Sep 14

Communication Resolves Conflicts

Communication Skills No Comments »

An interesting discussion on Radio 4’s Word of Mouth recently examined how our language use and communication style can help us to diffuse potentially challenging situations and resolve conflict. An expert panel discussed a range of conflict situations from the workplace through to hostage negotiations and marriage guidance and agreed that while these are all very different contexts the same principles apply to ensuring a satisfactory resolution to the conflict. What is clear is that they way we use both verbal and non-verbal communication in conflictive situations can make all the difference to our impact on the other party and how the situation is resolved.

Businessman Pali Rao i Communication Resolves Conflicts

© istockphoto.com/Pali Rao

Here are some key pointers when you find yourself in a conflictive situation in the workplace:
  • It may be a cliché but try to separate the person from the problem and to describe behaviours rather than label people. So, for example, rather than saying ‘you made me feel like I hadn’t done a good job’ it is better to say ‘I didn’t receive any feedback so  I thought I hadn’t done a good job.’
  • While telling someone to calm down is not helpful try to use language to lower the temperature and make a connection with the other person
  • Use language to demonstrate that what matters to the other person also matters to you and that you can empathise with their position.
  • Listen carefully and repeat back the other person’s key concerns to show that you have understood
  • Be aware of how you use body language and your tone of voice – softer intonation patterns can help to moderate difficult messages. And be particularly aware when using ‘device-lead communication’ that you do not have the benefit of non-verbal communication and are more likely to be misconstrued
  • Avoid the temptation to make digs or bring up previous conflicts – you might momentarily feel like you have the upper hand but making the other person feel small will not give you any long term benefits

Managing conflict in the workplace can be one of the most challenging aspects of our professional lives and requires a complex set of communication skills. Many organisations run Conflict Management or broader communications skills training programmes such as Communicating with Impact equip their employees with the awareness and skills to manage conflict more effectively and even turn it to their advantage.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Sep 11

The Art of Pausing

Communication Skills No Comments »

When we consider how we communicate it is all too easy to focus only on the words we use and the content we want to convey rather than the overall impact of our communication. Perhaps just as important is what isn’t said and the space between the words – the all too often neglected art of pausing. We are often in such a hurry to make our point, to get it all out, to make a good impression that we don’t take the time to consider the quality of our interaction or to reflect on what is being said. What is more, we often feel uncomfortable with silence and rush to fill it rather than giving the listener the chance to absorb what we have said and make sense of the message. Many of us are also guilty of thinking about what we want to say next rather than really listening to the other person so that rather than pausing to digest what has been said we jump straight in regardless.
Meeting Neustockimages i The Art of Pausing

© istockphoto.com/Neustockimages

 

Perhaps we should all challenge ourselves to feel more comfortable pausing – whether after speaking, before responding or even before hitting the send button. We probably won’t miss our turn or lose the opportunity to convey what we want to say but we might find that the quality of the communication improves as everyone involved has the opportunity to savour the meaning and reflect on what has been said.

If you really want to communicate with impact, you should seriously consider mastering the art of pausing and battle the urge to fill every silence. If you are giving a presentation or speaking at a formal meeting, remember to pause, and maybe even smile, after each of your main points. This will give more weight to your message and will allow your audience time to consider and really understand what you have said. When you are communicating one-to-one try pausing more frequently and you will find you come across more assertively and feel calmer particularly during potentially sensitive conversations. And finally, when you are communicating by email, always, always pause and pause again before you hit the send button.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Jul 23

Olympian Efforts: Has the UK Government Kick Started the Homeworking Revolution for the London 2012 Olympics?

Communication Skills No Comments »

It has been widely reported in the British press from The Daily Telegraph to The Daily Mail that from this week through to the end of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games thousands of London civil servants will be allowed to work from home. There has been great consternation that this will be an excuse for Whitehall staff to take it easy during the summer months, to take their foot of the accelerator rather than pulling together with the rest of London to struggle in to work on overcrowded transport systems during extended rush hour periods.

Typing Dmitriy Shironosov i Olympian Efforts: Has the UK Government Kick Started the Homeworking Revolution for the London 2012 Olympics?

© istockphoto.com/Dmitriy Shironosov

It is strange to suggest that government workers will only be working intermittently from home when those who choose to brave the commute may find themselves losing an hour or more every day due to delays and overcrowded trains and buses. Jokes abound that home workers will be watching the Games on the TV, catching up with household chores while the government grinds to a halt, but when set up and managed effectively, home working can be equally if not a great deal more productive than sitting in an office. Perhaps the critics should take a leaf out of the government’s book and look at the benefits of setting up something similar. Here are three advantages for starters:

  • Employees feel valued and trusted and are in many cases likely to work harder as a result. O2 recently surveyed staff working from home of whom over half reported that they spent most of the time they saved by not commuting on working
  • Despite jokes about the distractions of the TV, fridge and garden, productivity can actually increase without the distractions of office gossip, colleagues’ interruptions and water cooler conversations
  • The organisation’s carbon footprint decreases as their green credentials improve with fewer cars in the car park and less pressure on public transport systems

So what should organisations do to ensure that home working provides the best results? Communication is crucial as employees need to keep in touch with co-workers, clients and suppliers just as they would if they were sat at their desk in the office. Modern technology now allows workers to communicate through a variety of channels and platforms, using chat, voice and screen sharing as well as standard methods of email and telephone.

However, technology isn’t alone sufficient. For home working to be successful it is also a question of mind set. Workers need to feel supported and trusted but also to know that they are being monitored and challenged. Managers need to find the appropriate balance between giving autonomy and flexibility to their staff and monitoring their output and productivity. Equally, workers need to know that they have their usual support networks in place and that their performance is managed in the same way it would be in the office.

Many organisations embarking on large scale home working initiatives provide staff with training in Effective Virtual Working to help them master the necessary communication and relationship strategies for working from home effectively. Communicaid is one of several training organisations that helps companies and their employee exploit this new way of working.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2012

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Jul 06

Regular Communication with Customers is Key to Success

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A recent article in the Economist focused on the secret of IBM’s long success story as the latter celebrated its 100th anniversary last month. The article suggests that IBM’s success was due more to its ‘strong customer relationships than with its machines or software’. The fact that this large organisation has always kept up regular communication with its customers has been an essential key to its success.

Businessmen viewed from top sjlocke i Regular Communication with Customers is Key to Success

© istockphoto.com/Sjlocke

Everyone would agree in principle that maintaining customers once they are part of your client base is fundamental. With time, your customers build up a relationship with your company and consequently develop a sense of loyalty. They are therefore more open to any changes that your company implements and more understanding than new customers might be of any errors or delays. So, what are the benefits of communicating regularly with these customers?

1. Regular communication makes change easier. As IBM experienced, market changes can be rough and the survivors are those companies who learn to adapt quickly to these changes. Customers will be more inclined to stay with the company they trust when changes in the market occur. Trust is built up through regular communication and can help ease existing customers through these changes by making them appear less dramatic.

2. Customers can be a source for new ideas. Good communication works both ways. It is important to allow customers to express their views on your products or services and to make suggestions about what improvements can be made. This ‘feedback’ could reveal some common feelings among large numbers of customers and imply that some modifications need to be made. Customers who see that you are acting on their comments will feel valued and continue to communicate in this constructive way.

3. Listening to customers’ needs helps companies tailor and improve their products and services. Working together with your customers enables you to develop services that are tailored to their specific needs. Why impose products or services on a customer when ones can be developed which suit the customer better? Each customer is an individual and consequently has individual needs. Since 2002 the IBM services industry, its main division, often ‘co-creates’ products with customers.

4. Good reputations are spread just like bad ones. Customers who feel valued by regular contact with a company will probably talk about this manufacturer, distributer or service provider to people they know. This marketing is extremely important as it is based on genuine personal experience. Personal referrals and recommendations can be worth just as much as the best written brochures and websites.

Excellent communication skills don’t come naturally to everyone. This is why smart organisations invest in Communication Skills training programmes to ensure that their customer facing employees are able to talk and listen to their clients helping them to build more effective relationships.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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Jun 24

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings…

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The Guardian has recently highlighted our love-hate relationship with workplace meetings and offered some useful advice for making them work. Why do we so often walk away from meetings feeling that they have been a complete waste of time and effort? Why is it that so many of us dread the regular and seemingly interminable internal meetings that seem to be scheduled with alarming frequency? Meetings can be an important forum for sharing ideas and information, making decisions and building team relationships but they need careful consideration and planning in order to make them effective and efficient. If you are leading or even attending a meeting in the coming days or weeks, consider the following strategies and tips:

Meeting Neustockimages i Meetings, Meetings, Meetings…

© istockphoto.com/Neuxtockimages

Plan your meeting carefully – prepare and circulate an agenda a couple of days before hand if possible. The agenda should include not only your list of discussion points but also clear objectives for why the meeting is taking place

Stick to time – before or at the beginning of the meeting agree how long is needed for the meeting to meet its objectives. If you don’t need an hour don’t take an hour.

Leave smart phones outside – it might sound controversial but the meeting will be shorter and more effective if attendees are fully focused and don’t have half an eye on their emails.

Minimise visuals – if you do need to use a PowerPoint presentation or other visual aid, keep it short and sweet – and make sure it really is visual.

Lead from the front – if you are chairing or facilitating the meeting then make sure you do. It is important to allow everyone the opportunity to air their ideas and ask questions, but if you are chairing the meeting it is your job to manage the interruptions, digressions and ramblings to ensure the meeting finishes on time and achieves its objectives.

Take notes and summarise action points – you don’t have to do this yourself but make sure someone is responsible for the minutes which are summarised at the end and then circulated after the meeting. There is nothing worse than coming away from a meeting with no clear idea of what has been agreed or what you need to do.

With resources increasingly strained in many organisations, we need to make sure that meetings really make a difference. Training in Facilitating Meetings can provide frameworks and techniques for ensuring that meetings run smoothly and effectively.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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May 09

Communicating Feedback Effectively

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Why is it that, next to losing your job, a performance review is probably the least eagerly anticipated event in the office, both for managers and employees. Nobody enjoys giving or receiving difficult feedback but these conversations don’t need to be as stressful as they so often are.

Business meeting 3 nyuli Communicating Feedback Effectively

© istockphoto.com/ Nyul

The New York Times recently reported on research conducted by Google in a quest to find the characteristics of good managers. They analysed performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports which led to a list of eight good behaviours for successful managers.

The first of these good behaviours is the ability to deliver constructive, balanced feedback.

Why feedback alone doesn’t work

Studies have shown that performance reviews rarely result in improved performance. While positive feedback is enjoyable, it doesn’t necessarily improve performance. Negative feedback also has little affect on performance or can make things worse.

It has been suggested that this is because rather than record our objective experience of the world, our minds create a subjective version of events. So, managers tend to see things one way and employees another, particularly when it comes to shortfalls in performance and the feedback we use to address these gaps. A positive self-image is crucial to our own well-being and so feedback in conflict with this creates an uncomfortable phenomena that psychologists call cognitive dissonance. We are then motivated to do everything we can to reduce the dissonance and we take the path of least resistance.

We could admit we’re just not as good as we thought we were but it’s much easier to rationalise or discount the feedback instead. So we either blame the shortfall in performance on factors beyond our control, like defective customers, or we discount the source of the feedback and blame our problems on our managers.

Let the employee drive the discussion

As a manager you can overcome these perceptual conflicts by reversing the traditional roles.

1. Let the employee drive the discussion by asking, rather than telling, when it comes to both performance feedback and goal setting.

2. Have your employees complete their own appraisal prior to the review meeting. Then start the discussion not with your evaluation of their performance, but with the question, “How did you do last year?” The right questions enable people to come to terms with the message and avoids potential misinterpretation.

3. Where there are performance shortfalls, ask your employees to suggest ways to address them. Not only will they have interesting ideas, they will also be far more willing to own them and take responsibility for their success. The same psychological dynamic holds true when employees generate their own objectives.

This isn’t turning the asylum over to the inmates. It is still your prerogative to decide if performance evaluation, development plans or objectives are appropriate. When you make your decision, however, it only makes sense to incorporate the employee’s view.

Not only does this leverage the way the mind works, it is a much easier and less stressful way to manage. The responsibility for managing performance is placed where it belongs — on the employee. The manager is no longer the driver, but is the facilitator or coach. This doesn’t mean that you don’t hold people rigorously accountable for results. In fact, it’s much easier when they’re the ones setting the objectives and evaluating performance.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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May 05

Communicating Change

Communication Skills No Comments »

If you are a manager responsible for a change project, you will know that people are likely to be your biggest challenge.  Why is this?  Because taking people through change usually involves dealing with emotions. Yet, rather than trying to understand their people’s emotional reactions and communicate accordingly, many managers we meet push against any resistance they meet focusing on facts and opinions.

Businessman Pali Rao i Communicating Change

© istockphoto.com/Pali Rao

Why the resistance?

Even if we know change is needed, as humans we naturally feel resistant when asked to give up what we are used to or to step outside our comfort zone.  As with any potential threat, our emotional reactions come in to play to protect us.  And the more we feel pressured, the more we are likely to resist.

Unfortunately, using cold facts or threats to try to communicate the change argument in a logical way does not quell the resistant emotions. In fact it often ends up as a sub-conscious battle about ‘who is right’, a de-facto power struggle, with managers trying to trump concerns with data and facts.

People who have been through a series of change initiatives that have failed to work are often frustrated and cynical. Feelings of frustration breed defensive or attacking behaviour and get in the way of the open and collaborative attitude you want. The challenge then is to begin gradually to move people from the fear of change towards feelings of excitement and commitment.

Give over your power

If we want our people to feel supported through a change process and begin to open to more positive emotions, we need to find a way of engaging with them and give them power.

Your intention may be to communicate clearly and efficiently, but be sure you are not doing it in a way that contradicts or dismisses peoples’ ideas, excludes others from important conversations, or indirectly points fingers at a few making them feel left out, ignored or blamed?

Emotions are critical here and you need to ask yourself what has created them.  What experiences have led to these feelings?

Action steps to engage people

In order to move change forward you need both an effective tactical plan and a way of generating positive momentum and feelings among your people.

Change is a gradual process and you are unlikely to get agreement from everyone straight away.  Aim for getting ‘enough’ buy-in to get things moving, and assume that most people do want to be part of a new, more positive conversation about your organisation’s future.

Here are a number of ways to begin. Depending on your circumstances you will need to vary the mix and timing of some of these actions.

1. Ask the right questions and listen to the answers

You need to get a clear picture of what is driving reality on the ground by getting out among your people. Find out what they need and what is most important to them.

2. Create hope with a new vision for the future

  • Start by tuning into your own emotions around what you have found out and then manage your own reaction
  • Gather a core group of change champions who understand the positive intentions and support the possibility of change
  • Actively acknowledge and validate all the feelings and reactions, however difficult
  • Remind them why the change is important and how it aligns with your organisation or team’s purpose.  Make sure what you say resonates at both an emotional and logical level

3. Build momentum toward real buy in

  • Create a team of change leaders, designers and supporters who can build excitement
  • Draft a plan with an end vision, goal, key steps and how you will measure success
  • Expand the circle by increasing ownership, gathering feedback, co-creating and refining the plan

4. Offer others the chance to commit

  • Communicate the plan and invite people to be involved. Remind them they are needed and have a role
  • Help them understand costs, benefits and impact
  • Clarify commitment by defining roles and expectations both on a tactical and emotional level

Change can be one of the hardest messages to communicate which is why many organisations invest in targeted executive coaching and communication skills training programmes to help their leaders and managers to develop their communication skills to deliver key messages sensitively but effectively.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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Mar 21

Successful Communication – Your Style or Mine?

Communication Skills No Comments »

We all know that communication is a two way process. I use language that I know will engage you, you signal to me that you are interested and listening, you ask the right questions, I pause in the right places and so on. It works when we understand each other or at least demonstrate that we are keen to learn to understand each other. Good communication skills do not only involve giving the message but helping the listener to decode and respond to the message more easily.

Businessmen Greeting Neustockimages i Successful Communication – Your Style or Mine?

© istockphoto.com/ Neustockimages

So what happens when our communication styles and expectations are clearly different? Everyone has different preferences when it comes to how they like to communicate. These preferences can include the level of directness, use of body language, mode of communication, how much information is shared and even the time and place of communication. It is tempting to stick to our natural style and to communicate in the way that comes most easily to us but we need to remember that most work related communication has an expected outcome; we need to convince the other person or need them to do something for us. We need a result and to get the best and quickest outcome we should consider adapting our communication style in order to engender most positive response from our counterparts.

Keep the following considerations in mind when you are communicating at work and you should find the results are more positive.

Timing is crucial. If you know that the other person is busy or not in the best of moods it may better to wait for the right moment rather than interrupt them with a tricky or complicated message.

Method of communication. Your choice is often down to the type of message you need to convey but when you can, consider the personal preference of the receiver. Also, bear in mind, if you have a non-urgent request, an email is often better and the reader can act on it when they are ready. Delicate messages are usually much better conveyed face-to-face or if not by phone as emails can so often be misconstrued.

Level of Directness. You will find that some of your colleagues prefer straight talking and are frustrated if you ‘beat around the bush’ while others are comfortable with a more indirect approach and prefer potentially negative messages to be softened.

Level of Context. Some people are ‘big picture’ and need to know the whole story with all the background before they can understand and action what is needed. Others take a more expedient approach; they prefer a short and sweet instruction and are then happy to get on with it.

Location. Some of your colleagues will be more or less comfortable with having potential sensitive or challenging discussions in public places or shared office space.

Building awareness of your own communication style and preferences is the first step in more successful communication but many organisation provide communication skills training and coaching programmes to help their employees to adapt their communication style – and be more successful in their roles.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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