At this time of year we get to hear a lot
of messages, such as the Christmas message, the Chairman’s message, seemingly
endless messages from politicians, and so on, and that led us to wonder about
messages and what they actually mean.
And whether what they mean, when they start their life with the speaker,
actually is the same as when they have penetrated the ears of the
listener. So often that does not seem to
be the case and, if we are right, that means an awful lot of miscommunication
is going on with, in many cases, some quite important information.
Part of this subject has already been
covered in our blog ‘Communication – or is it?’. In that article we looked at some of the
physical steps you can take to facilitate communication, and here we will try
to look at some of the psychological aspects arising, and see if there are
techniques to help eliminate any distortions or misconceptions arising.
Consider, for example, the Chairman’s
message. Generally delivered annually,
this is a personal statement from the very top of the Company stating the
vision for the Company and its future over, say, the next 12 months. It will be grand (sometimes grandiose) in its
sweep, it can be defensive (“we want to maximise our share price to fight off a
take-over bid”), or positive (“we want to secure 50% of the world’s share of X
by this time next year”) but it will (or should be) aspirational and designed
to motivate the troops into battle.
Unfortunately, it is so often the case that
the message is given by someone who, financially and by experience, has nothing
whatsoever in common with the more junior employees of the company, and so
there is no way in which they can share in the dream of the Chairman. These are examples of two different worlds
that will never collide.
Nonetheless, the Chairman’s message is
vital – the Company must have a purpose to aim at – and so a mechanism has to
be found to translate the Chairman’s dream into one which all workers can
share.
When creating this mechanism, which will be
slightly different for every person because the mechanism needs to adjust for
the quirks of every person involved in it, a useful starting point is to assume
that people, generally, will find a way to distort the message you are trying
to convey. Not on purpose, necessarily,
but because the brain likes to take shortcuts to help it to manipulate and sort
data. Those shortcuts may well not be
the same ones that your brain took
when you formulated the message, and so the result of the data sorting that
takes place might lead to different information retrieval in the brain of the
recipient.
In addition, you cannot assume that your
words of wisdom are so riveting as to prevent a listener’s attention from
wandering, or being distracted by personal issues, or their immediate
environment, or a flippant comment from the person next to them, or a thousand
other matters that could take their attention away from you.
Anyway, even supposing that your employee
does listen with 100% attention to the message.
What is he or she, personally, going to do to hold up the company’s
share price, or attain a 50% stake in X for the company? The Chairman’s goal simply has no personal
relevance to that employee, nor is it within their ability to achieve.
So the way to deal with this is to
disseminate the Chairman’s message through descending tiers of the
organisation, with each tier hearing the message but also receiving a further
‘message’, aimed just at them, with their group’s goal for the 12-month (or
whatever) period – something that is achievable, that can be seen to contribute
toward the company goal, and that they can rally behind.
Now, the ‘macro’ problem of the message has
become a ‘micro’ problem, in the sense that you are dealing with a much smaller
number of people and the members of the group are much more closely aligned
with each other – they are likely to work in the same area as each other, have
similar or complementary skill sets, etc.
The leader of the group may well be the senior member of the team and if
so he or she has to carry a personnel function as well as their day-to-day
function. This will require specific
training if the job is to be done properly.
Such a person will need to be able to identify the various personality
types present within the group (e.g., a Myers-Briggs Type assessment) and use
the resulting data to create productive teams whilst minimising destructive or
destabilising influences. They will also
be able to ‘sense the wind’ and identify, and deal with, nascent problems
before they develop.
But by careful talking to people on a
one-to one basis you can sometimes become aware of cases where a person is
preoccupied with internal issues to the extent that they cannot hear an outside
voice clearly, or they seem to be reacting inappropriately to a message, which
may indicate that they have some emotional problem that is nothing to do with
work but which is having a big effect on them.
And then there is the person with their own personal agenda, who can’t
or won’t hear anything that doesn’t give them some personal advantage. Or, even worse, it appears to give some
advantage to someone else. Such a person
will not only not hear the message,
but may try to sabotage it – they need to be handled carefully, and very firmly.
Some
practical steps that can be taken are as follows:
- Whilst giving the message, try to do this in short bursts if possible. Human attention span tends to be quite short, often only 5 or 10 minutes during speeches, and if you can inject a question or two every so often, or even a joke, this switches brains back on again (well, for a bit, anyway).
- Keep your sentences short. Longer ones are subject to misinterpretation, especially the longer they are (mis)remembered. Try asking a group of people to say the sentence “I’m not saying he didn’t hit my cat” a number of times, but stressing a different word in the sentence each time. See what we mean?!
- Always use the language that is appropriate to the group. Use jargon to the extent that it relates to the job, and try to speak on the same level as your audience. Simpler is always better, and don’t forget those for whom English is not their main language.
- Once you have given the message to the group, go round the individual members of the group, check that they have understood what you have said, what is expected of them as an individual, and ask if they have any questions or comments arising. If so, you must deal with these as soon as possible.
- You have to keep reinforcing/checking the message with the group members. Why? Because the human brain is always trying to complete its current store of information on the basis of the data it has to date, i,e, incomplete data. So there is an innate tendency to half-listen to what is said, and then act as if we had all the information. We do this, of necessity, when driving, and sometimes we have to in the workplace – which is why you need to ensure that all members are regularly brought back on track.
- Be careful to appear neutral or pleasant when you go to see the group members. If you don’t, one or more of them will assume that you’re in a bad mood, probably with them, and their ’threat mode’ will be invoked. You then have a high psychological hill to climb before you can communicate effectively with them.
Finally, it might be a good idea to check
that you fully understand what you’re
trying to convey. This will make it much
easier for you to get the message across!
