THE IMPORTANCE OF CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS- TELLING ISN’T THE SAME AS UNDERSTANDING

William H. Whyte is credited with the insightful quote: “The great enemy of communication,?we find,?is the illusion of it”.??

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To more clearly articulate the same concept, the statement I constantly use in frontline leadership training is: “Just because you’ve told me doesn’t mean I heard, and even if I heard, doesn’t mean I understood”.??

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The concept behind this is not to assume that because you have given instruction to someone that they have necessarily heard everything you’ve said, and even if they have heard everything, it’s not necessarily the case that they have understood all that’s been said.?

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As a way of illustrating this, I often tell my leadership course participants that I spent more time than I ought to have in the principal’s office during my school years and it certainly wasn’t to receive certificates and awards. I remember time and time again the principal talking at me (not to me), going on and on and on and on about what I had done wrong (again), and how I should improve.??

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At the end of this monologue, he would invariably fire a short, closed question at me, that I could answer with a simple yes or no. Questions like “So are we clear?” or “So have you got that?”??

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I tell my course participants that I would reply by saying: “I felt like you were quite clear in your opening remarks, I then felt like things got a little bit murky in the middle and maybe you let your emotions get the better of you, and then finally I think you’re communication would be a lot clearer if you are able to work on your summarising at the end”.??

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Typically, those remarks are met by a lot of shaking heads and a lot of smiling faces by the people on my leadership programs who know full well that that was never my answer. When I asked them what my answer was (and why), they consistently reply that I would answer “Yes!!” regardless of what I thought of the principal’s dialogue, because any other answer would have prolonged my time in his office. They are absolutely correct, and I’ve even come to describe the condition that I had that would cause me to reply with as short an answer as possible as “getoutoftheprincipal’sofficeitis”.??

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There has been a term that has been around in parenting circles for years but is becoming more commonly used in business and that is the concept of “being present” in conversations. In a nutshell this means giving the other party your full attention and not allowing your mind to wander or be distracted. I’m very pleased that this phrase is being increasingly used in the commercial world because if you’re not present in conversations and in meetings, the messages you take in will be severely compromised. 40 odd years ago when I was at the height of my ‘principal’s office’ career, the last thing that I was in these conversations was present. When he was talking at me sentence after sentence, minute after minute, I was physically present in the room, but my mind was either off surfing on the West Coast or playing football. If he had asked me any meaningful questions at the end of those ‘one-way conversations’ I would not have been able to answer, in which case he would have discovered that something was lacking in his communication strategy.?

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As a first-time leader you will understand your responsibility to give a lot of instructions, and you could so easily make the assumption that your clearly articulated instructions have hit the mark. But how do you know?