that I can get practically unintelligible, and so I don't sell myself well over the phone anyhow. I also really like to accept every conversation in writing and so there'south no confusion about task guidelines, deadlines, etc.

Is there a way I can say "No, let's continue the conversation via electronic mail," or explain that I don't communicate by phone/teleconference? I have a therapist I work with, I accept medication, and I know there are strategies I could apply in the hereafter to make phone calls more comfortable--but from a business perspective, is there a fashion I can decline this request without seeming ridiculous? I'm enlightened that insisting to communicate only past email could lose me some jobs, but I have enough work that I'm OK with that.

What do you retrieve?

Green responds:

As long as you're OK with the possibility of losing business from people who feel more comfortable if they can talk by phone--and since you already have plenty work to exist comfortable--y'all tin can exercise your option to exercise this if you want.

For example, you lot can say: "My schedule makes it difficult for me to jump on the phone, simply I'd be glad to reply any questions you accept past electronic mail, and I tin commonly exist quite responsive that manner."

Or if you lot want to exist clearer that you're always going to be unavailable by phone: "I have a medical upshot that ways I don't utilise the phone, but I'd be glad to answer any questions you lot take by email, and I can usually be quite responsive that way."

That said, more than mostly--and this doesn't audio like it applies to you since you're in a position where you're calling the shots--I exercise call up people who dislike the telephone would be doing themselves and their careers a service if they worked on getting comfortable talking on the phone even when they don't want to.

There are tons of people who hate talking on the phone and who actively avoid it. I've heard dozens and dozens of managers say a version of this almost junior staff members: "She kept telling me she hadn't heard dorsum from the person who we're waiting on info from, but said she had followed up several times. Eventually I found out that all her follow-up had been by email. She'd never once picked up the phone and called, fifty-fifty when it was getting urgent. I had to order her to utilize the phone, and then we got the info nosotros needed." This is always said in a tone of exasperation, and understandably and so.

At some indicate in the future, the phone might go the mode of the mimeograph automobile. But until it does, for most people, "I hate the phone" isn't sufficient reason to avert using information technology when it makes sense for your job. But you're an exception to this, considering you're in a position where you can be finicky about how you work, which is a great thing.

Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org .