Room for improvement.

Please remember that communication involves listening, speaking and writing. Our body language also plays a large role! ?

I’ve been thinking a lot about communication recently, and mostly I find myself coming back to that wonderful quote by George Bernard-Shaw, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ?The Irish playwright hit the nail on the head!

I have been training and teaching and coaching on this subject for more than 13 years and have seen many teams and organisations be stymied by communication.

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with teams that have really been able to get their communication right; but I have also seen many stuck and not able to dig themselves out.

So why are so many organisations, teams and relationships continuously dealing with misunderstandings, miscommunication and / or insufficient or absent information sharing?? Why are some teams/ individuals able to improve, and others not? My hypothesis is that the agreed point of departure has a massive impact on the progress and success. ?

What do I mean by that? If you believe that you are bad at communication you work harder at getting it right than those who (incorrectly or not) believe they’re either fine at it, or good at communication. ??

A while back I worked with a senior leadership team. The organization was well established, and had seen good market share and solid performance, but things had started going downhill. ?The primary purpose of the session was for the team to establish “where the leak was” and strategise how to fix/ plug the leak and develop a plan for the way forward. We did some group discussions, we did some group exercises, and we did some activities, and it became evident to me that a lot of the problems that were being described, had their root in communication. ?When I raised this, I was told in no uncertain terms that communication was NOT the problem. According to the group the causes of the origination’s downturn were a lack of clear and standard operating procedures, teams, departments, and individuals working in silos and not being aware of what was happening in other units of the business. There was also a big problem with the fact that incorrect behaviour of members of teams was not being corrected, and consequences were inconsistent.

Dearest gentle reader (who’s watching Bridgerton) do you see what I see?

No SOP? You mean nothing has been communicated? Nobody has said we need this, and nobody has written it down, disseminated or trained on it? People working in silos? Sounds like nobody is asking or even telling other departments what is happening or what is. Incorrect behaviour that goes unchecked? Like nobody tells people when they are out of line. ?Hmmm?

Compare this to another team I have worked with. The entire company culture had been built around open dialogue, and good communication. When presented with information every person in the company would ask questions, seek clarity, and ensure both/ all parties were on the same page. If I wanted to give a colleague feedback on something that they had failed to do, or not done well or even something that I had a negative experience of, the agreed protocol was that I would go to them and give the feedback. The protocol continued, insisting that there was to be NO explanation, no context to be given and no disagreement. You were required to hear it and sit with it, for at least 24 hours. ?Then if you wanted to, you could come back to me with a reason, context, a different viewpoint… or sometimes just an apology.? It was incredible. I’m sure there was some anger and frustration but most of what I saw was people having a tough time in the moment, but there was no explosion, no mess to clean, no words said in haste to take back, in other words no collateral damage. Conversations could be had when the emotional climate was a bit more conducive to creation solutions and fostering teamwork.

When we believe that we are doing well, or even just fine, our default setting becomes to wait for others to catch up to us before we need to put in the work. In some instances, we even approach miscommunication with defensiveness and aggression. Our focus moves from problem-solving to shifting the responsibility (read blame) to the other party. If we are honest with ourselves and admit that we are not doing something well, we are more likely to move towards improvement with curiosity and enthusiasm.

Let’s put ourselves in the latter group.

Let’s improve our communication.

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