When you stop and think about it, the number one most important job you have as a manager every day is to be an effective communicator. Maybe you think your job involves other components: training, quality control, accountability, planning, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Okay, but name ONE of those jobs you can do successfully if you fail to communicate with everyone else involved! Really, stop, and think about it. Do you realize that a manager spends about 70% of his time every day just communicating information to the rest of the team members? How else are you going to do things like inform, convince, motivate, coordinate, explain goals, answer questions, implement policy, or process complaints?
When you look at it this way, if you are a manager, 70% of your salary is based on your ability to communicate effectively. Then it goes without saying that all too often a team’s inability to function and be truly productive may be rooted in a breakdown of the communication process.
But let’s get one thing straight right up front; simply broadcasting information, whether through posted memos, email, team meetings or even face-to-face sessions, is NOT the same as communicating. As a general rule, people tend to selectively “hear” what they want based on their previous experiences with a particular person or a similar situation in the past. A good manager has to overcome a lot of barriers to make sure that he is giving and receiving accurate messages. Here is a simple and powerful definition of true communication:
True communication has not occurred between the sender and the receiver until both sides have a shared understanding of the meaning of the message.
In an office, or on a project team, there are almost an infinite number of opportunities where true communication to be thwarted.
For example:
The employees of a certain company arrive to work one morning to be greeted by a blunt memo stating that from now on everyone will be required to arrive 15 minutes earlier. The memo went on to point out that some employees had grown lax in arriving on time, and they needed to pay special attention to arriving on time from now one. This memo produced immediate anxiety among the employees. The change seemed arbitrary and a little threatening. Their company’s industrial sector is in a down cycle right now, and several employees worried (and gossiped) that this new rule might be a prelude to a developing cause for letting people go. Morale was shredded for the rest of the day as people began to speculate about who would be let go first, and what their own chances were of surviving the hatchet. It wasn’t until one of the employees summoned up the courage to ask her supervisor the reason for the memo that they learned the supervisor was just passing on a new policy from his supervisor because the shipping department had a new schedule that required everything to be ready to ship 15 minutes earlier each day.
This is a very simple example of one type of communication problem that is common to all relationships; assumptions, expectations, past experiences, and careless expressions can quickly cause pain and confusion. However, in a working environment, the impact of poor communication can spread quickly and create explosive results. A manager MUST exert extreme care to make sure that messages are not simply heard, they are understood by the hearers in the same way that they were intended to be taken.
Surely you are familiar with the saying:
I know you think you understood what you thought I said, but the problem is that what you THOUGHT I said is not really what I meant!
This happens all the time in working environments. How can you avoid, or at least minimize, this problem? The best way is to make sure you practice the FIVE C’s of Good Communication. Whether you use an oral or written style of communication, you should consider whether your message has met these following prerequisites:
1. CLARITY. Is your message clear? Apply “Murphy’s Law” (If anything can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood) to your message.
2. COMPLETE. Is your message complete? You know what you mean, but the receiver may not. Pretend you will be receiving the message. Would you understand completely what is intended?
3. CONCISE. Is your message concise? Most people use too many words to convey a message. A rambling message is more likely to be misunderstood. Longer messages may not be read completely or are read too quickly and some essential part of the message may be missed. This is especially true of voicemail messages that can be deleted when the user believes all information has been received.
4. CONCRETE. Avoid terms and phrases that are too broad and too vague. Try to be as precise as possible in what you are trying to say.
5. CORRECT. Are the facts in the message correct? If the information being transmitted is clear, concise, etc., but the facts are wrong, then it matters little that your form and style are good. Be sure the facts are accurate before you communicate them.
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June Management Quick Tip of the Month – Beware the TTWWHADI Factor
Let’s face it; it’s easy to fall into a rut as a manager. For the sake of efficiency and consistency, you tend to train everyone on your team to do the same thing the same way all the time. Whenever anyone questions the process, you can either take 30 minutes explaining all the rationale, or you can simply hit them with TTWWHADI: That’s The Way We Have Always Done It. This is a bad answer for so many reasons, not the least of which is it tends to crush a creative spirit who might stumble upon an even better idea. Don’t start out by training new people in the process. Instead, start new people out by explaining the purpose. Make sure they clearly understand the underlying goal your team is trying to reach, and how the process contributes to that goal. Then, when they come up with a better way to reach that goal, all you need to say is, “Great idea!”
