This is not what I wanted! When communication fails …

I had dinner with a French friend (thanks Agathe!) last weekend. She runs her own real estate agency in Annemasse, not too far from Geneva. During the meal she reminded me about a very funny property-related story that happened in France about 10 years ago. I vaguely remembered it, as I think I did use the example in a blog post at the time. Anyway, the story concerned a beautiful property called Chateau Bellevue which was a landmark building in the village of Yvrac, near Bordeaux. I did a search online and this is what it looked like:

It was somewhat rundown as these old properties tend to be and was purchased by a wealthy Russian named Dmitry Stroskin. He decided to restore it and subsequently employed a team of builders to complete the agreed renovation works. Unfortunately, Stroskin then left the area and was away when the planned works began. He returned to find that instead of knocking down the small out-building as requested, the builders had actually levelled the whole chateau leaving only an empty field in its place!

Local media reported that the construction company had misunderstood the owner’s wishes. Hmmm. Agathe is originally from that region of France and she explained that locals smelt a rat too at the time and didn’t fully believe Stroskin when he said that the calamity was the result of a breakdown in communication between himself and the builders. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was a funny story and added to a great Saturday evening.

Since then, the story has refocused my mind on the importance of communication and, more importantly, the (often irreperable) damage caused when it fails. In our personal lives, we have all been through tough situations caused by a breakdown of communications of various kinds; personally, I will go to my grave regretting how I lost my best friend in life simply because we stopped communicating - something we were once great at. In work, it is not an exaggeration to say that the majority of our problems can be traced, in some part at least, to poor communication. Isn’t it odd that there are so many communication problems in life given that we have all been ‘communicating’ since birth? You would think we would have mastered the art by now. But communication is one area where practice does not make perfect – because most of us are practicing the wrong things, or simply following bad practice that we learned from childhood. We can only get better as communicators if we start practicing the right things.

In the world of work, there clearly are many dimensions of organisational communication to consider, but the focus here will be on some basic principles, models, and tools. However, before jumping into the specifics of those aspects, it is useful to highlight a broader issue about human interactions and particularly how some people seek to project themselves when they communicate in groups.

There is some interesting research related to this issue that was conducted by Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff from the University of California, Berkeley (1) and it offers valuable insights into how some people think and behave when interacting in groups. Using two simulated work-related experiments, and controlling for variables such as the influence of gender that might have skewed the results (they only constituted all male or all female teams), Anderson and Kilduff showed that in group situations the more dominant individuals consistently exerted higher levels of influence over the remaining participants. (No surprises there.) In the first exercise, 68 graduate students were divided into four-person teams and given a fictitious task to complete in a defined time-period. After the teams performed their work, the members of each group rated one another on both their level of influence on the group and, more importantly, their level of competence. The work sessions were videotaped, and a group of independent observers performed the same evaluations, as did Anderson and Kilduff. Following the first exercise, all three sets of judges came to the same conclusion: that those who spoke more frequently and offered more suggestions were subsequently perceived as being the most competent. (Again, nothing too surprising there perhaps.) What was most revealing in the study was that the dominant characters continued to rate highest amongst their team-mates and the independent observers even when the suggestions they made were no better – and sometimes far worse – than others.

In a second study, conducted with a new team of volunteers but following the same team format as previously, the exercise was based on the ability to solve maths problems; the idea being that some degree of competence would be required in maths to enable participants to speak up, and as such it was assumed this would influence who became the dominant players within the groups. Yet again, the researchers found that those who spoke up most frequently were subsequently described by their peers as leaders and were considered to be the maths experts in the groups. But, the researchers proved that, in fact, these dominant individuals were neither the smartest nor the ones who offered the most correct answers – what they did do was offer the most answers.

In a nutshell, this study highlighted that the more dominant an individual appears to be (and that doesn’t have to be in an aggressive manner either), the more likely their peers are to assign attributes of leadership and competence to them. A lot of people in my experience, including managers, work from similar beliefs about dominance; they know that if they project themselves as the strongest or brightest person around then few will challenge them. And they partially do this by hogging the limelight in group communication scenarios where they seek to dominate interactions. As we beging to focus on the components of effective communication, it is worth reflecting up upon whether this is something you do personally, or allow others to do to you.

Basic Principles

So, getting down to the nitty-gritty of communication at work, it goes without saying that effective managers are always great communicators. And they see the value in having regular and structured communication with their people, individually and collectively. That said, they are less hung up about the quantity of communication than its quality because they know that the more meetings employees have to attend, or the more time they spend in meetings, the more pressured they are likely to feel. Double those feelings if the meetings are badly run and unproductive. As a result, top managers make sure that what they do in terms of communication – across a variety of channels – is not only structured and ongoing, but productive too.

Effective communication is a challenge at the best of times but the workplace, with its multitude of distractions, pressures and personalities raises the hurdles exponentially - and in the new paradigm where remote working will become ven more prevalent, the communication challenge will only increase. Add to this mix the one or two individuals who choose not to listen, or intentionally misinterpret (and then misrepresent) what you say, and the difficulties faced when seeking to communicate well at work are many and varied. Still, the best managers take many of those challenges in their stride because they intuitively understand that, when it comes to communication, how they say things is just as important as what it is they have to say in terms of making an impact. They know too that, when they communicate with others, be that one or many, the messages flying back and forth have two important elements – content and context. They understand that content relates to the words they choose, while context – the emotional part – is about how those words are transmitted and relates to tone and body language.

Content

Any number of problems can arise in relation to content, from using inappropriate language for the audience in question to overuse of meaningless jargon, such as all that ‘going forward’ and ‘leveraging’ gibberish. It is important to be clear, concise and get to the point in a timely fashion.

Context

Context includes your tone and body language and, as is widely known, all the research shows that this far outweighs the actual spoken word in terms of impact. Tone is often misused in communication situations, from those who do not speak loud enough to others who mistake shouting for power of argument. Of course, the level of your voice is just one tonal issue, there are plenty more concerns, such as pace, pitch and pronunciation as well as being too curt or even too formal/informal depending upon the circumstances. With regard to body language, there are a multitude of potential sins. When transmitting messages your body language should always reinforce what you are saying, not detract from it; and especially in situations where you feel somewhat nervous or intimidated, you need to work hard to get things right.

All of us should constantly strive to enhance our ability to communicate, but we do not always give these basics the attention they deserve. What we do not always realise, or admit, is that as well as the good things we have learned, we have also developed bad communication habits along the way, about which we may not even be aware. Others are, however. And if you watch managers in action who are poor at getting their message across, it is usually fairly basic stuff that they are getting wrong. So, in conclusion here, you should never stop focusing on the nuts and bolts of how you communicate so that you are constantly developing and improving in this vital area.

Styles of Communication

As a manager, you will naturally be communicating with people in a variety of ways on a multitude of subjects, hopefully using different styles that are appropriate to the matter or scenario at hand. While this style issue is again not something that you probably give a whole lot of thought to, it’s worth reflecting upon because how you use different styles of communication has a major impact on how effective you are as a communicator and as a manager. The diagram below shows the different styles that you can adopt to communicate with your team:

Generally, how you communicate can fluctuate from a Direct (informing and discussing) model to one where you seek to Engage (influencing and consulting) people in order to win them over to your ideas, and you can do so using one-way or two-way styles. These are all valid approaches and can be applied as follows. In terms of the Direct Model:

Informing - At times being a manager means that you have to make decisions, or implement those taken by your superiors, which are not open to debate. In such circumstances you need to inform your people – and while you might let them blow off steam, or you will naturally explain the finer points of what’s planned – there is really no point in getting into a detailed discussion with them about the matter because they simply have to accept that the decision has been made. It is out of their control. Using the informing method is perfectly acceptable once you are not being aggressive in how you apply it, and if you don’t think that informing equates to railroading, whereby you close down any discussion on the matter.

Discussing - If you only rely on the informing style all the time, which is essentially a one-way approach, then this becomes very limiting because your people need more input than that if you want them to fully engage. So, at times you need to adopt a ‘discussing’ style where people can explore issues in detail with you. Again, this is a perfectly acceptable style in the right circumstances and meetings are a good example of where you would be deploying it.

In general, the Direct model of communication has its limitations in that, even where discussion is possible, by and large decisions have already been made and employees really do not have all that much input into them. To counterbalance this, on other occasions, rather than impose ideas and decisions on your people, you need to shift to an Engage approach to how you communicate and within that you can again apply two styles:

Influencing - Influencing is a one-way style which involves convincing others that an idea or decision is the right way to go. With this style, you use persuasive arguments to win people over. A good example of where you might use this approach is in trying to convince people that a change you are proposing is for the best – it’s not the case that you are telling them this is how it will be, but rather the onus is on you to try to inspire and excite them about what you want to happen.

Consulting - A consulting style of communication is where you fully engage with your people to discuss issues, explore options and collectively agree on the best way forward. Some managers are uncomfortable with this style of communication as they fear they might lose control in such circumstances, or that things might get out of hand in some way.

While the four styles of communication outlined above are clearly not complicated, applying them in practice can be far more challenging. Naturally, the Direct styles are easier on you in the sense that they allow you to retain high control, but in today’s workplace you need to be on the engaging side most of the time to be effective at any level of management.

SBAR - A Simple Communication Tool

To close for today, I’ll leave you with a communication tool that does not always get enough focus in the business arena, but is widely used in healthcare settings. The tool is known as SBAR, or Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation (2). SBAR is a simple but powerful communication tool which was first developed for use in the US Navy and has been adapted for use in a healthcare setting. It is designed to help reduce the incidences of poor communication by focusing interactions. I believe it is worth thinking about in a broader context and that, with some tweaking, you might consider using it in some shape or form in your work life. Essentially SBAR consists of a standardised approach to sharing information within the four sections which is designed to ensure that the information transferred between the parties involved is focused, concise and relevant. To give a quick flavour of how it is used, imagine you were meeting with a few colleagues to address a problem that arose at work. You might apply SBAR as follows:

Situation

At the outset of the meeting you would ensure that you, and all participants, are fully clear on the reason for the interaction. What exactly is to be discussed and why? What is not relevant?

Background

Then, you would lead a discussion on the facts around the matter. And the word facts is important here – clarifying the background to ny situation should be based on evidence not opinion. You cannot communicate effectively, or indeed plan responses based on opinions alone. The unkowns of the matter at hand may also have to be identified as you will need to factor those into decision-making.

Assessment

Based on a collective understanding of the situation, and the facts related to it, this is where the discussion on what resolution options are available can take place. This is also where the expertise around the table comes into play; here, varying opinions on solutions are welcome and can be shared, discussed, selected or discounted. This is the meat of the discussion and obviously the longest section time-wise.

Recommendation

This is where the way forward is finalised, agreed and mapped out.

Now, this is a fairly rudimentary explanation of SBAR in practice but you get the picture; it is a simple approach, but one that if used consistently could make a positive difference to your communications at work, and indeed beyond. One thing for certain, if our Russian friend had used SBAR when dealing with his builders it is unlikely he would have ended up staring into a field of rubble shouting “This is not what I wanted!”

Enjoy your day!

If you found the content of this article interesting, I have expanded on this and related topics in my book, 'The Essential Manager'. Click on the image to the left to purchase the book on Amazon, or if you'd like a signed copy, you can purchase one directly on this site via our products page.

References

(1) Anderson and Kilduff , “Why Do Dominant Personalities Attain Infl uence in Face-To Face Groups? Th e Competence-Signaling Eff ects of Trait Dominance” (2009) 96 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, pp. 491–503.
(2) SBAR Model - https://improvement.nhs.uk/documents/2162/sbar-communication-tool.pdf

Chateau Photos reproduced from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243467/French-chateau-demolished-mistake-Bungling-builders-bulldoze-18th-century-Chateau-Bellevue.html