“What do you do when you are working with someone who simply isn’t a strong communicator?” asks training specialist Shaun Belding in his Winning at Work e-newsletter  (top-notch reading for anyone in the workplace).

“It might be someone who speaks in one- or two-word sentences. Perhaps it’s someone who only gives you half the information you require, assuming that you already know the other half. It could be that they are communicating to you in their second language, and simply don’t possess enough language skills yet. In some cases, poor communication comes from individuals so intent on using important-sounding buzzwords that they completely baffle the listener. (e.g. ‘We need to granularize the core alignment of the cloud-driven segmentation…’)”.

All these things can be irritating if you happen to be s tickler for accuracy or perfection.  But, whereas you might be somewhat more  tolerant in other circumstances,  it becomes really frustrating when your colleague’s lack of clarity  begins to impact your ability to do your job.

And what makes it harder is that poor communicators rarely have  any inkling of how bad they really are.

So what can you do about it?  Reproaching the offending parties outright for their  sloppiness is  usually  not an option.  Nor is offering to give them lessons written or verbal language skills.  However,  there are solutions.

What Belding advocates is the use of clarifying questions that let your coworker know that they do not make themselves entirely clear.

” Be gentle, and don’t make them feel stupid. For example, if your coworker sends you an email that says,  ‘Pls advise re: customer paperwork’  don’t just email back with  ‘ What on earth are you talking about?’  You’re better to send a message back (or better – call) that says something like,  ‘Absolutely! Just so I make sure I’m getting you the right information, can you confirm which specific customer and paperwork? Thanks!”‘

Although the questioning may annoy your fellow worker in the short term,  the next time he or she comes to you with a query or request,  he or she might present the information more clearly. if that happens, you’ve done a great job, but Belding concludes with a very pertinent warning:

“Don’t be too quick to place all the blame on your coworker. Communication, after all, is a two-way street.

When great communicators deliver a speech, how long do they speak?  Very often, not for long at all. In case you find that difficult to believe, Dave Yewman of Dash Consulting Inc made this brief slide deck to drive home the point. See for yourself the precise duration of history’s greatest speeches – and send this link to corporate executives, keynote speakers and the like who ramble on and on. (Click the right arrow to advance to the next slide):

A few years ago,  consultant Larry Liberty wrote a book called  The Maturity Factor: Solving the Mystery of Great Leadership.  The book stresses that the emotional and psychological maturity of a leader is more important than where they were educated, who they know, or what prior experiences they have.  According to the author, 80% of corporate executives are not fully mature. Most executives are, at best,  what  he calls  “High Functioning Adolescents.”

John Renesch, noted futurist and writer on social and organizational change, wrote a foreword to  Liberty’s book.  Renesch  quotes part of  it  in the May issue of  his newsletter,  FutureShapers Monthly.  ( The entire essay,   entitled Women at Work: Employing the Powerful Feminine is well worth a read;  its primary theme doesn’t concern us directly here but is a fascinating one. )

“Organizations, particularly business organizations,”  wrote Renesch, ” have unparalleled influence on our society today.  The business sector, and the economic system which fuels it, is the de facto leader of the industrialized world. This dramatic shift in global power away from traditional institutions like government has important implications. Never in human history has there been such a universal need for organizational leadership that acts responsibly for the good of all people. The hierarchical, top-down rule that dominated the Cold War era and the benevolent dictator models of some of today’s republics are equally unacceptable. A new, more mature leadership is needed — no, absolutely necessary — to assure that our children and grandchildren live in a time of greater civility, less apprehension about the survivability of the human race and greater compassion for all people on Earth.”

On somewhat similar lines,  management consultant Myra White,  in a recent article entitled  Seeking Competent Leaders,  poses a question that must  be  on the minds of many following  last year’s financial  debacle.  How did it happen that “may of the business leaders in whom we placed our faith, our trust and even our money” turned out to be ” incompetent or (in some cases) out-and-out charlatans”?

Part of the explanation,  asserts  White,  lies “with the fact that we often are more concerned with social skills, likeability and charisma in choosing our leaders than we are with their ability to be effective leaders.”

White identifies several leadership types prevalent in the business world today, all of which fall short of the ideal: the servant leader  who serves the people he or she serves rather than controlling them;  the emotionally intelligent leader  who has social charm , empathy,  self-awareness and self-control;   the transformational leader who provides people with a vision of a better world and motivates them to transcend their self-interest; and finally the charismatic leader – who emotionally energizes followers with an inspiring vision of the future and convinces them that he or she is the heroic figure who can make this vision real.

But even though many of these characteristics may be cause for admiration,  they do not necessarily mean that the leader we have chosen will deliver results.  “Research has not found that leaders who are socially adept or liked or admired are more effective.”

White acknowledges that likeability and charisma are desirable qualities.  They have value in energizing and  motivating followers to achieve a leader’s goals. But in a complex world where countries and businesses  are globally intertwined, can charisma be enough?

As White aptly puts it:  “Sport teams  pick people based on their competence and ability, not their social skills and charisma . Why shouldn’t  businesses and organizations follow suit?”

Every week I read numerous email newsletters published by a variety of business consultants, trainers, life coaches and other professionals working with human capital. I subscribed to most after visiting their websites and being promised weekly or monthly mailings replete with the very latest tips and cutting-edge strategies relevant to the writer’s particular field of expertise.  (Often, as  an additional incentive to subscribe, I’m offered a free “special report” or white paper -  comprising information easily obtainable elsewhere!)

Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, most of these self-serving and heavily promotional e-publications fail to deliver the goods.

One of the relatively few  exceptions is  written by trainer Shaun Belding.   Shaun’s  regular Winning at Work mailings – as brief as they are – do deliver the goods. His publication offers “techniques and tools for dealing Coworkers, Bosses, Callers, Customers and Clients” and excels in showing us how to handle difficult people in each of these categories.

Disagreements  among colleagues in the workplace are the subject of the latest  issue.  Differences of  opinion among people working towards a common goal are not only inevitable but healthy.  After all,  sharing and examining different ideas and contrasting viewpoints leads to progress and growth. What is certainly not desirable is the unnecessary acrimony and conflict that is often an offshoot of such debates.

As Shaun Belding points out, what creates the conflict has less to do with the idea and more with the way it is presented.  He presents us with two  useful techniques for minimizing the potential for conflict when offering a different opinion:

I think in this case…

This technique involves first validating the premise behind the other person’s assertion, then offering a new or different perspective that leads to a different conclusion.  For example:

Sally: I think we need to have a full team meeting for an hour every Monday and Wednesday morning.

Bob: (validating) That makes sense. The more frequently we communicate, the less likely we’ll have issues like  the ones that cropped up in the last  project. (new perspective) I think in this case we have a challenge with availability.  Not everyone is in the office every Monday and Wednesday.  Perhaps we should just say we’ll meet twice a week, and on the Friday before set mutually convenient meeting times.

Yes, and…

Over the years, we have written and published a wealth of material on our site and our blog on a very special  emotion that serves as a key facilitator in all effective interpersonal relationships – namely, empathy?  What  do you usually think of when you read the word in print or hear the concept mentioned in everyday speech?

When Dr Carol Kinsey Goman, author of the THE NONVERBAL ADVANTAGE-Secret and Science of  Body Language at Work (and various training programs on this topic) hears someone mention “empathy”, she thinks of mirror neurons and body language? And monkeys. A strange combination, so what’s the connection?

Dr Goman writes about a research laboratory in Italy where neuroscientists were studying the brain cells of macaque monkeys. When the monkeys performed a single highly specific hand action, sophisticated monitoring equipment detected that neurons in the motor cortex of the animals’ brains become very active. For example, every time a monkey reached for a peanut, certain brain cells immediately “fired”.

Then one day, by chance, the reseachers discovered something particularly interesting. A monkey connected to the monitoring device happened to see a human grab a peanut. The same neurons fired in the same way! In terms of motor cell activity, the monkey’s brain could not tell the difference between actually doing something and seeing it done by someone else.

In other words, these brain cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others,  which is why the researchers dubbed them “mirror neurons”.

What is fascinating is not only that later experiments confirmed that these same neurons  exist in humans, but in addition to mirroring actions, the human brain cells also reflected sensations and feelings!

In one study , subjects watched a hand move forward to caress  someone else and then saw another hand push it away rudely. The brains of the subjects registered the pain of social rejection as if it were happening to them. Why? Because empathizing with someone, whether in grief or joy, apparently activates the very same circuits in your own brain as your companion who experienced the original emotion! Mirror neurons are well named indeed.

In her training programs on nonverbal literacy,  Goman  describes  “empathy ” as “the human ability to internalize the emotional state of others by  simply observing their body language.  The moment you become aware of a strong emotion felt by someone in your immediate environment – whether you can see it on the face or read it in the person’s gestures or bodily posture –   you begin,  however subconsciously, to place yourself in that person’s mental shoes, to get under their skin,  so to speak.

Before you know it, you are experiencing  the identical emotion, feeling your companion’s happiness,  excitement, confusion or  disappointment  as if it were your own.

And that, after all, is what empathy – genuine empathy, in the heart, not on the sleeve – is all about.