Management Communication: Three Basic Rules

Many leaders in the workplace choose to ignore these simple points. Fine. That’s their business and good luck to them. But then why do they seem so surprised when the productivity of their workers takes a nosedive?

How to Tell If Someone is a True Friend

It’s a lament one hears often:

“I’m so frustrated about the friends that I have. I trusted someone who I thought was a good friend of mine and I ended up getting used. I really can’t tell who is really a friend and who is just fake and trying to use me. I used to trust my own judgment, but now…I’m not so sure…”

Here are five simple rules that serve as a litmus test.

Working With Difficult People: Turning Tormentors into Teachers

When a confrontational employee or fellow worker with a chip on the shoulder begins to drive you up the wall, a simple switch in tactics could put a smile back on his face. And yours.

How to Leave Professional Phone Messages

Trying to reach a person who isn’t immediately available can be pretty frustrating at times, but take heart! A well planned message could be a fine opportunity to enhance your reputation and even help build relationships.

Voice to High? How to Safely Lower Your Pitch

Some common speaking problems:

“Even though I’m a mature female and a stockbroker, I am often mistaken for a child when I answer the phone or leave messages. I’m not sure what to do. Is my voice too high? Too hesitant? How can start to sound my age?”

“I am a small man and my voice is higher than I prefer. Are there any ways to lower my voice? I once heard that one movie star used to go into the mountains and scream for hours.”

Read what voice production expert Susan Berkley advises.

What to Do About Office Gossip

How an organization deals with habitual gossipers can be mean the difference between growing and thriving, or disintegrating from within

Please use the Comments area to let me know what you think of these articles, or to suggest topics you’d like to see covered in the future. If you prefer, you can also contact me privately at azriel AT hodu.com.

Passive Aggressive Behavior and Workplace Anger

Passive aggressive behavior is one of the most common ways anger is displayed in the workplace. Because people fear retaliation for speaking up, or even fear for their jobs, anger goes deep and oozes out in unhealthy ways

Seven Ways to Stop Interrupting

It happens all day, every day. We see it on television interviews. We hear it on the radio. We experience it at home and at work. One person talking over the other person. Not letting people finish what they were saying. In short, interrupting!

Interrupting can cause a whole stream of problems and challenges. It reduces our effectiveness as a listener, negatively impacts relationships, shuts down communication, reduces our ability to learn and much more.

Icebreakers: The Niftiest Training Tool

If you’re looking for a training tool that will deliver the most benefits for the least effort… a tool that can be used in any number of training situations… and change the mood of a group in a second… all while delivering heaps of learning… then I think I can claim to have found it…
…Icebreakers!

Stand Your Ground With Manipulators!

Nobody likes being manipulated. And despite what manipulators may believe, the act of manipulation always has a diminishing outcome.

How to Deal With Conflict Avoiders

Some people with whom you relate have tremendous difficulty acknowledging and talking about negative feelings.

Because they want to keep the peace at any cost, they pretend everything is fine. They don’t want to rock the boat. As a result, underlying resentments can grow and eventually destroy working relationships as well as personal relationships.

High Time to Change Childish Conversation

Many adults use childish conversation styles some or all of the time. What are the most common types of childish speech, and what makes people talk that way?

Please use the Comments area to let me know what you think of these articles, or to suggest topics you’d like to see covered in the future. If you prefer, you can also contact me privately at azriel AT hodu.com.

Next, hasten to explain to your partner that of course, you didn’t  mean what you said – your were just joking, or if you like, you were conducting an experiment. Ask her to describe how she felt when you called her an “idiot” (or any other term of contempt you chose to use.)  Doubtless, the reply will be “Awful!”

Then, assuming she’s a person deeply attuned to her own feelings (to be sure, not everyone is), ask if she felt better after you explained you hadn’t been serious.

Very likely, of course, she’ll say that she was a lot relieved. But if she’s honest, she might well tell you that deep down she still feels a certain amount of emotional pain. Pain that didn’t completely dissipate even after accepting (at least on an intellectual level) your assurance that you didn’t mean it.

As one husband once commented: “Whenever my wife hurls an abusive epithet at me – even I know she’s only doing it because she’s under great stress – something inside me always dies…”

Here we’re talking about a case where the target of verbal abuse knows it’s just an act, or maybe he can even sense that although it appears to be an attack against him, the attacker is really shouting at himself! How much more, then, does the victim suffer when she knows that an unfortunate choice of words (to put it in the most charitable way) directed against her is unquestionably intended!

The power of speech, for good or evil, a power almost impossible to over-estimate,  has been the subject of untold volumes and discourses. Yet as much as we pay lip service to this truth, somehow we find it extremely difficult to internalize it.  It just could be that this little story, a remarkable true incident, may help a little towards this end.

Sharon Smith was in her early teens and had everything going for her. She was extremely popular  among her classmates and teachers alike,  was considered  “the life of the party”, and was an outstanding student.

Then her troubles began.  True,  she continued to be well-liked after the episode she regarded as a turning point, and other than her own family and her closest friends, few in the outside world  may  have noticed any change in her at all.  But deep down inside, the change was quite dramatic, and by her own testimony, the effects of the “curse,” as she sometimes called it, were to remain with her many years later.

Bambi was known as the clown of the class.  Slightly eccentric but full of fun (and with the proverbial skin as thick as an elephant’s hide), she could always be relied upon to lift sagging spirits.

One day,  during the recess following a particularly demanding class test, Bambi announced. “Come on girls, I’m a fortune teller. Let me read your palms and I’ll tell you what’s in store for you once we’re all out of this place!”  Her classmates  gathered around Bambi gleefully, extending their palms.

“You, Suzie, will graduate with honors as a lawyer. You, Jane, will be a CEO. You, Pam, will marry a millionaire…You will be a diplomat in a foreign country…”  The girls chuckled with delight.

Finally it was Sharon’s turn. By this time, Bambi probably realized that in order to retain “credibility”, she had better mix in a couple of less possible forecasts too!

Bambi thought for a moment, looked Sharon up and down and announced: “The same thing that happened to Gertie McQueen will happen to you!”

Ever since the girls had been in kindergarten, Gertie McQueen had been the undisputed genius of the class. Then, about two years previously, she had suddenly starting acting very strangely. Each day her conduct had become stranger and stranger,  ultimately leading to a complete mental breakdown. She had been in and out of hospital ever since.

Everybody, Sharon included, enjoyed a good laugh, apparently forgetting that it wasn’t so nice to make jokes at the expense of a poor girl who had lost her mind.

That night, Sharon didn’t sleep much, and the little sleep she did get was punctuated by nightmares. In point of fact, it was the start of one long nightmare that has been plaguing her ever since.

If she slept,  ran the dark thought at the back of Sharon’s mind, would she wake up crazy?  It was a thought that was to give her no rest in the days, weeks and months that lay ahead. She was forced to stay home from school for a few days, claiming that she didn’t feel well. Well, in a very real sense, she certainly  wasn’t well. Not by a long shot.

Eventually,  Sharon forced herself to return to school, but nothing was really the same again.  She  had to keep telling herself that she must hold on to her sanity at all costs.  She felt powerless to stop the incessant, anxious thoughts that were twirling around in her head, which she was convinced would burst open any second!

Before too long,  her closest friends began to notice that Sharon was under stress, although they didn’t suspect any connection with the fortune-telling session.  Eventually, one of them managed to persuade Sharon to confide in her.  The friend tried her very best to reassure the hapless Sharon, and all else having failed, urged her to consult a psychologist.

The sessions at the psychologist did help a great deal,  and she learned to  keep her anxiety under control and carry on with normal life. But there was just no way she could totally shake off those dark thoughts that had taken a such a firm grip on the recesses of her mind.

Today, Sharon runs a successful business and is the proud mother of a lovely family. But ever so often, she is overcome with anxiety attacks that virtually put her out of action for a short while.

Do you think that the words that come out of your mouth, once spoken, just disappear into thin air? If so, it’s high time to think again. Very carefully.

And even if your words are only part of a game!

And he never deviated from this style, however impractical or ridiculous the worker’s suggestion might have appeared to him at first glance.

Instead of saying, for example, “This idea will cost too much”, the president would throw out a challenge by asking: “How might you reduce the cost?” or “How might you raise the money to develop this idea?” Instead of offering a prophecy of doom by saying: “Management will never accept this idea” he would inquire: “How might you get management’s support?”

Seems to me that the simple, yet underrated, communication concept used by our president has applications in many areas outside the world of business. Not least of these involves a class of people interacting with whom – or perhaps more accurately, attempting to interact with them – causes many older folk to almost tear out their hair in frustration.

I refer, of course, to our attempts to communicate on a deeper level with our children, especially teenagers. Adolescents, after all, have a reputation for being uncommunicative- a phenomenon most marked precisely when we badly want to get through to them!

The question is what we can do to reverse the trend, to get our older kids to open up to us – without wearing ourselves out with excessive nagging and prodding, and without counterproductive threats or bribes.

Professional counselor and columnist Azra Buksh presents some useful tips to help parents and other seniors succeed in what often appears to be a futile quest. She concludes her list with examples of two contrasting kinds of questions we can use when engaging our children in conversation.

The first type of question she calls “door openers” – non-judgmental, non-threatening, open-ended questions that invite and encourage the one being addressed to respond in kind, to “open up” and express his or her thoughts in full measure, without fear of criticism or retribution. The questions of the second type – the “door-slammers” – imply judgment, disrespect and criticism, or at best, condescension. The result, therefore, will be exactly the opposite of what should hopefully be achieved with questions of the first category.

These are Dr. Buksh’s examples of both types:

Door openers

“What do you think?”“That’s a great question”
“Would like to share more about that?”
“I don’t know, but I will try to find out.”
I am interested in what you are saying”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Are you ready to talk about it?”
“ That’s sounds important to you”
“I don’t have answer now, but I will talk to you about this tomorrow”.
“I know I did not clarify this next time I will do better.”

Door slammers

“Stop asking such questions”.
“You don’t need to know that”
““Why do you want to talk about this?
“Don’t talk to me if you mess up”
“We will talk about it when time comes; you are too young for all this”.
“That’s just not for Boys/girls”.
“ I don’t care what your friends are doing:”
‘I have no time for such foolishness.”.
“ When I was your age, I was not like you”
“It’s your entire fault.”

Why, then, do we so often throw all admonishments to the winds and simply let ourselves go when that “meeting” takes place over the phone?

It could be a simple telephone call to ask a friend or acquaintance – or more critically – a stranger to ask a small favor, a call to a prospective employer to arrange an interview, a call to a prospective client or customer, or whatever. The potential to have all our hopes dashed in the space of few seconds is the same.

Singapore-based business coach Heather Hansen has written an excellent article on telephone etiquette that will be useful not only in the kind of make-or-break situations referred to above but even during the most routine telephone conversations. Heather discusses five common areas where people are wont to make blunders during the course of a phone call.

What is significant is that all these cases have a common denominator. In each one of them, the errors described, with their potentially damaging consequences, could have been avoided had the callers tried to put themselves in the shoes of the party they were calling.

Personally, I can identify closely with the writer’s description of the person who calls you to make a request and doesn’t identify himself properly: “Hello, this is John! John! You know…John! So how are you doing? I wanted to ask you if…”

Now, I don’t usually spend my day sitting idle, and chances are that when “John” calls I’m in the middle of a task that requires some degree of concentration. I could even be busy writing this post. Not that I resent being interrupted, especially if someone needs my help. And no one compelled me to pick up the phone.

But while I’m more than happy if I can help John with whatever he needs (A burden? No way, it’s a privilege!), my thoughts are probably very far away at the moment I receive that call. Mentally, I might be on a different planet. Now even if John assumes (as we said, probably correctly), that I forgive the interruption, some empathy with where I might be holding at this point might be in order.

The first problem, of course, is that I may know dozens of Johns. But even if he says at the outset “John Williams”, he knows as well as I do that we haven’t seen each other for several months or even years, and he’s not likely to be a person that I’m thinking about all the time. Since, until a few seconds ago, my mind was immersed in other things, I’m now required to switch gears fast.

And since, (sigh!), I’m getting on in years and am no longer (if I ever was!) as quick on the uptake as John and others may believe I am, any help he can give me in re-orientating myself would help me to be in a position to help him faster!

Therefore something like: “Hi, Azriel. This is John Williams . We might last February at the seminar in such-and-such a place and we were discussing such-and-such a topic,” would certainly be a more welcome introduction.

As we said, whenever you pick up the phone to make a call, try to put yourself in the shoes of the one you’re calling and you can’t go far wrong.

For more in-depth information on telephone etiquette, telemarketing and communicating via the phone in general, consult this section of our web site.