Communication - Gap or Chasm

This management thought relates to a commonly talked about topic, Communication Gap!

“The Single Biggest Problem in Communication is the Illusion that it has taken place” ~ George Bernard Shaw

Every individual is different and unique and so are their abilities to express and perceive. Communication, as simple as it may sound is a challenge in terms of making the other person understand what you intend to say and also understanding what the other person has to say. This is what is communication gap. However. over the two decades of my career, I have realised that often what we refer to as communication gap is actually a chasm.  In this post, I am narrating some instances of how I learnt about this chasm in my career.  I am also attempting to put down the learning that I derived out of them. However, communication improvement is a vast topic and therefore, what you will read here is definitely not exhaustive. Here we go:

1.       One of my Bosses went on a market visit. When he returned, I inquired about how his visit was and he said he was very unhappy with the Area Sales Manager (ASM), as even the basics were not followed. He also mentioned that he gave the person a piece of his mind. After some time, I called up that ASM and asked him how my Boss’s visit was. He said – “It was fine only that he gave feedback on a few improvement areas, which will be corrected!” The Area Manager clearly seemed to be satisfied with the current state of affairs. The clear learning that I derived out of this incident was that when dealing with people a couple of notches down the hierarchy¸ we must be simple and crisp in communicating! Assuming that the other person will understand jargon and complex sentences, is a mistake. Also, it may be a good idea to close the loop by asking them about their “take away” from the conversation post the download.

2.       Another one of my Boss had serious concerns with our advertising agency. He decided to communicate his issues to their MD and met him over lunch to discuss the same. After two months, there was no improvement in the performance. He then, called them to our office in a slightly larger group and discussed those issues again. This time with harder questions. After two months, when there was again no improvement, we decided to move the account and that’s when the MD realized that he had not been listening to us. I learnt that clarity of communication does not depend on the IQ or designation of a person, because most often we hear what we want to hear.  Communication gap can occur with anyone. I also believe that tough talks need to be done with eye to eye contact and in a formal setting. Very often the setting overtakes the communication objective.

3.       Once, I was upset with a colleague of mine over the low growth rate that he had taken for next year’s budget. I was so upset with him that being at such a senior level, he’s not getting company’s vision of growing big next year and was convinced on taking low numbers. On top of that, he was also trying to justify the same to me. I sarcastically told him – “If I had taken this kind of growths, I’d be holidaying in Bahamas”. Obviously I meant that the targets were very easy to be achieved and required no hard work. However, he understood it as his ABP was good enough for him and he doesn’t need to work on it any more. Learning was that sarcasm is best avoided in a professional communication.

4.       I was once told that another colleague of mine is not agreeing to the project timelines as he believes that there are certain bottlenecks in the project. But this information given to me was “off the record”. Till date, I fail to understand how can any communication which impacts our work and deliverables be “Off the record”. If I am officially not supposed to act upon it, why am I being provided with the information and if I am supposed to act upon it, how does the information become “off the record”? Official Information is never “Off the Record”. If it is, its not official information, its “gossip”.

5.       One of the most crucial aspects of communication, as hackneyed as it may sound, is about it being clear about expectation. A lot of times, “I want it” is not perceived as “I want it now” and when your team member fails to understand the priority of work, frustration comes through. I once told my Marketing Head to get an ad released within next three days. He replied that it was really difficult. I replied back “I want the ad on the required date, DO OR DIE”. Without doubt the ad was released on the required date.

6.       In one of the advertising agency meetings, I liked one of the ads, though I remarked casually that “maybe the ad would look a little better if the background was yellow instead of blue”. Genuinely, it was only a casual comment. Next day, I had the yellow background ad in my mailbox. I pitied the people who worked on it throughout the night just to give shape to my casual comment. At senior positions, it is likely that people tend to take your casual comments also as directives and act upon them without you necessarily wanting them to. Expression of purpose is the most important content of a communication.

Communication is a funny thing. How you come to know from the smile of a woman that she has fallen for you and how you don’t understand that when Boss said that the work needs to be completed “Now”, that “Now” didn’t mean a week.  Like I mentioned, perception is different for different individuals! That is what creates the communication gap or shall I say chasm?

Communication gap is inevitable and will never be able to be completely got rid of. If my secretary confuses my intent of visiting Allahabad, my  “Home Town”, as my intent to visit Home Town, the concept which is just downstairs, I will not blame her, but reflect on myself. What we can work towards, is making sure that the gap is reduced as much as possible and make conscious efforts towards it.

Would like to know your thoughts on how do you make sure that proper communication is in place in your surroundings.

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

Unleashing the power of feedback

This article is about a concern that most of us go through in our careers as well as personal lives – Lack of Proper Feedback. Though all of us work in best possible way, sometimes, we do tend to get off the track – but how do we get back on track, unless someone tells us!

Sample this story. Alok and Richa worked for in the same company. Alok was heading the marketing department while Richa was sales in charge for a business unit. Both of them never got well along with each other. While Richa thought Alok was too laid back in his attitude, Alok thought Richa’s aggressiveness is just a way to impress her seniors. More often than not, these two would get into serious quarrels before every campaign break. Richa blamed Alok of informing her only at the last moment, while Alok said that Richa always tried to interfere in his domain, which he did not appreciate. Diwali campaign was about to break out and Tarun, the CEO of the company expected another spat between the two. So, he decided to resolve it himself this time. He called both of them individually and asked them what all problems they faced with each other. He jotted down everything that both of them had to say. Next he passed Richa’s feedback to Alok and vice versa saying it was a feedback from him of their work and he really thinks these are their improvement areas. Not to his surprise, the Diwali campaign had much lesser issues and working was smoother. He then called them together and told them the reality, ending with “…if only both of you started giving feedback to each other directly”.

Did you notice what can a simple feedback achieve? Feedback is a completely underrated part of work in most organizations. People continue to crib about their work areas and company, but hardly bother to give any feedback to anyone. The underlying assumption is always that “how will my feedback matter?”, but don’t we realize that every individual behaves in a certain way, because he thinks it is the right way. If its not, how will he know unless someone tell him? What we must understand and appreciate is that Everyone needs Feedback. A lot of us don’t see ourselves as others see us (reminded about Johari Window*), and so the feedback becomes really important to overcome the “Blind Spots” that we develop over a period of time. Have you realized how much impact does a smile from your spouse, a pat on the back from your Boss, delightful eyes of a customer or a look of appreciation from a colleague ;-) make? Don’t you feel irritated when your Boss doesn’t comment on the results of some work that you’ve put so much efforts in? Have you also tried telling your team members to improve in certain areas of work and seen some immediate results? It works! While a negative feedback results in improvement and performance enhancement, a positive feedback gives motivation to continue to perform even better. Also, not all feedback needs to be positive or negative. It can be just a simple indication saying the individual is on right track!

Giving / Receiving feedback isn’t easy. A lot of people don’t want to give feedback simply as they don’t want to confront each other, which could also be a probable start to the “Blame Game”. What we must understand is that we must be prepared to take the feedback in the right spirits! A lot of times we tend to believe that the person is giving negative feedback because “he doesn’t know enough”, or “she wants to me fail!”. That’s almost like moving towards the “Blind Spot” even further.  We must also learn to give feedback effectively – making sure that the other person understands the right intent behind it. If you make it sound like a complain, defensive behavior is inevitable.

The concept of feedback doesn’t apply only within the important areas of work. It can be in smaller things also. The more you give feedback, the more improvement you will see in things around. What changes would you like in a report, appreciating the new HR initiative, telling the R&D team about how the new toothpaste flavour has turned out and what could have made it better, little feedbacks can make your life easy. It’s also about leaving a comment on this blog and saying if it is in the right direction.The same is applicable even in your personal life. It’s there in telling your driver how well he drives and saves so much of your time. It’s there in asking your spouse whether he / she would like to change something about you.

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

* Johari window is a great psychological tool used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. This blog  addresses only the top right hand corner of the box.