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Why Can't We Talk?
Is the art of communication dead?
Communication matters!
When you boil it down, all organisations are really networks; a place where people come together and form varied interlocking relationships – individual people, with their own skills and experiences, in pursuit of (hopefully!) shared goals, aims or objectives.
In any team, nobody should feel like their desk is an island, no matter how big or deep the staff pool around them might sometimes feel, but when things go wrong – or mistakes are made – it’s pretty common to hear ‘miscommunication’ identified as the root problem.
In our experience (with more than three decades in business ourselves, and what we’ve learned from the many thousands of clients we’ve supported) communication – or, more accurately, the lack of it – is more likely to be a symptom than the cause of any failures. What you really need to address is those underlying problems. But how?!
This would be a very long article if we shared all the solutions – but here are some of the best places to start!
Unclear Goals or Roles:
If any of your employees are unclear about what is required or expected of them, it’s a matter of luck more than judgement (or deliberate actions) that determines if their work hits the spot – or garners their Manager’s satisfaction.
When two people both think the other is responsible for any task, chances are it will A) not be done, B) be done twice, but in different ways, or C) trigger a dispute that could have been avoided! Any organisation – or manager – that can’t define responsibilities, or set clear, unambiguous goals for your people, is unlikely to see those goals being accomplished consistently.
You can get what you want without asking for it…but that’s luck, not leadership, and relies on your people being uniquely talented – and even when they nail it, the chances of that success being repeated are slim. If you don’t know how you got there, you can’t replicate what worked!
Poorly defined Structures or Processes:
If the expected processes between leaders and their teams are blurred, and the communication pathways muddied by a lack of structure or strategy – or if a team has two (or more) ‘Managers’ who can’t co-ordinate or align their expectations – successful outcomes are very unlikely!
In a lot of organisations – and especially those facing change, mergers or a recruitment drive – a multi-disciplinary, or cross-functional, effort is what you need to achieve any of your objectives. Managing this, or sustaining any possible success, means that you absolutely have to be sure that your organisation’s hierarchy and lines of communication are clear. If you don’t, you’ll quickly see ‘silo behaviour’ from your teams, which will encourage your best people to work against each other, rather than in collaborative ways. It doesn’t take long for this to result in a very toxic working environment, a culture of secrecy or unhealthy competition, and your best talent heading for the door because their skills aren’t being utilised, and their ambitions shot down.
Your organisation’s long term success means that every employee needs to have clarity – clarity of purpose, of process and of progress, and some insight into the bigger picture, and their vital place within it.
Poor Leadership!
Leadership is a responsibility, not a status – and it isn’t necessarily one that comes naturally to everyone.
Not every leader or manager is ready for the responsibilities, or has the skills required, to get the best from everybody in their team; it’s more than just telling people what to do – to lead is to guide, encourange and reward direction: people’s willingness and ability to follow leaders to achieving these goals is dependent on knowing where they are being led, and why!
If your leaders are indecisive, if they can’t define a direction or provide clarity when it’s asked for, or if they are unable (or worse, unwilling) to communicate their visions and strategies, the people they lead are left confused and floundering. If every person seeking guidance and clarity from their leader is met with poor communication and inadequate – or deliberately unhelpful – responses, they’ll lose momentum, and grow increasingly frustrated by the barriers put in their way. #
Great leaders need to inspire their people, to map out the goals, communicate the path to achieve them, and encourate, support and develop the skills of each and every person that contributes to successes; having their goals communicated so effectively also encourages them to communicate better too – with their peers, their team, those more senior, and more honestly.
Cultural Misunderstandings:
The world we work in is no longer bound by geographic limitations – and many organisations find themselves finding their place in an increasingly globalised, multi-cultural world – with an equally multi-cultural workforce, and customer base. This makes understanding the differences and values that shape those many cultures absolutely vital to your success.
Attention to detail in one culture may be interpreted as micro-management in another. Even small incidents of personal manners can have an unexpected impact, if they differ from the culture locally: an example from a UK citizen working in the Netherlands, taken from a Daily Telegraph article, shows how simple differences can cause big impacts:
“Being stopped by a Dutch airport official to be told that you look “so much better than your passport photo” becomes an amusingly phrased compliment. Numerous female friends have described going into work without make-up and immediately being told they look ill or tired. In the UK this would be a social faux pas, here in Amsterdam it is shrugged off as (you guessed it) Dutch directness.”
There's no 'one right way' to work, or to lead - so a culture that gives your people the freedom to communicate is vital
Are your people really engaged?
Demoralisation:
Whether it’s in work or out of it, our emotions – and the behaviours they bring – matter. When we get angry we might raise our voice – and when we’re demoralised we might no longer see any benefit to making our point – meaning that people are far more likely to say less, or nothing at all. Getting the best from people simply cannot happen in a culture where they feel their voice is irrelevant, and progress stagnates when people know they can’t speak out about the way things are going, the ideas they have, or their needs and goals.
There’s probably an element of ‘chicken and egg’ to this kind of disengagement and poor communication: this piece discusses the 12 questions in the GallupQ12 survey, an international standard in measuring employee engagement – seven of which relate directly to communication issues:
- Do you know what is expected of you at work?
- In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
- Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
- Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
- At work, do your opinions seem to count?
- Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
- In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
Inappropriate Leadership Styles:
Take a step back, and really observe your leaders and managers. How do they lead their teams? Are they dictating. issuing orders and making demands? Telling, when it would be more inspiring or engaging to ask? Focusing their concern on tasks and outcomes, at the expense of a concern for people? Would the people in your organisation be more effective if their Leaders were able to coach those teams?
Are they inviting dialogue and conversation, or are they broadcasting?
The way your leadership communicate reflects the culture they work in – and impacts the productivity and successes of your people. If the communication style is abrasive, divisive or causes friction, the result is teams of people who can’t achieve their objectives, because they are anxious, overwhelmed, confused about what to do, why and how to do it, and their frustrations mean they’re pretty unwilling to perform at their best even if they do know what’s expected!
Inappropriate Behaviour:
People don’t only stop communicating when they are demoralised. Sometimes, silence descends because people are self-censoring any irritated or inappropriate responses, or they feel like they can’t communicate safely.
If you have a Leader or Manager who is attempting to gain power or hobble other people’s performance by withholding information, or people in their teams are indulging in gossip, rumour-mongering, belittling others – or, less malignantly but equally damagingly, criticising the person rather than their work – you’re failing every single person in the organisation. This toxicity infiltrates everything, and creates a culture full of mistrust, disgust and anger. These are all behaviours we might want to believe don’t happen once we’ve left school, but even in the most corporate environments, we know that – sadly – they do.
When we speak about “Difficult Conversations” – and the skills and training that help your Leaders and Managers to have them – people usually assume those difficult conversations are performance reviews, or telling someone they might be made redundant…but experienced Leaders and Managers know that difficult conversations cover far more issues. Behavioural, cultural, interpersonal, organisational, no matter what, having those conversations means you need the right information, the right procedure, and the right attitude. Nobody wants to have to do it – so learning how to do it effectively, and appropriately, matters.
If your organisation is being impacted by communication issues, it’s hard to change the way you do it – but hard doesn’t mean it can’t be done. If communication is an area you’d like some help, just ASK…
Not only can we help with those difficult conversations, as specialists in behavioural change, we can also work with you on the broader management and leadership issues that underpin them.
To find out more, email us at hello@askeurope.com or call us on 01234 757575, to schedule a no-obligation chat with one of our specialist consultants.