Category Archives: Communication

#146 Speak up!

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The world is an uncertain place. Anything that happens to make things look worse is annoying, and even frustrating. How you communicate will decide whether your audience thinks you are giving good news or bad news, whether they will listen to what you have to say, and whether they will believe in you. Anything that makes the world look better is not necessarily a cause for celebration, but don’t over think this.

When I was reading Carol A. Fleming’s book, I was struck by how much easier it would be and how much faster things would move in the workplace if we all just communicate with confidence.

If you are tense or hesitant when you communicate, your audience will conclude one of two things.

  • There must be something wrong, so they tend to get tense and hesitant.
  • They sense you are not very confident. This will evoke a range of emotions, ranging from mistrust, irritation, to downright anger.

Just as some people use heart monitors when jogging, every person in the workplace should be given a device that can be work on the wrist, showing how their voice is coming across to their listeners. Now that is a product idea! Wonder if there is an app for that…

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#136 Managing interfaces (additional insights)

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I’ve talked about interfaces in earlier blog posts (#84, #89, and #94). I had a few additional insights that are worth sharing.

If interfaces break down (between marketing and sales, between sales and finance, between customer and vendor, and between engineering and product marketing), there may be more than one reason at play:

  • Different world view. If both parties have a different view of the problem to be solved and a different view of their roles in solving those problems, you can expect nothing but communication gaps.
  • Different processes and methods. Or, no process and method has been defined. Structured interactions may sound restricting, but it actually speeds up processes and outputs.
  • Different levels of capabilities. Staying on top of industry best practices and tuning the solution to the problem needs to be an ongoing effort. If one of the parties knows a lot more than the other party, communication gaps are bound to happen.

List specific points for each of the above and communicate hard until each point has been addressed. Clarity should be non-negotiable. Once a common understanding has been reached, there is more than one way to solve a problem. Pick the solution that benefits the customer the most.

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