Engineer for great Communication

"All you got to do is ask them questions and listen what they say and shit." (American Pie, 1999)

This is the "Engineer for greatness" -series. Everything here is about setting up organizations, creating great working environments and getting it right. This is no high road, just my road. Have fun and enjoy!

Every company has a formal cultural layer and an informal cultural layer. Each with their own unique social structure and code of communication. And if those two layers are in alignment information flows faster & more freely. Thus creating a situation where cooperation between people and teams happens more effectively, providing a more seamless workflow and less friction.

If those two happen to be disconnected from each other we will lose information, self-organization will be more difficult for us, silo-thinking will be more common between us and our overall results will suffer. But if we respect each other, make a conscious effort create a common terminology and make each other comfortable enough to speak our mind, which we all do in comfortable informal setups, we will work better together and thus achieve overall better results.

It is also critical to understand, that our acceptance of behavior & opinions is always granted top down, forcing us to express opposing ways of behavior or opposing opinions in informal setups. Whichever so often means, that the most insightful thoughts get spilled over coffee and are lost in the kitchen. The best teams, however, find a way to engage their "contrarians" in a positive way and learn to view those as valuable assets to their overall progress and success. And it is our responsibility as a leadership-task to arrange for those circumstances to happen.

So how do we do it?

There are two critical leadership qualities that will help us to create that diverse team and open culture of communication: empathy & compassion. Empathy, as the key to being able to understand each other and compassion, as the expression of our urge to go out of our way to help one another. If we apply both, we will feel more save around each other, have more reason to trust each other and feel more engaged and appreciated, which in return will make us more comfortable to share our true informal thoughts and critical opinions.

But not everybody is a "natural people person", right? The good thing: nobody really is. If we dig deep enough, we all have our insecurities, antipathies, general annoying behaviors, crude prejudices, you name it. What makes a real difference is, that we can take a practical approach to people management. We can learn about it and we sure can practice.

So if we from time to time struggle with the concepts of empathy and compassion - I know I certainly do - here are a few good rules of thumb, through which we can engineer for that kind of leadership experience:

• We should listen a lot more than we talk and try to pay attention. Eventually, we might learn something and as our interlocutor, we will feel more appreciated.
• A good addition to listening is if we simply ask questions. We all had those party chats where we either got asked a lot of interesting questions or else got talked to all the time, right? I sure know which one I prefer and which party companion I like the better. So if we want others to take an interest in us, we should start by taking an interest in them.
• A little more tricky is, that we should obligate ourselves, to react well to what we hear. Or else: If we don’t have something positive to say, we should consider to simply shut up. There is nothing to gain if we over-explain, criticise, ridicule - I know it is hard sometimes, but we should try to avoid being jerks, even if it feels good. In the end, no one really cares if we are right. But we all care when we engage each other through our excitement when we have to share something when there is something inspiring in the air. We should just stop to try “to be right”. It sucks. Instead, we should try to be an inspiration. We should learn how to tell a meaningful story in an exciting way.

Those three will by themselves create more intimacy between us. That is great so let’s progress to the next level:

• Provide Context: we should share our inspiration, all pieces of information we have, our vision, and strategy. We should do it often, do it uncalled for and do it with enthusiasm. All of us, literally all of us, perform better when we know where we are headed and what individual role we are playing (meaning: why we are important).
• We should never ever micromanage. If we ever feel we have to, we should stop in our tracks and think twice. It is always better if we try to create a process, or standard, or tool, maybe hire an assistant, split responsibilities, even fire the person, in short: we should do whatever it takes to avoid micromanagement. All of us will make mistakes and none of us will be perfect in all areas. But we will diminish engagement if we do not allow each other to find our own way of doing things, working together, making mistakes (and fixing them). The worst outcome of micromanagement is that we start to work towards each other's expectations and not towards what we know would be the best way of solving a problem or achieve results. In any job that requires thinking and adapting, that will become a problem.

And here we go. We just became a team that knows where it is headed and feels comfortable enough to openly discuss the best path to get there. Also called: autonomy. So let’s progress to the next level:

• We should aim to lose our egos (or at least swallow it from time to time - that is what I aim for), don’t ever make stuff about us, even if it is, never try to explain or defend ourselves, but always look for a way to improve towards our common goals in all situations. We will find there is usually somebody smarter than us, or with more insights, or a coincidental better idea. So an earnest look beyond what we think and feel might put us in touch with a whole world of stuff we do not yet know. This is also the only real way I know to integrate uncomfortable opinions and those who voice them into our teams - by not making criticism (I hate calling it feedback) about people, but about results and approaches of work. This has to start with us and how we perceive a challenging opinion. Nobody can do it for us, there might be context to make it easier but ultimately it is our attitude that matters most in this respective.
• Have fun. Laughing and playing are amongst the most natural bonding experiences humans are capable of. We should spend more time together doing nothing but enjoying ourselves. We learn a lot more about each other if we are comfortable to approach each other and for that, we have to experience some kind of personal bond and intimacy. We should allow ourselves to let that happen.
• All of us who are not in leadership will agree on one simple truth. The fish always stinks head first. So really it is time, that we all take on responsibility. As a leader we have to accept, that everything happening (or not happening) in our organizations has at some level something to do with ourselves. Being in charge we define the rules, tone, style, dynamics of interaction. It is our responsibility to do all we can to reflect upon ourselves and how your preferences and behavior shape the environment we all share.

And Boom, we created a real sense of belonging and responsibility. Seems to be a lot to take on for one person? It is. But handled with attention, those simple steps help to shape a great working environment and will better our overall results as individuals and more important as teams. When approaching this it makes sense to seek out allies. There is no need to go alone if we can go together. In the end, that is what it is all about.

To wrap it all up. We are in business like we are at home. If we engage each other on a personal level, we will go a long way together. If we make each other comfortable enough to share our thoughts, we will learn a lot more than by ourselves. And if we let each other to get to know one another, we will eventually be able to see beyond our differences and find the ability to trust and respect each other.

It all comes down to two simple concepts: empathy and compassion. Which I believe should not be viewed as given landmarks in our character, but as skills that can be developed like every other skill.

Thank you for your time spend reading, I hope it was worthwhile. Either way, please leave a comment and have fun working!