Communication 102

Just as a person who has only ever seen hand tools may struggle to imagine a skyscraper, a business owner who is learning entirely from their own experiences may be overwhelmed by the idea of expanding, or even maintaining their business.  Fortunately, business coaches have a deep and varied toolkit at our disposal, a kit that enables our clients to dream bigger and to achieve those dreams.  Long term success for a business generally begins, with the business owners or top leaders, understanding themselves.  Expanding this understanding across the entire team will bring different, but equally valuable, insights and opportunities.  Also, although this may surprise some leaders, teams can often behave differently as a group than each of its members would behave as individuals.  This means that once the team understands the value of their own introspection, an uncovering of team preferences and dynamics can lay the groundwork for higher levels of performance.  Of course, knowing exactly which tools will be of the most value for a given situation requires some degree of experience but the first step is simply understanding the options that are available.

A small business’ success tends to rest, for better or for worse, upon the shoulders of the individual leader who owns or runs it.  To maximize the chance of success, the leader must learn to understand how their own strengths and weaknesses impact business performance and they must develop a functional vocabulary that allows them to communicate their needs and intentions to others.  Most importantly, successful leaders are those who are in tune with the needs and challenges of their employees, which can be measured by the level of their EQ (emotional quotient).  Research has shown that EQ is far more valuable in this context than IQ (intelligence quotient) and in fact, a high EQ is often viewed as a better indicator of a leader’s future success than a high IQ.  Luckily, there are several options available to both assess and improve a leader’s EQ.  This is why I begin most coaching engagements with an assessment of the business owner or executive, focusing on their interaction preferences and their EQ.  Honestly, many small business owners have never considered the importance of EQ before engaging with me, and they can become discouraged if they find that their results are poor.  For many who have built a business from scratch through blood, sweat and tears, their frame of reference tends to focus on results with minimal conscious thought about the path to achieving those results.  Showing a deep sense of empathy to an employee whose tomato garden has been attacked by insects may feel less important to the business owner than making the shipment to the new client.  But getting shipments out on time will happen more often when employees feel supported and heard, such as when the leader allows them to describe their painful tomato garden loss and then move on.  To many small business owners, this is a new idea and it takes time for them to understand that practicing empathy by developing a stronger EQ will enable their organization to grow, become more accountable, and ultimately more successful.  

Of course, the value of introspection is hardly limited to the leader of an organization.  As the team dynamics are clarified and interpersonal tensions are identified, managers and other employees will be equally empowered to dive deeper into their own values and motivations, which can streamline efforts towards more effective collaboration.  More projects and initiatives fail because of miscommunication than any other cause so the sooner a team learns how to work most effectively together, the better their chances of achieving shared goals.  For business owners committed to the success of their leadership team, a Communication Breakthrough workshop can be the path to success.  By pulling the team together and sharing their behavioral preferences with each other, they begin to better understand why they get certain reactions from certain co-workers.  Take the person with a high preference for inclusion, one who is energized by the people part of the interaction and less interested in the exact details of the solution.  Now ask them to work closely with a person who has a strong preference for compliance or rule following and does not make a decision until they have tested every scenario.  This can be a recipe for disaster if the two co-workers fail to consider each others’ preferences when attempting to resolve conflict.  We often approach others the way that we would like others to approach us and then wonder why they are less motivated than we would be in their shoes.  A more effective way to find a common ground is to approach others as they would like to be approached.  It is equally important to know your own personal preferences and those of your colleagues so that you can communicate your needs while meeting coworkers on their terms - the Platinum Rule!  It opens doors!  

Looking at a team as a collection of individuals with individual preferences and intra-team challenges is crucial but the team itself also has its own set of characteristics that must also be understood to gain efficiency.  Not only is it important to understand how your preferences fit with those of your co-workers, it is also important to understand the general preferences of the overall team and what the team prioritizes collectively.  Team behavioral preference reports can be used to identify the themes most important to the collective team.  When reviewing the team report results, it can be eye-opening for a team to see how far their behavioral preferences stray from what they perceive to be the most important values that they must foster.  I once worked with a leadership team of a customer service oriented company who were shocked to learn that they valued customer service next to last in a list of business values!  As they broke down the team preferences, they saw that as a group they were inwardly focused on accuracy, consistency and organization, mirroring their leader no doubt.  This left the team addressing the customers’ needs only after they had fulfilled their own.  Suffice it to say it is very different there today!  Since the inclinations of the team are almost always more powerful than that of one individual, it’s critical to understand team preferences, adjusting where they are weak and most importantly, leveraging where they are strong.

So, as with many of my articles, the final summary really boils down to one simple concept - communication.  Clear and effective communication may arguably be a skeleton key that can unlock most challenges faced by any business.  So why are so few organizations good at it?  Perhaps it is because, like human beings, businesses come without instruction manuals.  Just because crisp communication is a near universal panacea, it remains one of the most difficult targets for any group of individuals to consistently implement.  But the results are well worth it and the tools are available for you to get started.  You will be amazed at the rewards you will reap if you make the commitment and investment into understanding your team and refining your ability to communicate and collaborate.  The insights may conflict, the choices may be difficult, but the results will likely be far more successful than the outcomes achieved with no tools brought to bear on the problem at all.