Much has been written on the art of communication, verbal,
non verbal etc. But in this time and age the key question is, are we communicating
the right things in an appropriate manner? Are we assuming many things and leaving
them open for judgement? Majority of the issues around us today are due to lack
of proper communication than necessarily willingness to resolve or better
still, ability to resolve it.
Have you ever wondered how simpler life would be if we all
communicated in straightforward manner rather than leaving things to
interpretation?
The six golden rules of clear communication still remain the
same:
- Why
- What
- When
- Where
- How and
- The body language or in new world even the social media language
As
I started reflecting on my days, I found numerous incidents where ignorance of the
basics of the six golden rules led to issues that could have been simply
avoided.
Why:
Early morning on my way to office, there is a massive traffic
jam and the GPS is showing the area as all red, I wonder why is there so much traffic at this juncture,
and moving a few yards forward, I realise
that the road is being repaired on one of the two traffic lanes and hence the
chaos. I wondered, “It would have been great, had the traffic police communicated
by putting a warning signal, at the beginning of the lane ‘Construction work
ahead, expect delays or take alternate route’…the day would have started on a happy
note!" Simple, yet very important for better planning of commuters and even
traffic management.
What:
For my morning coffee, I went and ordered my coffee in my
regular café where I had been going for years, only to receive a black coffee
as I sipped it moving out of the café… angry at the morning delays, I walk back
to the counter almost screaming, “this is not what I get on a daily basis”. and
the young girl at the billing counter said, the café staff has changed and the
new guy didn’t know my preference. I cool down a bit and wondering if I would
have communicated clearly, what was
my recipe of coffee rather than assuming that the server at the café would
know, I would have saved the moment.
When:
There is a regular client in our organisation (say Mr. Right),
a highly professional and empathetic client, I receive an “urgent attention
needed” message from him stating the quality of the services is not upto the mark...
digging deeper into it, I realise the quality of analysis was not an issue but
more importantly the agreed timelines of the services were not met. One of the key
project members had to leave because of an emergency and the project lead didn’t
inform the client, assuming that they would pull it during the day, but could
not and hence when Mr. Right found out, he was obviously upset. We immediately
called him, apologised and explained him the situation. All he said, “If you
would have told me when to expect
the analysis, I could have managed the situation better.” In my 20+ years of career, I have seen more
issues around communication than the actual quality of product or services.
How:
Reviewing a presentation for an upcoming strategy meeting, I
found all the financial numbers and related analysis to be wrong, only to
realise later that they were assumed based on previous financial year while in
the strategy team had projected numbers on Zero based budgeting. On further
discussions with the two department heads, apparently, the finance department
was not informed by the strategy team on the how the projections were considered for the coming years and finance
team on their part assumed without clarifying … a simple communication between
the teams would have saved many frustrations and obviously time.
Where
I come back home in the evening only to find my daughter has
still not reached home post her music lessons, I remember her telling she will
be late today, as post class she would be hanging out with her friends practicing
for upcoming show in the academy area. With
two hours above her class time and her phone not reachable, I am worried. I
call up the music academy, to discover that it closed an hour ago. She comes home in
sometime, little realising my worry level had already gone up, she casually explains
her phone ran out of battery and she thought she had already informed that she
would be late and they moved to a nearby fastfood joint. Had her communication
been clear on where she intended to
go, we would have saved each other some unpleasant conversations.
The language
Social media these days is adding on to pressure on
communication where brevity is the new “in thing”. A friend of mine often
writes, pmwf (ping me when free)… now does that mean an urgency or not is often
a subject of interpretation. There are times, when I have replied back
immediately only to realise that it was a casual chitchat and when I didn’t for
couple of days to realise, it was really an emergency situation. I am often
left wondering, are these instant messengers helping us or making matters worse?
Are they even depicting our intentions clearly in the language we are thinking or are we using abbreviations and
emoticons more which are even more subject to interpretation.
Recent studies are suggesting, though average intelligence
quotient (IQ) of human beings is increasing, our emotional quotient (EQ) is
going down and hence, it is imperative that we communicate more clearly than
before. We need to our ability to communicate more than any other living
species to our advantage rather than to create more confusion in the world.
