Cultural Communication & Education » Insights

Better Communication Skills — Silence and Violence

Admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:04:36 +0000

Introduction

Leaders need to seek better communication skills not only for themselves and their leadership teams, but as part of the organization’s culture. Successful change management requires getting everyone moving in one new direction.

People will be talking with one another while you’re trying to drive change. As a leader, you want to make sure those conversations are out in the open so that objections can be addressed and people will grow confident in your leadership.

Better Communication Skills at the Organization Level

What do we mean when we talk about the communication skills of an organization? At the individual level, we know how to describe communication skills. We talk about someone’s style, their subject matter knowledge, their ability to adapt their message to their target audience, their preparation, etc.

In an organization, better communication skills are something we seek to build in the culture. To be specific, we’re seeking to create a cultural norm of frequent, open dialogue. When that’s the norm, people feel safe in raising concerns and objections, knowing that they will be heard.

They also recognize that they are obligated to participate in dialogue, whether in meetings or less formally among their peers. It’s part of their job, making sure they are contributing not only their labor but their expertise, insight and ideas whenever possible.

Leaders need to look out for the two biggest barriers to better communication skills in an organization: silence and violence.

Recognizing Silence

Very simply, silence means people are not participating in the dialogue. Said another way, important conversations are not happening because people are choosing not to engage in them.

Why is silence a problem?

Hopefully you’ve hired smart people. It only makes sense, then, that you want and need the insights of those smart people when you’re leading a change program. Smart people always have thoughts and opinions. When they go silent, you lose the benefit of knowing those thoughts and opinions.

Besides not having the input, when people are silent you don’t know where they stand. Do they understand what you are trying to accomplish? Are they committed to working with you and your team, or do they have reservations? Without clear understanding and commitment, how will you bring these people along with you?

Addressing Silence

First and foremost, make sure you’ve created an environment where it’s safe to speak out. Many people who turn to silence do so because they feel they may be ignored or worse yet criticized for speaking up.

Examine your behavior — what do you do when you are challenged? Do you fight back right away? Or do you give considered answers and act respectful when you disagree with the challenger? Check the same behaviors in your leadership team, and within the organization in general. You’ve got to make it safe for people to engage. Your behavior will set the tone.

If you’re sure it’s safe and you see individuals are still reluctant to add their input to the dialogue of the organization, coach them individually. Let them know how much their input is valued and needed, and thank them when they open up.

Recognizing Violence

In this context, violence can be described as the tendency of one or a few individuals to dominate conversations. When there is violence, there is no chance for open dialogue. The dominators, if there are more than one, may argue their points without effectively listening to one another. And those who are not dominating the conversation will end up going silent, out of frustration or boredom.

So in the end, violence begets silence. How do you address violence?

As a leader, maintain your own objectivity. You’re a participant in the conversations taking place, but you must also be an observer. Learn to step out of the discussion from time to time and assess what’s happening. If you observe individuals dominating to the point where others are checking out, you need to intervene.

The degree of intervention depends on just how “violent” the dialogue is getting. It can be as simple as reminding someone to ease up a little and open themselves up to push back from others. Or it can go all the way to having to call a time out and taking people aside to help them see that their passion is overwhelming others and suppressing good dialogue.

The Result of Silence and Violence

One of two things is going to happen when you don’t have open dialogue in which everyone is actively engaged.

You’ll stall. Some strong people will argue and debate ad infinitum, while others check out. And your change strategy goes no where.

You’ll move forward. Not everyone will be participating, but strong people will drive and dominate the dialogue and the resulting actions.

Stalling will be very clear to you, and you’ll need to intervene to create safety, get people engaged, help break logjams, etc.

Moving forward might not seem so bad, but beware. Depending on just how many people have gone silent, there may be a time bomb in your implementation plan. When things go wrong, as they do in any change initiative, there will be a number of people who will have effectively positioned themselves to wash their hands of all responsibility.

As we noted earlier, just because they go silent doesn’t mean they don’t have input and opinions. When the plan goes forward and they’ve been shouted down, or chose not to engage because they felt it wasn’t safe, they will be in a position to say “that wasn’t my idea”.

Even though such behavior should be unacceptable, it happens way too often. Prevent it by setting expectations around organizational communication, specifically creating a shared value for open, honest dialogue without repercussion or disrespect.

By: Tom O\’Dea

How to Improve Communication with Interpersonal Insights

Admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:46:55 +0000

Communication that is interpersonal is the process of sending and receiving messages between two or more people. Examples of interpersonal communication are:

1) a conversation between two people

2) small group communication

3) a speech made to a wide audience.

All these can be considered forms of interpersonal communication. All forms of interpersonal communication rely on a sender (from which a message originates), a message, a communication channel (or medium such as the voice of a person), a receiver, and feedback. Examples of these elements of interpersonal communication may change depending on the situation but it is still interpersonal communication.

When something obstructs the process of interpersonal communication, such as noise, there are negative consequences that result. For example:

1) if the sender finds it difficult to be heard, the receiver may not be able to react to the message being sent.

2) the receiver may not be able to provide necessary feedback to the sender of the message.

This makes interpersonal communication a very important process to follow, regardless of the size of the group involved in interpersonal communication.

What are the ways in which interpersonal communication can break down or be obstructed?

1) Predominance of emotions – the sender may be subconsciously influencing how the message is received because of his emotional state. Or the receiver could be providing emotionally-influenced feedback in return.

2) Filtering – when this problem occurs, the receiver may not get the whole message because the sender has restructured the message to suit his own purposes.

3) Information overload – sometimes, there are senders who provide too much information at one time, making the receiver feel burdened with the size of the message. The receiver may then not be able to respond to the sender.

4) Defensiveness – a receiver who feels threatened by the message could react in a defensive way – even if the sender did not intend to put the receiver on the defensive.

5) Cultural bias – the message of a sender could subconsciously be colored by the cultural perspective maintained by the sender. If the sender and receiver come from different cultures, this could result in communication breakdown.

6) Jargon – a sender should make sure that the receiver can understand him when the sender resorts to using jargon. This is because the sender may wind up being frustrated because the receiver fails to understand him or reacts in an undesirable way.

How does one improve interpersonal communication then?

There are four possible ways:

1) Make messages simpler – do not resort to long messages because this makes it more likely that the message will not get through, be misinterpreted, or simply ignored. Short messages are easier to absorb and react to.

2) Restrain your emotions – if you become emotionally agitated, wait until you have your emotions under control before you send a message or feedback.

3) Listen closely – make it a point to listen well to the person speaking to you. Many cases of breakdown in communication occur because the receiver does not listen closely to the message.

4) Provide sufficient feedback – If you are the receiver, make it a point to assure the sender that you have received the message by providing a summary of what the message was about. This facilitates the communication process even further.

For interpersonal communication, it is important that both sender and receiver make an effort to improve the

communication process. If only one party chooses to make an effort at improving communication, interpersonal communication will still not be achieved. Both parties – the sender and the receiver – have to do their part. Only then will dynamic communication interpersonal be achieved.

By: Peter Murphy

Cultural Fit – the Rise and Fall of the “traditional” Interview

Admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:40:07 +0000

You have reviewed the resume, the candidate has all of the proper qualifications and experience, you bring them in for an interview and ask all of the traditional questions, give them a psychometric test, and possibly even test their actual skills. A month goes by and THEN THE TRUTH COMES OUT. They are not even nearly performing at your expectation. And worse, they are bringing others in the team down too. You’ve already invested in their orientation training, possibly even housing, so what now, fire them and start over? If this cultural incompatibility is not caught in the interview, after they are hired you might as well burn money and more importantly – time.

People lie, sometimes even to themselves which makes them even more convincing that, “they”, as a new employee, will truly add value to, and even be happy working in, your organisation. So what questions would you ask to identify the right people?

If you type the phrase “most asked interview questions” in Google, you will get over 4.4M results that help others in preparing to win you over. Others don’t bother, they have been on so many interviews, they just know what you are looking for, and tell you.

And what about psychometric tests? Well, anyone (well anyone reasonably intelligent) that has taken one before will be able to skew the results to suit the job description. So are there interview questions or tests that can give you greater insights into the real performance of an individual once he/she gets into your organisation?

Well, NO!

But the quest to find the “right” employee with the right is not lost. The real question is not what to ask in an interview, but what to ask before the selection process even begins so you know what to really look for in the interview. Getting the right employee for your organisation goes beyond job description and skill, and even “personality”, it comes down to the very essence of your organisation and its culture. It is a candidates “Cultural Fit”

To identify Cultural fit, three questions should be asked: “What type of culture does your organisation want to have?”, “What type of culture doe it actually have?”, and “What are the values, communication processes, and emotional drives a new employee should have to fit in the culture and help it to Evolve?”

With this in mind the interviewer is more prepared to identify the nuances of an employee’s “Cultural Fit”. Each individual introduced into an organisation reacts to its culture. Those reactions will perpetuate it, decline it, or possibly evolve it. So it become essential to understand your organisation’s culture before you even begin.

Culture can be summed up as a recipe for the way your organisation functions. Some recipes create lots of volume but have little taste, others may be too spicy, and yet others may taste good but be tough and difficult to chew. And still, many recipes may have the same ingredients but in different measures. Some of the key factors in an organisation’s recipe are: measure of innovation, measure of blame, measure of empowerment, measure of structure, measure of cooperation and measure of personal development within the organisation.

The CCEE (Corporate Culture Evolution Evaluation), a free tool provided by Directive Communication International, can assist in discovering the current level of culture evolution an organisation is at.

So let’s say you already have an idea of what recipe your organisation has, and let’s say you even know what ingredients would make it better. So now you are better equipped to make better hiring choices. But you still need to get passed the BS that candidates will feed you.

So what do you really need to know? Well of course the first thing will be if they actually possess enough of the specific hard skill required to do the job. That’s the easy part. The rest requires a bit more interpretation on the part of the interviewer. You need to know how that person will fit into your corporate culture and their specific job, how they will react to the people they work with and make them feel, how the people they work with will react to them and how that will affect their personal performance, what will motivate them and what will cause them to lose interest, how they process information and how that will complement or hinder effectiveness with the people they work with, how they will react to pressure within the cultural mechanism and how they will demonstrate leadership.

But this article is not about the questions, it is about the interpretation on an individual and how they will affect your organisation, and we don’t even think that you should ask questions, well, not the traditional ones anyway to find the truth. We think you should play games instead!

Interviewers who are aware of Directive Communication Psychology, use a specially designed picture deck called Colored Brain Communication cards for one of 3 games they play with potential candidates. The cards are designed to elicit subconscious thoughts, emotions and even lost memories associated with a particular topic, the trick, is not using a topic that is typically associated with a job. For example, one of the scenarios often presented is that the candidate has just won US$5,000,000. They are then asked to choose 5 cards that best represent what they would do with the money. When they look through the cards, the interviewer notices some of the communication processes unique to that individual (this is known as the Colored Brain model) which also identify possible work processes. The types of cards that are chosen, also cross referenced with the process of choosing the cards, identify perception and communication processes which also indicate who they will work well with and who they will have conflict with, and finally the explanations of what each card means identifies the emotional drives and motivations of a candidate as well as the type of job they would excel in and the type of job that they would underperform in. And all this in about 5 minutes.

According to Ong Hong Him, HR expert and certified Directive Communication psychology practitioner in Singapore, “While this is only one component of this new method in interview techniques, it demonstrates the trend away from the “traditional” interview. Why? Because “cultural fit” is the new revolution in selecting the right employee. And there are even self contained kits for any interviewer to effectively learn from which makes it easy to know your candidate in ways never realized before.”

Ong is not alone, many organisations like MayBank, Petronas, American Express, Royal Bank of Saudi Arabia, Samsung, and the State of Nevada Police force are already using this method to improve their corporate culture from its very roots, selection.

By: Arthur F Carmazzi