Posts Tagged ‘clear communication’

For the past several months, I have been working with my friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry on a number of projects. As part of my responsibility in working with Kevin, I serve as a coach on the monthly group coaching call for Silver Members of Kevin’s Remarkable Leadership Learning System.

While this post doesn’t specifically address resolving conflict, the ideas in it relate directly to the much broader topics of leadership and leadership development.

Last week, we had our monthly Group Coaching call, and we discussed Enabling Process Improvement. We had a great, lively, informative call. Here are some of the highlights of the call:

Keep it simple

In keeping with Kevin’s description of a “non-denominational” process improvement approach (Plan – Do – Check – Act) during his monthly teleseminar, we discussed the importance of focusing on the basics. Keep it simple, and keep going back to foundational principles so that you can get a “ground-up” approach to process improvement. This approach will make your life as a leader much easier.

Set constraints up front

If you know that certain approaches are “off-the-table” with regard to what is or is not acceptable in the context of your process improvement efforts, tell people up-front. Openly sharing what is not acceptable can help people to focus their efforts on what is.

Ask questions

Question, probe, and investigate early and often. The more you work to surface concerns and frustrations with the current situation, the better you can communicate the need to take action and the better you can define your desired outcomes.

Clearly define the problem

If we define the word problem as a “condition that you want to change,” then we have to agree on the problem statement before we can agree on the solution statement. Working to make the problem definition clear (the current condition that we want to change) will help you reduce resistance to change that might occur as you work to improve the process.

Make it safe to fail

We don’t want people to fail in ways that will destroy the company. We do want people to learn and grow in order to get better. Planning for the future. Taking reasonable steps to avoid failure. And then, allowing small failures to happen without negative consequences can create an environment that enables process improvement.

Last week, my wife and my youngest daughter experienced a communication breakdown. In short, my daughter, at age 13, changed her plans without consulting my wife. This created a problem for two reasons:

1. My daughter moved to a different location than the previously agreed upon location for pick-up, and
2. My daughter’s schedule directly impacts my wife’s schedule.

Understandably, my wife felt frustrated and angry. Rather than address the issue while she was angry, she waited until we could speak about it on Saturday morning.

As we discussed the appropriate parental response, my wife’s frustration from the previous day came to the surface. For a brief moment, she considered “punishing” my daughter. As we spoke, I asked one question: “What is your objective? Do you want to punish her because you are angry or do you want to make sure this behavior does not happen again in the future?” (I’m not convinced that I phrased this question in the best way for her in the moment.)

She stopped briefly. Then she said: “When you put it that way, I suppose I want to make sure this does not happen again in the future.”

In that moment, my wife’s intended actions began to move towards appropriate and natural consequences for my daughter’s behavior and away from consequences that would likely communicate vengeance and anger.

My daughter did not intend to cause problems for her mother. She just did not think through all of the implications of her decision. She has some things to learn. My wife and I need to help her learn them.

My wife did not intend to harm my daughter, she wanted to protect her from making poor decisions in the future. In the emotion of the situation, she initially had a difficult time seeing past her anger.

I had the “emotional upper hand” in this situation. I was not emotionally involved in the events of the previous day. I could easily, in this case, make an objective, third-party observation. My wife lived the situation, and her emotions were directly involved. She had a more difficult time making the switch in thinking because of her emotional investment. She did it. It just was not easy for her to do.

After my wife shifted her thinking about the situation, we then discussed it  further. After a few minutes, we came to an agreement about how to handle the situation in a way that would improve our odds of achieving our real objective – teaching our daughter a life lesson that will serve her well beyond the time she lives with us.

Monday Momentum Message – Be clear about your real objective before you confront another person.

On Monday, I offered Three Tips for Heading Off Conflicts Before They Start. My third tip was to work to ensure open lines of communication.

In situations where you work closely with people over a long period of time, it is easy to start getting a bit “relaxed” in your communications. This relaxed communication approach has both good and bad implications. It can be good because it can foster openness. It can be bad when we lose the communication discipline to carefully consider what our words and actions communcate to others.

For example, my wife tends to communicate in a direct, bottom-line, high-energy fashion. When she gets really worked-up on a topic, I have difficulty telling the difference between passion about the topic and anger directed at me. Even after nearly twenty years of marriage, I still cannot easily distinguish between these two emotional states.

She is aware that her passion sometimes looks like anger to me. She works to control her expression and to tell me in words what state she is in rather than leaving it to me to interpret her tone and actions. She works hard to communicate more clearly, and she is still a human being. Sometimes she is tired, in a hurry, pressured, or otherwise distracted, and she forgets the discipline she normally works so diligently to apply to her communications.

Because we know that these moments will happen despite her best efforts. We have agreed to two code words that help me to quickly understand her thoughts and feelings. In our case, we have agreed that I can ask: “Sandra, are you angry or are you just passionate about this topic?” When I ask that question, she tells me her mental state in one word. As a result, I know exactly how to interpret the situation and how to best respond to her.

In about 95% of the situations where I would naturally interpret her behavior as angry, she is actually just passionate about the subject. In most situations, anger never even crossed her mind. Using these code words has helped us head off more conflicts than I can now count.

You can apply this same concept with the people in your life either at work or at home.

Thought for Thursday: Discuss this idea with some of the people close to you. Identify potential areas of misunderstanding or miscommunication between you, and develop code words that you can use to immediately clarify the situation for both of you.