"Effective Communication" - 5 new articles
Hey, Mr Public Speaker! When Will You Get to the Point?When great communicators deliver a speech, how long do they speak? Very often, not for long at all. In case you find that difficult to believe, Dave Yewman of Dash Consulting Inc made this brief slide deck to drive home the point. See for yourself the precise duration of history’s greatest speeches – and send this link to corporate executives, keynote speakers and the like who ramble on and on. (Click the right arrow to advance to the next slide): View more presentations from Dave Yewman.
Charismatic Leaders Are Not Necessarily the Most CompetentA few years ago, consultant Larry Liberty wrote a book called The Maturity Factor: Solving the Mystery of Great Leadership. The book stresses that the emotional and psychological maturity of a leader is more important than where they were educated, who they know, or what prior experiences they have. According to the author, 80% of corporate executives are not fully mature. Most executives are, at best, what he calls “High Functioning Adolescents.” John Renesch, noted futurist and writer on social and organizational change, wrote a foreword to Liberty’s book. Renesch quotes part of it in the May issue of his newsletter, FutureShapers Monthly. ( The entire essay, entitled Women at Work: Employing the Powerful Feminine is well worth a read; its primary theme doesn’t concern us directly here but is a fascinating one. ) “Organizations, particularly business organizations,” wrote Renesch, ” have unparalleled influence on our society today. The business sector, and the economic system which fuels it, is the de facto leader of the industrialized world. This dramatic shift in global power away from traditional institutions like government has important implications. Never in human history has there been such a universal need for organizational leadership that acts responsibly for the good of all people. The hierarchical, top-down rule that dominated the Cold War era and the benevolent dictator models of some of today’s republics are equally unacceptable. A new, more mature leadership is needed — no, absolutely necessary — to assure that our children and grandchildren live in a time of greater civility, less apprehension about the survivability of the human race and greater compassion for all people on Earth.” On somewhat similar lines, management consultant Myra White, in a recent article entitled Seeking Competent Leaders, poses a question that must be on the minds of many following last year’s financial debacle. How did it happen that “may of the business leaders in whom we placed our faith, our trust and even our money” turned out to be ” incompetent or (in some cases) out-and-out charlatans”? Part of the explanation, asserts White, lies “with the fact that we often are more concerned with social skills, likeability and charisma in choosing our leaders than we are with their ability to be effective leaders.”
White identifies several leadership types prevalent in the business world today, all of which fall short of the ideal: the servant leader who serves the people he or she serves rather than controlling them; the emotionally intelligent leader who has social charm , empathy, self-awareness and self-control; the transformational leader who provides people with a vision of a better world and motivates them to transcend their self-interest; and finally the charismatic leader – who emotionally energizes followers with an inspiring vision of the future and convinces them that he or she is the heroic figure who can make this vision real. But even though many of these characteristics may be cause for admiration, they do not necessarily mean that the leader we have chosen will deliver results. “Research has not found that leaders who are socially adept or liked or admired are more effective.” White acknowledges that likeability and charisma are desirable qualities. They have value in energizing and motivating followers to achieve a leader’s goals. But in a complex world where countries and businesses are globally intertwined, can charisma be enough? As White aptly puts it: “Sport teams pick people based on their competence and ability, not their social skills and charisma . Why shouldn’t businesses and organizations follow suit?” Disagreements At Work Need Not Lead to ConflictEvery week I read numerous email newsletters published by a variety of business consultants, trainers, life coaches and other professionals working with human capital. I subscribed to most after visiting their websites and being promised weekly or monthly mailings replete with the very latest tips and cutting-edge strategies relevant to the writer’s particular field of expertise. (Often, as an additional incentive to subscribe, I’m offered a free “special report” or white paper - comprising information easily obtainable elsewhere!) Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, most of these self-serving and heavily promotional e-publications fail to deliver the goods. One of the relatively few exceptions is written by trainer Shaun Belding. Shaun’s regular Winning at Work mailings – as brief as they are – do deliver the goods. His publication offers “techniques and tools for dealing Coworkers, Bosses, Callers, Customers and Clients” and excels in showing us how to handle difficult people in each of these categories.
Disagreements among colleagues in the workplace are the subject of the latest issue. Differences of opinion among people working towards a common goal are not only inevitable but healthy. After all, sharing and examining different ideas and contrasting viewpoints leads to progress and growth. What is certainly not desirable is the unnecessary acrimony and conflict that is often an offshoot of such debates. As Shaun Belding points out, what creates the conflict has less to do with the idea and more with the way it is presented. He presents us with two useful techniques for minimizing the potential for conflict when offering a different opinion: * I think in this case… This technique involves first validating the premise behind the other person’s assertion, then offering a new or different perspective that leads to a different conclusion. For example: Sally: I think we need to have a full team meeting for an hour every Monday and Wednesday morning. Bob: (validating) That makes sense. The more frequently we communicate, the less likely we’ll have issues like the ones that cropped up in the last project. (new perspective) I think in this case we have a challenge with availability. Not everyone is in the office every Monday and Wednesday. Perhaps we should just say we’ll meet twice a week, and on the Friday before set mutually convenient meeting times. * Yes, and… Undoubtedly the most common way for people to express differences of opinion is with the ubiquitous “Yabut” (”Yes, but”). “Yabut, we don’t have the manpower,” “Yabut, we don’t have the time”, ”Yabut we tried that once before”, etc. Yabut is a universal trigger for conflict, because it sends the message that you are discounting everything the other person says. Try changing Yabut to “Yes, and…” and see the difference in how people respond to you. This acknowledges the other person’s position and then augments it. So, for example, instead of saying “Yabut we don’t have the manpower”, you could say, “Yes, and we’ll have to increase our staffing levels to accomplish this.”
You can subscribe to Winning at Worka href="a href="http://www.beldingskills.com/winning-at-work.htm" target="_blank">here.
How Body Language Can Trigger EmpathyOver the years, we have written and published a wealth of material on our site and our blog on a very special emotion that serves as a key facilitator in all effective interpersonal relationships – namely, empathy? What do you usually think of when you read the word in print or hear the concept mentioned in everyday speech? When Dr Carol Kinsey Goman, author of the THE NONVERBAL ADVANTAGE-Secret and Science of Body Language at Work (and various training programs on this topic) hears someone mention “empathy”, she thinks of mirror neurons and body language? And monkeys. A strange combination, so what’s the connection? Dr Goman writes about a research laboratory in Italy where neuroscientists were studying the brain cells of macaque monkeys. When the monkeys performed a single highly specific hand action, sophisticated monitoring equipment detected that neurons in the motor cortex of the animals’ brains become very active. For example, every time a monkey reached for a peanut, certain brain cells immediately “fired”. Then one day, by chance, the reseachers discovered something particularly interesting. A monkey connected to the monitoring device happened to see a human grab a peanut. The same neurons fired in the same way! In terms of motor cell activity, the monkey’s brain could not tell the difference between actually doing something and seeing it done by someone else. In other words, these brain cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, which is why the researchers dubbed them “mirror neurons”. What is fascinating is not only that later experiments confirmed that these same neurons exist in humans, but in addition to mirroring actions, the human brain cells also reflected sensations and feelings! In one study , subjects watched a hand move forward to caress someone else and then saw another hand push it away rudely. The brains of the subjects registered the pain of social rejection as if it were happening to them. Why? Because empathizing with someone, whether in grief or joy, apparently activates the very same circuits in your own brain as your companion who experienced the original emotion! Mirror neurons are well named indeed. In her training programs on nonverbal literacy, Goman describes “empathy ” as “the human ability to internalize the emotional state of others by simply observing their body language. The moment you become aware of a strong emotion felt by someone in your immediate environment – whether you can see it on the face or read it in the person’s gestures or bodily posture – you begin, however subconsciously, to place yourself in that person’s mental shoes, to get under their skin, so to speak. Before you know it, you are experiencing the identical emotion, feeling your companion’s happiness, excitement, confusion or disappointment as if it were your own. And that, after all, is what empathy – genuine empathy, in the heart, not on the sleeve – is all about. Beware the Blank Stare: Signs Your Message Isn’t Getting ThroughIt’s something that happens in the best of organizations. The boss drafts a report and asks a staff member to proofread it. The assistant brings the report back with a section marked and says, “I don’t understand what you mean here,” to which the boss replies, “Oh, that’s technical–it’ll be clear to the lawyers when they review it.” Two weeks later, the lawyers ask for a rewrite of the same section. To consultant Dianna Booher, this is a scenario that’s all too familiar, as she points out in her Communication Tip of the Month e-newsletter: ” People always assume the confusion happens on the other end of the communication–that what they themselves say is perfectly clear and that the other person just missed it somehow.” Very nice – at least for your ego. But in business communication, you may be asking for trouble if you assume too much. Wise communicators never take their skills for granted. Want a good gauge of your own clarity, or lack of it? Beware the blank stare! Need additional signs that your message just might not be getting through? Booher offers the following: Lack of questions. (You call for questions at the end of a presentation, and there are none. Or, you bring up an idea in a meeting and you’re greeted with only polite smiles.) Unexpected responses. (People respond irrationally to what you say, such as with anger, withdrawal, silence, or denial.) Lack of coordination. Things “fall between the cracks” in coordinating projects.) Low morale. (People feel discouraged that they can never “get it right” when, in fact, projects are frequently delegated without essential elements for successful completion.) Rework. (Projects have to be redone because the instructions weren’t clear the first time. Or, extra work was completed “just in case” to “cover all the bases” because somebody wasn’t sure what was needed.) Bottom line remains as always: fuzzy words lead – at very best – to fuzzy action. Only with clear words canyou expect clear action. |
