Are You Really Communicating?
More importantly, is anyone listening?
You think you are communicating clearly, but have you assessed whether your current way of communicating is effective? What the CEO and C-Suite have to say is important. Your messages animate the entire organization in service of your strategic directions and performance objectives but are they reaching your audience and having the intended impact? How do you know?
Communication is the foundation of everything that is vital to an organization being an organization. If organizations exist to do things that individuals working alone cannot, it follows that members of an organization must by definition understand what others are saying so that they are able to work together collaboratively to accomplish shared goals and objectives. Still, time after time, through surveys and interviews, I hear that the number one problem people experience is communication. It doesn’t happen at all; or it’s not clear; or it’s not transparent; or it doesn’t happen in a timely fashion; or it’s incomplete; or it’s inconsistent from one source to another. Nothing has changed about this situation for the past fifty years, despite the availability of much more sophisticated and instantaneous communication channels. Your communications people are helping you craft great messages and campaigns, but your audience still isn’t able to repeat what you say. Clearly, the tools aren’t the problem. What is? As you would expect, it’s not just one thing but many. Here’s a partial list of some of the most common communication issues, along with a recommendation for improvement in each.
1. You don’t think communication is a problem. If you believe that everything is fine with the way you are currently communicating it will never get better. I’ve never encountered an organization in which people tell me that communications from the top couldn’t be better. Everyone complains. When you think about how important communications from the top are to everything else, this should be cause for alarm and yet, I don’t find many top leaders very concerned about it at all, which explains why people are complaining.
Action: If you want to know whether or not your communications are effective, just ask. The more specific you are in your questioning, the more likely you are to find some truth. There are reasons that people aren’t doing what you are expecting them to do and one of them is that they either didn’t understand what you were saying or thought your message didn’t apply to them.
2. You aren’t communicating effectively. You’re really trying, but the message isn’t getting through. I’ve said elsewhere that communication has to be loud and clear, meaning that people are paying attention to what you are saying and that they understand your message. Often, this is not the case. Communications don’t reach people, are ignored, or not well understood. What is clear to you isn’t clear to them. Or it’s clear enough but people have no idea how to make what you want happen. One of the fundamental “misses” in communications from the top is that they are unidirectional when they need to be bi-directional. You can’t know what people heard or think unless you ask and listen.
Action: Here’s a simple rule to follow. When you communicate, put as much time and effort into listening as you do into talking – literally. If you’re giving a 30 minute speech, leave 30 minutes for two-way discussion at the end. You need more than applause to know if your audience understood you and really took your message in. Just hearing something spoken is not communication; people need to feel a personal connection to the subject and work through what the meaning is for them. If you send out a memo, work at putting feedback channels in place that tell you whether the memo was read and if so, what people think they need to do as a result.
3. You aren’t communicating consistently. You haven’t spent enough time together as a top team deciding what should be communicated and how, so parts of the organization end up hearing very different messages. Then, because you don’t take enough time to engage the next level of leadership in understanding your intent before they communicate to their people, they communicate an entirely different message altogether. Not only does this cause a certain amount of head scratching on the part of individuals regarding the actions they are expected to take, it undermines any hope of getting people to work together across organizational boundaries of units, functions or geographies. At best nothing happens and at worst, time, energy and resources are wasted.
Action: In your haste to end your meetings on time, you probably are not leaving enough space on the agenda to plan what you are going to say and how. You assume that everyone is on the same page as they leave the room and that each person’s communications will be effective. Or you assign the responsibility to someone to write the memo and never follow up to see if the message is received and understood. Just remember that decisions are of no value if they aren’t implemented, and effectively communicating a decision is always the first step in something getting done.
4. You aren’t reinforcing your communications. People receive a LOT of communications in the course of a day. They may all be marked as “urgent” so it’s hard for them to know what to really pay attention to.
Action: If something is really important, it’s worth following up on. After a period of time, check to see if anything is being done and if not, why not. You’ll be surprised (more like dismayed) that something you felt was critical has dropped off the radar. New communications and requests may have superseded yours. Or a first step was taken but then actions required by others never got done. In the face of being overwhelmed with other priorities, the person or group responsible may not have followed through to see why others are not taking action.
5. You used the wrong language. This refers to any communication that those on the receiving end simply didn’t understand. Technical jargon, another spoken language, abbreviations or shorthand may make it impossible for some people to interpret your message. You might as well be sending a message by secret code when the person receiving it doesn’t have a matching decoder ring.
Action: Keeping things simple, testing your message with representatives of the audiences you are trying to reach, and have your message translated into the language by native speakers. Don’t be afraid to seek help in getting your message getting across.
When you think about it, it’s amazing that we are able to communicate in large, complex organizations at all. At a minimum, we shouldn’t assume that we will get it right on the first try or even after multiple attempts. You’ve heard that every message needs to be repeated between 7 and 26 times to be noticed by those not expecting to receive it. We’re all busy and communications have to disrupt our concentration to reach our awareness.
So, with that, a final piece of advice: before you wrap up your communication efforts around something that’s really important, check to see if anyone is listening.