By Debbie Depp
According to Harvard University how you speak impacts
your potential for promotion. In a survey by The Discovery
Group, the number one complaint of employees is unproductive
meetings with no results. As in 2004, the stock of companies
with high morale, higher than 70% average employee satisfaction,
outperformed those in the same industries in 2005. Communication
researchers, Ramirez and Sunnafrank, found that assessments
made in the first few minutes of meeting someone strongly
influence the course the relationship will take. In
every case it's all about communication…or lack
of it.
Why do people have so much trouble communicating?
We can all speak, of course, but often we don't speak
well. We can all hear, but we don't actually listen
very carefully. As a result, time is wasted, people
get frustrated and goals are missed.
Every person has tendencies in how they communicate.
Whether you are talking to another person or giving
a speech to hundreds, the way you communicate has discernable,
predictable patterns. Recognizing these patterns in
you and in others is the foundation to being able to
communicate clearly.
The two dimensions that make up the snapshot of how
we communicate are where we communicate first
and what we communicate about most willingly.
The way we communicate affects both how others experience
us and how our communication affects groups with which
we interact.
Your communication style is based on the tendencies
you choose. That's right. You choose how you communicate.
Some companies use personality assessments. However,
employees often feel assessment tests unfairly characterize
them and management struggles to measure results. Productivity
and organizational effectiveness suffer. Instead, an
intentional communication process becomes the methodology,
which enables assessment tools to work better.
Regardless of your personality type, education, or
beliefs, in every interaction you are making communication
choices: talking without thinking or thinking before
you talk, using what you say to make people comfortable
or uncomfortable, consensus building or debating. The
question is -- Are they conscious? The key to being
understood is recognizing which choices will be most
effective to reach your goals.
Are your employees wasting time because they cannot
express concerns directly? Do they embrace reality and
engage in constructive debates or political gamesmanship?
Can you communicate your vision of where your company
needs to go next to be profitable in the future? You
need to develop the social architecture of working together
in common cause. An intentional communication process
creates the social software you need to change the culture.
It's how you get the whole organization to follow your
lead. Without it people cannot do their jobs in the
most efficient and effective way. The more people are
aware of expectations, the more you can achieve.
One of our clients needed to figure out and resolve
the communication "storms" - the core problems
- holding back their Marketing/Creative department's
effectiveness in inventing, testing, and implementing
new high-leverage platforms. They were not producing
to their full potential and, as a result, were losing
money because of ambiguity in decision-making, innovation,
and leadership. Organizational effectiveness was impacted.
Since they were bringing three teams together for the
first time and wanted more than just a team building
event, they had clear-cut objectives:
- Identify the specific "storms" as each
employee understands them.
- Create a common language for establishing vision
and expectations.
- Provide specific tools to make decisive decisions.
- Manage roles so every team member knows their--and
their teammates'--specific responsibilities.
- Develop communication processes that inspire and
value risk-taking creativity.
- Build "arenas" where the group discovers
and addresses client needs.
- Instill leadership voices to motivate and focus
the entire group.
With a new awareness about their communication tendencies
and the tools to communicate effectively, the group
was able to foster open communication, provide the tools
necessary to create focus, and build upon their strategy.
They gained a clear understanding of what their "storms"
were and how to solve them. As one of the executives
said, "What stood out most to me was that we walked
away at the end of the day with tangible business goals
and tools that provide a common language for us to use
to drive the business forward."
Results of these tools gave management metrics from
which to quantify that effective communication was actually
happening. With tangible business goals and tools that
provided a common language the company was able to drive
their business forward.
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