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Are You Touching All the Bases in Your Communication Game Plans?

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If you are deaf or hard of hearing, you can read the transcript of this skit here.

In this classic comedy skit by comedy duo Abbott and Costello we witness the hilarity that can ensue from communication errors. Real life communication errors can also be funny and may even serve as a bonding moment between the parties involved. But communication errors can also cost us time, money and relationships.

Abbott assumes that he has established that the players have funny names. From this assumption he communicates that “Who” is on first base. Costello, however, did not understand the assumption and does not understand that “Who” is a funny name.  Versions of “Who’s on First” are playing out across corporations today.

Leaders assume that they have “communicated” to their teams yet team members miss the objectives because they did not know they were given. Consumers are frustrated by instructions that fail to instruct on the basics and support lines buzz with complaints.

No one hits a home run on communications 100% of the time but you can reduce your failure rate and minimize errors when they occur with just a few simple steps.

  • Assume nothing. Assumptions can get you into trouble when attempting to communicate.  Whenever possible, check the understanding of your audience. In a live interaction, ask. If sending an email, simplify as much as possible and include explanation for items that may not be mutually understood. If you are preparing for a meeting, keynote or presentation, verify the depth of understanding in advance.
  • Invite questions. Ask if there are questions but do so in a way that truly makes it comfortable for people to admit a lack of understanding. There is nothing worse than making someone feel bad for not “getting it.”
  • Listen. Costello asked the question but Abbott was not really listening. It’s easy to become impatient when we are misunderstood but this heightens the error.
  • Be patient. I once had a frustrating days long email exchange with a web designer about the color blue. I was working with a client and the web team was based in another country. I got up in the middle of the night to communicate real time and desperately tried to find a way to communicate I wanted blue. An example and a little more explanation finally bridged our communication gap. Ideally, I would have hashed it out by phone but that is not always possible. When I let go of the frustration, and focused on finding ways to be understood we quickly moved to resolution.
  • Check Understanding. Confirm that the other party understood with simple check statements such as: To make sure we’re on the same page, let’s confirm what was discussed, Does that make sense to you?, I want t make sure I got everything, may I confirm what we talked about? You can do this in live conversation or via a quick confirmation email following a meeting.

Please feel free to share your tips, or feedback in the comments section. And if something was not clear, please do not hesitate to ask. 🙂

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5 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Communication Skills

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This is the third post in a series on communications in the digital age. You can read Part I and Part II here and here.

I ran across a statistic at the HBR website that drives home the need for being able to communicate well. According to a recent survey of 120 blue-chip American companies poor writing costs businesses $3 billion a year to correct. This is the result of only two-thirds of employees being able to write well.  Is poor communication costing you money? Are you spending time mitigating the fallout from a poorly written email? Are you being perceived as a poor leader because you are unable to convey clear expectations to your team? Have you been passed over for a promotion because of your communication style?

Great communicators rise to the top in corporations. It is a valued skill to be able to articulate ideas, messages and thoughts clearly and succinctly. This translates well in our personal lives as well. How many family disagreements arise from communication failures?

Communication
Image by elycefeliz via Flickr

Communication IQ is comprised of the ability to:
• Clearly convey thoughts and emotions
• Listen actively
• Demonstrate empathy
• Recognize emotions
• Walk the talk
• Use conflict constructively by being solution focused
• Gain respect through ethical and respectful behavior

Source: Effective Communication & Communication IQ | eHow.com

Improving our communication intelligence is not as complex as it may seem. The tips below will help you instantly improve your communication.

  1. Communicate to be understood. You can instantly improve your communication skills by focusing on the listener, rather than broadcasting a message or making a point.
  2. Be attentive to the spaces between the words. We have the ability to say much more than the words we speak or write. If you’re angry, calm down before sending that “professional” email.
  3. Two ears, one mouth. Listen twice as much as you speak and you will boost your communication skills overnight.
  4. Match the message to the medium. Save long, layered messages for real interaction. Use email, text and other short form communication for easy to communicate messages, ideas and updates.
  5. Receive with grace. We can avoid communication conflict by managing our own emotional reactions. Rather than respond in kind to a terse email, leave the emotion out of it and respond with grace. Remember that not everyone is a skilled communicator.

Do you have tips to add to the list above? Have you ever been on the receiving end of poor communication? What was the impact and how was it resolved?

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Say What? – Age of Communication Part II

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This is part II of a series on communications in the digital age. If you missed the introduction you can read it here.

As often happens I wrote this series and communication issues rose up around me. In the past several days I have read and heard so much on communication and miscommunication that I could fill volumes. We are communicating more than ever but also misfiring at rapidly increasing rates. The rise of digital combined with multi-generational perspectives have added complex layers to not only the content and methodology of our conversations but how we interpret them.

What is communication?

In my ninth grade English class we were asked to write instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We were to write the instructions for someone who was from a foreign country who had never made a PB&J sandwich. Many giggled and called the assignment stupid but with each question the depth of the assignment became clear. The challenge of communication is not simply getting the words right but putting them in the right context and making them accessible to those who may not share our same set of experiences.

Communication: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

The goal of communication then is obviously to not only be heard (or read) but understood. Note that the definition is not limited to language but includes behavior.

Our capacity to communicate has expanded but our exchange process has transformed. The danger of an over reliance on digital short form communication is the fractured nature of exchanges, the absence of other signs and behavior and the other subtleties that allow us to communicate and be understood in voice to voice and face to face interactions. Language, whether written, spoken or signed is enriched by behaviors that deepen the communication with feeling. Yes, feeling. At the heart of communication lies emotion, even when we communicate facts there is intent to evoke a response that is both intellectual and emotional.

Digital communication does not always strip communication of emotion but there is a greater risk when there are no other signals to validate intent. It is for this reason that I often advise business professionals to address complex issues via phone or face to face rather than email. Far too often I have witnessed an unnecessary and ugly protracted email exchange that could have been resolved in a 10 minute phone call.

The lack of human interaction for some gives them “textual courage” leading them to say things that they would temper in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice exchange.

The solution is not to refrain from digital communications but to become proficient in all forms of communications and that includes choosing the right channels.

Do you have a preferred communication channel (email, text, phone or other)? Have you found that there are times when your preferred channel is not the best channel for communicating?

Please stay tuned for the next post in this series. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcomed. If you have specific questions or ideas you’d like to see addressed please let me know.


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Corner Office – Kasper Rorsted – E-Mail Can’t Replace Interaction

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Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?

A. That was in 1989, right when I got promoted from being a sales rep in the Digital Equipment Corporation to being a sales manager at the age of 27. I had about 20 people at that point in time. All but two of them were older than I was.

Q. Was that a good experience?

A. When you’re 27, you’re inexperienced, so you don’t know what to fear. I didn’t know what I probably should have known. The first time I realized it was serious was when, after about six months, I had to lay somebody off. And then suddenly you move from the sunny side of the deal to the real deal. I remember I was sleeping very poorly for almost for a week. He had a family.

So one of the lessons I learned from that, which I’ve been very aware of since, is to be friendly, but not a friend. I had grown up in the company and I knew everybody, so I was more a friend. But then I had to start having honest conversations with people about how they performed, and that taught me a lesson. I’ve always been friendly but never been friends anymore. When we have parties, I’m the one who will leave early.

Q. What were some other lessons?

A. Later on in my career, I realized that there is nothing personal in business because most decisions are made for business reasons.

Q. How did you learn that?

A. In 2004, I was dismissed by Hewlett-Packard. My immediate reaction was to take it very personally and say, “What are they doing to me?” I was running a division with 40,000 people and $30 billion in revenue. I learned a lot from that.

Within a month, I had 11 job offers, all in high tech, and I had one that came from a completely different industry. It was from Henkel, a consumer goods and adhesives company. And I decided I would take the job offer from Henkel because there was a clear path I could see to get the C.E.O. job.

But I realized when I came in that I had no clue. I didn’t know the industry. I didn’t know the employees. I didn’t know the customers. I didn’t know the competitors. And when you grow up in an industry, you tend to know more and more, and a lot of people, me included, become a bit complacent or arrogant because you know it all. You’ve seen all the problems before.

Here, I had to start from scratch again. It was like going back to first grade in school and I had three years of questions. It was a reminder of just how important it is to ask questions and listen and listen and listen and just be humble again. It was a great lesson for me, and I think I’ve changed my leadership style, to be much more humble and listen much more and ask questions.

Q. It was your first C.E.O. job. Were you surprised by anything?

A. I was surprised about a couple of things. One was how much conflict actually ends up at the C.E.O.’s desk. All of the problems that nobody else wants or can’t sort out, they end up on your desk. And there’s the immense amount of time you deal with people, and how important it is for you to be there and be visible, not sitting in the office, so people can see you and feel you and ask you things instead of just sending an e-mail.

Q. How would you say your leadership style has evolved over time?

A. I do less e-mail and a lot more of being present. Last year, I just moved my office to the U.S. and traveled around for six weeks without going home. This year, I’ll go to Asia for six weeks and will visit as many sites, employees and customers as I can. So that’s one — just understanding how important it is to be where the business is and understand how it works. The second part is being very clear on what is urgent and what is important and being very selective about the battles I pick.

Q. You mentioned you’re doing less e-mail.

A. I think e-mail is very often disruptive in corporate cultures. You sit next to people and send e-mail to each other instead of walking over or making a call or just trying to look for the personal interaction. I use e-mail more and more as text messaging — just very, very short messages. It’s very efficient, but I am convinced that e-mail does not replace presence. Also, I never read cc e-mails.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. When I see on an e-mail “cc Kasper,” I delete it. I don’t read it.

Q. Why?

A. Because it’s a waste of time. If they want to write to me, they can write to me. People often copy me to cover their back.

They need to deal with their business and I need to deal with my business. If it’s important, they need to write it to me, but I’m not going to read a cc e-mail. I’m not advocating against e-mail, but you can get into a great argument in e-mail because people can read whatever they want into the words. It takes two minutes to pick up the phone, so I try to encourage that as much as I can. It’s not either/or. I’m just saying you’ve got to get the balance right.

Q. And when you became C.E.O., did you already know who you were going to keep on the executive team because you’d been working with them?

via nytimes.com

This interview with Kasper Rorsted offers some interesting insight from a seasoned leader. You can read the entire article here: http://nyti.ms/9Umuj4
I believe that new leaders can benefit from the advice but I was most interested in his views on communication, since I am exploring these very issues in a series of posts this week. I share his views on email and have seen gross misuses that lead to complete breakdowns in communication. Conversations, especially the ones we often wish to avoid are best handled by real human interaction.

What are your thoughts?

Posted via email from Marketing, Musings and More from Karen Swim

The Age of Communication?

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"Kellogg" brand "candle stick&q...
Image via Wikipedia

I had an interesting conversation with a client the other day about etiquette and the art of conversation. Like me he is a baby boomer, fully immersed in current technology yet aware of its shortcomings. We both still write real letters, phone our friends to chat and talk to people minus a blackberry when we are face to face. We use technology and take leadership in driving change but also reflect a generation that is desperate not to lose the personal touch of the past as we march forward into a tech driven world

It is no secret that internet communication and the continuing evolution of tools and platforms that facilitate conversation have changed the way we communicate. In many ways, the changes have been exciting. The ability to communicate with ease across global time zones exposes us to a wider diversity of cultures and traditions. This has also eased the ability for businesses of all sizes to expand internationally.

The internet has expanded everyone’s appetite for information. Not everyone was excited about reading the encyclopedia or spending hours in a library but the world it seems is fully ready to Google anything from anywhere.

All of this should mean that we are more literate than in the past and far savvier at the art of conversation. It should but does it?

Join me this week as I explore the issue, and please share your thoughts in the comments. What do you think of our communication skills? Any personal victories or horror stories to share?

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