At a local event I was speaking with a person who was
having troubles with finding a common ground for communication with their
business counterpart. She explained to me that while the business would tell
them in their own words what they want but her team could never seem to deliver
on what was asked.
She went on to explain that her team went to what they
believed to be great lengths to improve on the delivery of service and be a
better partner but they seemed to continually miss the mark.
I explained to her that degrees of communication are like
Europe. She had a bewildered look on her face, so I thought in the spirit of
communication I had better explain.
Some years ago I took a trip to the continent and did a
fair bit of backpacking. Before I left I planned which countries I would visit
and since this was before the advent of smart phones and apps I didn’t want to
carry translation dictionaries for every language so I put down the top phrases
for some and none for others.
Greece was one of the farthest gaps I experienced, while
at most places people spoke English, the places in off the beaten path places
was in Cyrillic. Which left me totally lost or at the mercy of others. In other
words there were significant communication challenges.
In France I found that while my French was lacking I had
a better handle on communication since I had some background on the language. Aside
from understanding many of the words in the printed form, I was also able to
pick out enough keywords from the quickest speaking Frenchman to put things
together.
In England one would assume that I would have no
challenges whatsoever since English was my principal language. If you have ever
conversed with an Englishman you would know that not all English is the same.
This might be the best indication of where business and providers are seeing
this level of communication breakdown.
Here are some tips to improve on your communication
skills
Ask
questions
There are no stupid questions, but if you don’t get the
information you want that there could have been smarter questions you could
have asked. Leverage the 5 W’s and get an answer that has a comprehensive
explanation rather than a one or two word answer. Take the information that you
are given and ask the person in your words just to ensure that you have hit the
mark. This will improve you comprehension of the information that you are
given.
Face
to Face
Like many of the places I visited I was in a way better
position to understand what was going on because I was speaking directly. I
found that if I had to speak with someone on the phone the lack of engagement
and ability to see their body language would generally end up with me booking a
night in the worst hostel in town.
Listen
don’t talk
Some people feel the need to finish off another person’s
sentence as a way for them to understand (or believe to understand) what is
being explained to them. In many cases the most important detail of what they
are explaining will come to the end and by speaking for them we over-write the
most important details on our own assumption.
In the end you need to wrap all of this together to get
the big picture. Some information has been shared with you. You gathered all
the details from the business and then validated the information with the
business in your words to ensure that you understood what they said and then
had them confirm that you understand. The trick is to continue the dialog
regularly to ensure that you continually stay on target for the communication
process
