3
COMMUNICATION
Share Mission, Vision, and Ideas

Effective communication sets profitable, productive organizations apart from the duds. It can take many forms, but the factors that work best are plain talk, honesty, and cooperation. Your communication must be simple and straightforward, especially when conveying the organization’s mission to employees.

In some cases, particularly when you’re working with other leaders, you also have to know how to butt heads politely and cautiously. You want to sell your ideas to give an advantage not only to your team but also to the organization as a whole.

CONVEYING YOUR MISSION CLEARLY

If you can’t effectively communicate the organization’s mission and your expectations from the very beginning, you’ll get nowhere. Study the art of getting it right the first time, which boils down to communicating with the people involved in whatever project you’re working on in the way they best understand. It’s impossible to be either effective or efficient if your team doesn’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place.

Generally, humans like to talk more than they like to listen. In daily life, this causes enough problems; in the workplace, it can result in a loss of time and money. Here’s an example of a minor miscommunication that turned into a major issue:

A technical writer explains to his editor that the client wants to use a variant spelling for a specific word on a report’s cover. Ignoring the request, the editor changes that word to the more accepted spelling. The report goes to the printer and four hundred copies come back perfect-bound. The client rejects the report because of the spelling of that one word on the cover. The company that prepared the report not only has to deal with the embarrassment of facing (or losing) the client, but also with the unexpected cost of reprinting the documents.

Who deserves the most blame here? The editor—for not listening. She should have clarified, repeating back to the writer what she thought she heard him say. And the writer—for not making his point more clearly. He should have followed up with the editor, in writing as well as verbally, instead of assuming she had listened to and understood his instructions.

Right from the Word “Go”

You can’t afford to have your words misinterpreted, lest your organization suffer. To ensure your team members do their work correctly the first time, communicate your expectations clearly and concisely. Follow these three rules:

1 REPEATEDLY COMMUNICATE YOUR EXPECTATIONS. Keep your mission in front of your team. Repeat your goals until you’re blue in the face—you can’t overcommunicate, and you won’t insult people with repetition. You don’t always have to communicate your expectations verbally or in writing; lead by example, too. If you need your people to work longer hours to meet a sales quota or push through a rough patch, arrive early and leave late. Express confidence in their abilities and support them in every way possible. Modern leaders are visionaries and facilitators whose lucid vision makes their goals well known and clear to all.

2 TRIPLE CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING. Rechecking is especially important when you can’t reverse an action, which is why medical teams that prep surgeries clearly mark the body part to be removed or operated on. It’s also why demolition crews repeatedly check the address of the building they’re supposed to take down. Sadly, both types of operations have gone appallingly wrong in the past. For example, in 2013, one Fort Worth, Texas, demolition crew demolished the wrong buildings two days in a row. Apparently, their code enforcement officer failed in both communications.⁴

3 COMMUNICATE IN MULTIPLE WAYS. Keep individual communication styles in mind. Some people understand your needs better when you express them verbally; others do better with written instructions. I recommend using both. New initiatives deserve team meetings, followed up by emailed summaries. If you head a larger group, you won’t be able to take everyone’s background and capabilities into account. But even so, make sure your managers know what you need and can communicate it effectively.

At John Hancock Investments, “One of the most important ways we avoid communications breakdowns is through structured communication on a scheduled basis,” says Senior Vice President Darren Smith. “These scheduled interactions … also lead to greatly increased efficiency, since items of importance can often be grouped together and addressed during scheduled intervals, instead of being a source of constant interruption to all parties.”

Trust, but Verify

Effective communication is more art than science, but either way, it requires practice, diligence, and follow-up. Trust your team members to do their jobs, but make sure they understand what they should do and why. Otherwise, you might demolish the wrong “building” in your organization, and then you’ll have some serious explaining to do.

PROMOTING YOUR VISION

Clear communication is important in all directions, upward and laterally as well as downward. You’ll have to learn to argue effectively and productively with others at or above your responsibility level—because no matter how good-natured people are, if you bring any two together, they’ll eventually find something to disagree about.

People who rise to a management level are often competent and strong willed, so you might find yourself at odds with another peer leader or with your own superior. When you’re at loggerheads with someone for any reason, you’ll want to find the most efficient way to resolve the issue quickly. That way, you can move forward with the business at hand.

I’m not talking about minor opinions that don’t matter in the long run. If your team argues about tiny issues, you have bigger problems to work out. No, I mean important issues that can affect your productivity. For example, it could be deciding whether or not to dismiss someone or to submit a negative performance evaluation you disagree with, or how to change a company brand.

Here’s how you can argue your point productively, so everyone can move quickly through the dispute phase and get back to work.

1 GET ALL YOUR DUCKS IN A ROW. Prepare your arguments, and have your facts straight. Probe them for weaknesses, so you can strengthen your position. Run your thoughts by neutral people and ask them to shoot holes in your argument. You may find your position fails when other factors are brought up, or your view simply has less merit than someone else’s. If this proves to be the case, admit your mind has been changed and bow out gracefully.

2 DISAGREE EARLY, CLEARLY, AND POLITELY. Remain open to others’ points, but make your position clear. Be simple, to the point, and specific about your concerns. If a newly mandated process won’t work, explain why, and back your argument up. Once you make others aware of the problem, they can update their requirements to match reality. Don’t dispute an argument in general terms; always use specific examples to refute it.

Just as importantly, keep your disagreement clean. Don’t use sarcasm or name-calling. Never talk about people behind their backs. These behaviors will rebound on you, solidifying a decision against you and damaging team solidarity. Losing your temper can ruin your reputation and hurt your career if the wrong person witnesses or learns of it.

3 CONSIDER THE OPPOSING ARGUMENT. Others in a dispute may have several good points, in which case you can integrate those points into your decision-making process and hammer out a compromise. If you don’t understand their reasoning, have them explain it to you. They may have an explanation that, when presented logically, will help you understand their position more fully, so then you can give your wholehearted support.

4 KEEP THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION OPEN. You can’t work something out if you won’t talk to one another. Jump on the phone or meet face-to-face instead of sending a volley of email. Present your arguments, listen to the other side, and then decide what to do and how to clear a productive pathway to your goals.

If you’ve made your argument, but the decision goes against you anyway, grab an oar and start rowing. True leaders can disagree behind closed doors, but when they emerge, they must present a united front. Whether they agreed or not, everyone must accept ownership of a decision in which they participated.

COHESION: FORMING A UNITED FRONT AROUND IDEAS

Sometimes head-butting results from your attempts to promote a new idea, strategy, or beneficial expenditure. In this type of case, you have to tune up your effective persuasion skills to sell the idea, which requires a different approach to disagreement.

From Paper to Reality

Every innovation—from the fishhook to the Space Shuttle—started with an intangible idea. In business, new ideas help us improve everything from work processes to our product lines. We depend on innovation to survive. But innovation won’t get you anywhere if you can’t communicate it widely.

Those who operate businesses aren’t always open to new ideas. As we discussed in chapter 2, they may prefer to stick with what they know, rather than take a chance on something unproven. There may come a time when one of your team’s carefully nurtured ideas has matured into something truly useful. Now you just have to get it past the defenses of the people whose failure to support it may result in its death. Depending on the organization, those people may consider dozens of ideas a month, or rarely hear any at all. Either way, they can stymie your initiative, so know the answer to this question: what makes your idea different enough to be heard?

Cautionary Tales

You don’t hear much about the ideas upper management shoots down. When no one cares enough for an idea to fight for it successfully, that may be a sign it’s either flawed or ahead of its time. But there are also lots of examples of ideas whose time had come, but that stalled (at least temporarily) because of bad judgment. Take Western Union’s decision not to buy the patent for the telephone in 1876, citing it as an “electric toy.” That toy spawned an entire trillion-dollar business.

To keep your big idea from getting the brush-off, start by outlining the implementation process ahead of time. When I was on the board of directors for the National Speakers Association, certain board members had a habit of asking about the implementation plan before approving a proposal. Imagine that! They wanted to know an idea’s originators had thought through the next steps and were ready to spring into action. The board wasn’t impressed with half-baked ideas and hazy answers—they wanted to know proposers knew what they were doing.

Then do your homework, so you can answer any question a skeptical manager or board member may ask. How will your idea impact the organization? How much will it earn the company, above and beyond its cost?

To be sure you’ve worked out all the angles, pitch your idea to a trusted but critical colleague first and ask that person to tear holes in it. If the holes can’t be fixed, drop it. Then, when you do pitch the idea, reveal the win right away. Don’t bury your conclusions in a mountain of data or glib assurances. Start with your most important point: why and how this idea can profit the organization. Once you have your audience’s attention, then you can outline the details and explain how you plan to implement it.

You can take a page from the marketing department’s play-book while preparing for this process, using these two important strategies:

First, address the objections. Any good salesperson will tell you that to sell something, you have to be able to address all the objections the buyer has. List every objection you might expect someone to make, prepare detailed rebuttals, and memorize them. When the objections arise, you’ve either sent answers in advance in an FAQ sheet, or you’ll be able to address concerns to everyone’s satisfaction.

Second, list the benefits. Once you’ve dealt with the objections, show everyone why your idea profits them in particular and the organization in general. List the benefits in descending order of importance, vividly illustrate their value, and show they’re obtainable with a modicum of effort.

World Changers

One idea can change the world. Planes, trains, and automobiles are all good examples. At the very least, your idea can change your organization. But it won’t go anywhere unless you know how to present it to those in power—and fight for it through the worst of their criticism.

Your idea may not make it, but who knows? You may end up the world’s next Sergey Brin or Steve Jobs. Don’t give up on an idea until it’s truly dead. Even then, you may be able to resurrect it later as technology and society advance.