IS YOUR COMMUNICATION ALL ABOUT YOU? LEADERSHIP AND FACILITATION ARE A GREAT PARTNERSHIP

Source: Vector image is from freepik.com by @storyset

IS YOUR COMMUNICATION ALL ABOUT YOU?

BY MICHELLE GIBBINGS

Effective Communication

It’s a typical workday. You rush from meeting to meeting (and yes, you can rush virtually too). Send a few emails and text messages and talk with a team member to update them on things you think they need to know. You then rush to your next meeting.

Sound familiar?

I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of doing this.

It’s a classic case of ‘dump and run’ in action. You have information in your head that you think someone needs to know. Naturally, you want to share it with them, delegate the task or get the issue moving.

When you’re rushing, you’ll likely rush the conversation too. You’ll say what matters to you but have little time to hear the other person. You feel better because you feel like you’ve communicated, and if it’s task-related, you feel good because it’s off your plate and on someone else’s plate. However, the person on the receiving end can feel bewildered, annoyed, frustrated and disengaged.

Research across more than 330 000 leaders, peers and team members found that communication is one of the skills that most significantly impact whether a leader succeeds or not. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, who conducted the research, provided participants with 16 competencies and asked them to rate the top four essential competencies for roles at different levels of organisational hierarchy. Being able to ‘communicate powerfully and prolifically’ came in at number five. Interestingly, the top competency was ‘inspires and motivates’, and I’d suggest that you can’t do that if you don’t communicate well.

We all know the criticality of good communication, and it’s something that sets good leaders apart. So, do you know whether your communication hits the mark?

Good communication is more than just being an effective orator or a good listener. In fact, there are many considerations. Let’s start with the five communication levels, moving from least effective to most effective.

Starting at level 1 (and the least effective) is DUMPING. This is a one-way conversation. You’re seeking an audience for your voice, and you are thinking (either subconsciously or consciously), ‘It’s all about me’. You focus on getting your idea or issue heard or the information you need to share disseminated. You aren’t interested in conversation or debate.

The next level is DEBATING. At level 2, it’s a contest of words and ideas between the people talking. Each person seeks to ‘win’ the conversation or have the ‘last word’. When you are involved in this type of conversation, you are less concerned with listening and more concerned with getting your point across.

As this helpful Korn Ferry article reminds us, our brain isn’t naturally good at listening. Our brain uses heuristics (essentially mentally short-cuts) to save the brain’s processing capacity, and so it can decide swiftly. This comes into play when we are communicating too. As the other person is talking, you focus on formulating your response. You may jump ahead and assume what they will say next. You can make assumptions about their intent and be easily distracted.

Communicating at level 1 may save you time in the short term, while level 2 can be interesting if you like a rigorous debate with little care for the outcome. However, neither are good strategies to pursue if you want a healthy organisational culture, sustainable results, and sound decision-making.

At a minimum, you want to strive for level 3, which is CLARIFYING. This is where the conversation is much more about the ‘we’, rather than the ‘me’. The conversation is more curious and less judgemental. Both parties are curious, open to learning, and seeking ideas and answers.

This is critical because so much of what is said is not heard, and we can easily misunderstand what the other person is saying. For a conversation to proceed in a manner where both parties walk away with the same level of comprehension, many things need to go right. Both parties need to:

• pay attention and not be distracted • speak clearly and precisely • provide all the information needed in the conversation to ensure clarity • have the same level of comprehension and understanding of the topic and the language used

All those elements are rarely present throughout an entire conversation, so asking questions and clarifying what you’ve heard is crucial. It is easy to misinterpret, miss keywords and then end up with a hazy recollection of what was said. Even better is level 4, which is SENSE MAKING. A conversation of this nature is open-hearted and open-minded. It involves both parties pushing their thinking into new territory. It’s recognising the impact that context has on what you are saying and how it is interpreted. It’s accepting the role that emotions play in how words are heard.

Through such a dialogue, each person seeks insight, knowledge and more profound understanding as they make sense of what’s happening and how they are interpreting what’s happening.

The most effective and yet, most challenging to master is level 5 – ADAPTING.

It’s hard to admit you don’t have all the answers and that your knowledge and ideas are imperfect. Being comfortable with admitting you don’t know is a sign of leadership. Conversations of this nature are about exploring possibilities and making decisions conscious of context, the imperfect nature of how we decide and an acceptance that as the leader, you don’t have the licence on being right.

At level 5, you are embracing a much more inclusive communication approach.

Of course, moving up the levels of communication isn’t easy. There may be times when you move up and down the scale depending on who you are conversing with and how you are feeling. As with all skills, it takes time, practice and a desire to improve. It’s also essential if you want to be more influential and to step up and progress.

Remember the wise words of George Bernard Shaw, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. So if you aren’t sure if your communication has landed or if the conversation has been helpful, engaging and effective, then the best thing to do is to check in and ask.

MICHELLE GIBBINGS

Michelle Gibbings is a workplace expert and the award-winning author of three books. Her latest book is ‘Bad Boss: What to do if you work for one, manage one or are one’. www.michellegibbings.com.

Source: Photo by Norbert Kundrak on Unsplash

Prevent a Midlife Crisis

BY SHAWN SHER

PREVENTING A MIDLIFE CRISIS WITH TWO SIMPLE MINDSET SHIFTS

This update is for those of us in our 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s. It starts with a story…

A close friend of mine ran a successful business. He owned/ran a boutique hotel together with a chain of restaurants. He no longer does. The main reason was that he had (what he in retrospect now realises) a midlife crisis that led to him slowly removing himself from active involvement in his family affairs (which consequently led to a divorce) and investing his funds in frivolous business ventures which went bust.

Coupled with the challenges of Covid and the fact that the hotel and restaurant business is always a tough business, the company buckled under this pressure. The business blew up its finances and this friend ended up having to sell his stake in the company and today works for someone else. Having lost his home, family and life- savings, he now lives with his sister at the ‘tender’ age of 56. What happened? In retrospect, a midlife crisis.

Is A Midlife Crisis Inevitable For All of Us?

Is a midlife crisis inevitable? If not, how do we prevent them? While these questions seems complicated and quite personal, Harvard Professor Arthur C Brooks believes that almost all midlife meltdowns can be prevented with just two simple mindset shifts.

Scientists had previously thought that midlife crises were a normal part of the aging process. They have recently changed their tune and Brooks believes that a ‘crisis’ is not our unavoidable fate. To avoid crashing into regret and mortality and making poor considered decisions when we hit midlife, Brooks insists that we need to make two small but profound changes to our mindset.

MINDSET SHIFT 1

Focus on Gains, not Losses

Aging is inevitable. As you get older, you are going to lose physical strength and speed and eventually some mental flexibility too (although science has also found that these mental slowdowns actually happen much later than we commonly expect). Understandably, this sets off feelings of panic in many people. I can relate to this. I recently attempted to resuscitate my tennis playing days and started playing aggressively (almost daily) again. Initially, I was doing well and was making progress. Then, inexplicably the knee started acting up before I developed tennis elbow. Ignoring this initial pain signs as nothing more than part of the process of getting better, i.e. growing pains, I ignored the pain signs until my elbow finally buckled and I couldn’t even lift a cup at one stage.

A visit to the doctor confirmed my fears. It was not part of my development into a better tennis player. I was no longer 25 and my body needed rest. According to Brooks however, this feelings of despair we may feel at our weakened muscles and faltering memory are unnecessary and that we should be focusing on the other half of the equation. Some skills may get worse with age, but lots of other important ones get better.

Stagnation, which can lead to a crisis, happens when you try to fight against time, whether you are desperately trying not to look older or struggling against changes to your skills and strengths. Generativity comes from accepting your age and recognising the new aptitudes and abilities that naturally develop in your 40’s and get stronger through your 50’s and 60’s. These includes the growing ability to see patterns clearly, teach others, and explain complex ideas – what psychologists call ‘crystallised intelligence.’

Still skeptical? There are multiple studies today showing that certain important skills from emotional intelligence to some types of creativity actually get better as we age. It is also relevant here to point out that the average age entrepreneurs who go on to run successful businesses started their business was at 47 – probably due to the fact that the skills and experience gained in your younger years make you a more formidable leader. The same applies to people who make significant ascensions up the corporate ladder to become C-suite executives. So, the message here is focus on what you are gaining as you age instead of obsessing over what you are losing. MINDSET SHIFT 2

Focus on Subtraction, not Addition

According to Brooks, the good life is often gained by subtraction rather than addition. He advocates we adopt a tool called the ‘reverse bucket list’ to figure out what commitments, stressors, and miscellaneous other junk we need to remove from our schedules and brains. Apparently, this process of pruning is key to avoiding a midlife crisis too.

Early in life, success usually comes from addition, i.e. more money, more responsibility, more relationships, more possessions. Life in early adulthood is like filling up an empty canvas. By midlife, however, that canvas is pretty full, and more brushstrokes make the painting worse, not better. We need to change our life objectives by stepping away from unnecessary duties and responsibilities and make more time to think, read and reconnect spiritually – the work we need to do to reengineer ourselves.

While these two mindset shifts may seem easy enough in theory, we all know that focusing on the positive and saying no more often can actually be fiendishly difficult in real life. But we need to persist with these two mindset shifts.

Summary

Whether or not you opt for some formalised approach to grappling with middle age; the truth is that middle age will inevitably grapple with you. Knowing a bit of the psychology of how successful people transition away from youth and into a flourishing middle adulthood could help boost your peace of mind and maybe even your career.

SHAWN SHER

Shawn is the founder and chief executive of LS Human Capital.