Hello all,
How we communicate is one of the most important things we can do as partners, friends, employees and leaders. Not communicating effectively leads to challenges in productivity and relationships.
For instance, my husband and I were talking about parental duties as we ramp up the nanny share, where we will be alternating houses with the other baby’s family. We decided that my husband would “do drop-off” in the mornings and I would “pick-up” everyday. On our first day, the nanny was coming to our house at 8:30am, I said goodbye to go for a run around 7:30 am, and my husband said he needed to go to work. Who was going to stay with the baby until the nanny arrived?
Unbeknownst to us, we had two different conversations around these expectations. We regrouped.
In order to avoid miscommunication, try these steps:
- Identify the problem statement. What is it that you’re solving for? If we’re looking at the baby example, one of us thought we were talking about morning and afternoon duties. The other thought we were talking about physically dropping the baby off and picking her up at the other house. Sometimes you’ll find there are lots of problem statements: get specific to avoid confusion.
- What are you going to do about it? Decide a clear path moving forward that everyone can agree to. This may take some negotiation and navigating conflict. In the case of the baby, we have to negotiate work time, exercise/personal time, and meal duties.
- What are the roles: Identify who is executing and what they need to know. Once we’ve identified our nanny schedule, then we identify exactly what each person is in charge of during that time.
- When will it be done? Get a deadline in place that everyone agrees to. Had we talked about deadline, we would have quickly realized that we were talking about two different things, and would have gone back to step #1.
A couple hints about how you communicate:
- Don’t let miscommunication get you down. It happens to all of us! Get curious, regroup, and move on.
- Find ways to communicate effectively and often. Systems are important.
NEW Offering
I recently became a partner in the Five Behaviors assessment and facilitation program. This work, done either personally or as part of a team, is a great way to assess how you approach and succeed (or fail) in trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results. If you haven’t read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team yet, please do so you understand why this learning is important among leaders. Let me know if you’d like to learn more!
Happy fall, y’all!
-Corinne