Communications - Being Understood

The famous line: "what we have here is a failure to communicate" elicits chuckles.  People recognise the experience these words describe. The words resonates with many people because the experience is very common. 

We've all had experiences of miscommunication.  You may recall colleagues who never let you finish a question -- they answer the question even before you have even gotten midway through your question.  Of course the answer you receive has no relation to the question you were intending to ask.

For a project manager, miscommunication is  a professional tragedy.  A project manager's job is constantly about communication.  He doesn't do the actual work.  He organises, orchestrates, informs, and instructs.  He uses communication to do these.  A project where the manager instructs the team to do something, and the team comes back with something else can be heading for trouble.   Miscommunication consumes time, energy, money,  increases tension, and decreases motivation in the workplace.

Dowling & Sayles says that for communication that instructs to be effective, it must meet a few criteria. 

First, the message itself must be understood.  Understanding is hard, it is easier to misunderstand.  To understand something is to get exactly what is meant. To misunderstand is to get something wrong, even a very little something.

One of the problems is words.  Words are never very precise.  Someone said that words are cups that people fill with the meaning they want.  Think of the words you often use in your projects: maximise, prioritise, quality, improve.  Do they mean the same thing to everyone?  These could all be understood in different ways.  When you come across communication that uses words that come loaded with meaning, make sure to explain in more detail what you mean by the word.

Managers should practice getting feedback about what they are communicating.  How do you know that what you said is what was heard? One way to get feedback is to ask the other party to restate what you just said.  This works for some people.  You can ask your staff to repeat what you said.  You can also practice it yourself, repeating what other people say to you, to help them ensure that you understood them correctly.  It is not as easy to ask your superiors or clients or some people to repeat back what you said.

Another way to check if they understood you is to ask questions about what you said, trying to get a hint of what they think you meant. 

Once your communication has been understood you have crossed one barrier.  There are two more to cross.

The next question is, yes they understood what you said, but did they believe you?