Feature
SKILLS
The art of communicating Effective communication is an essential skill for risk managers. Richard Gossage offers some practical advice on how to do it better BY RICHARD GOSSAGE
I
was sitting on the train recently and, despite my best intentions, found myself listening to one side of a conversation a guy was having on his mobile. It wasn’t going well. You could just tell. It was a business-related call and he was trying to communicate that the timing of part of a project didn’t work and needed to change. His arguments for why didn’t sound that convincing, but he was clearly passionate about the subject. As the conversation progressed, the tone got harder, louder. The sentences got shorter, more assertive. Several of my travelling companions were now tuned in. The call concluded with the words, “No, you are just not listening. I can’t deal with this anymore. I will speak to you in the office.” The man took his phone from his ear and stated to anyone who wanted to listen, “Man, what an idiot!”. The train finally pulled into its destination and we all moved on. I found myself reflecting on the man on the train. Why did that conversation go so wrong? Putting aside the issue of the professionalism of talking business in a public area, what could he have done better to get his message across? Fortunately, there are some common reasons as to why we fail to get others to understand our message and there is a framework we can use to help us improve our success rate.
Keep talking Stephen Hawking, the eminent physicist, has said that the greatest contribution to the advancement of mankind is our ability to communicate – we have to keep talking. Today, in every area of
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Enterprise Risk
