Leadership Skills | Guy Harris: The Recovering Engineer

Archive for Leadership Skills – Page 2

Nov
14

Five Questions to Make Sure that You Understand Others Correctly

by Guy Harris

Have you ever taken an action – either immediately or at some later time – based on what you heard someone say only to find out after you acted (or spoke) that you did not accurately understand their statement or request?

So far, everyone I have asked this question in a face-to-face conversation answers pretty much the same way. In effect, they all say: “Yes, of course I have.” And, the truth is, so have I.

As the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, said:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

The illusion that you accurately understand another person’s intended message based solely on your interpretation of his words, tone and body language is a trap that can hinder your desire to become a truly remarkable communicator. You certainly have an interpretation of what he intended to say, and you never really know if you understand correctly until you confirm it with him. Confirming mutual understanding is the feedback loop often missing in situations that lead to misunderstanding and frustration.

When you develop the ability to check your own understanding of the messages you interpret from what another person says by consciously inserting a feedback loop, you improve the odds of effectively communicating with her. Well phrased confirmation questions can help you do this gracefully and with ease to improve the odds that you get positive replies rather than snarky comebacks.

Here are five ways you can phrase a confirmation question:

“Let me say back to you what I think you just said, so that I can be sure I understood you correctly…”
“Please correct me if I am wrong. I understood you to say ________. Is that correct?”
“If I hear you correctly, you are saying _____________. Is that right?”
“I hear you saying ____________. Is that right?”
“It sounds to me like you feel/think ____________. Did I understand you correctly?”

If you look closely at each question, you will see a common thought: if a miscommunication happened, it’s my problem and not the other person’s.

You can probably find other ways to express the same idea, and I encourage you to do so. You do not want to say the same thing over and over again in the same conversation to the point that you sound like an inauthentic automaton.

This list is a good place to start your own list of confirmation questions. I suggest that you think of others to add to your communication toolkit so that you can have many of them to pull on when you find yourself in the middle of a high-stakes conversation.

If you have other ways of confirming that you understood correctly, please add them in the comments section below.

1 Categories : Communication Skills, Family Relationships, Leadership Skills, Resolving Conflict

Nov
10

Three Critical Factors to Consider Before You Choose a Communication Technique

by Guy Harris

Before you start looking for the right communication technique or words to use to convey an idea, you must consider three critical factors. They are not complicated. They are important. Failure to include them in your thinking, could lead to a failed communication.

Proper consideration of these three factors coupled with understanding the underlying principles of communication and conflict resolution will lead you to successful, powerful, and effective communications.

The general principles, concepts, and mindsets of effective communication are simple to say. In fact, they pretty much reduce to:

Assume the other person has benign intent until you definitely learn otherwise.
Communicate in ways that do not project a threat to the other person.
Make it easy for the other person to receive your message.
Close the loop on your communications to make sure you understood correctly and that the other person understood you correctly.

This list is probably not inclusive of every key communication principle. It does include the basic, underlying ideas for most of the techniques and approaches that I teach in workshops, help coaching clients to implement, and that I work to apply in my personal life. They are simple enough to express, and they are often difficult to apply.

Application becomes difficult because of the three critical factors I mentioned above. The foundational principles and core ideas combined with the three factors accounts for the wide range of possible communication strategies you could apply in a given situation.

The three factors are:

Your Message

In many cases, this is the first factor that most people consider, and they often consider it only from their perspective. If stated out loud, most people’s thinking would probably sound like this: “Here’s what I want to say.”

In reality, your message has two parts:

The message you are attempting to deliver, and
The message that the other person receives.

The second part of your message – the other person’s perception of it – is at least as important as the message you intend to deliver. As you choose your approach, make sure you consider both sides of the message.

Your understanding and consideration of the next two factors significantly influences how the other person receives your communication.

Your Relationship

The nature of your relationship with the other person must figure in your thinking as you communicate with him or her. While the general principles remain the same, the specific strategy for communicating with your supervisor is different from the strategy you would use with your colleagues or with people who report to you.

If there is a power mismatch between you and the other person, it could increase the perception of threat felt by either party. Keep this in mind as you plan your communications. If you are the “superior” party, you might have to work a little harder to take any subtly implied threat out of your communications. If you are in the “subordinate” position, you might hear threats that are not intended.

The Context

Where are you during the communication? Is it spoken or written, on the phone or face-to-face, one-on-one or in a group setting? Each of these situations – contexts – calls for a different consideration as you choose your communication tactics and techniques.

The bottom-line is this: if you are looking for silver-bullet, one-size-fits-all communication strategies – look no further. You will not find them.

Work on building your communication tool kit, develop and practice multiple approaches and phrases to use in different situations and with different people, and learn to read situations so that you can choose the best communication tool for the job. Do these things well, and you will become a remarkable communicator.

As you look for the right tool for the job in various situations, remember the three critical factors to improve your odds of success.

4 Categories : Communication Skills, Family Relationships, Leadership Skills, Resolving Conflict

Aug
28

One Way to Head Off a Conflict: Manage Expectations

by Guy Harris

A little over a week ago, my wife and I drove our daughter from Indiana to Texas to begin her freshman year of college. On the return trip, we drove through Oklahoma. As is common this time of year, we encountered road construction marked with a sign similar to the one above, and I felt frustrated as I thought about the coming delay.

We then saw another sign with additional information. The sign with additional information gave us an estimate of both the actual speed and the estimated time in minutes that we could expect to drive through the construction zone, and I felt relieved.

The actual speed was much slower than the posted speed. The estimated time we would drive in the construction zone was longer than I wanted to experience. The delay was the same, and, still, I felt relieved.

At that moment I gained a powerful insight into heading off conflicts before they start.

As I wrote previously about why your natural response to conflict is probably wrong and how conflicts escalate, we often feel angry or frustrated as conflicts get started — just as I felt frustrated when I first saw the construction signs.

In my driving situation, the frustration dissipated when I got further information. The speed I could drive and the time I would likely spend in the construction zone did not change. The delay I would face did not change. Nothing about my experience would change.

The change in my frustration level came from knowledge about what to expect. And that is the insight I had about heading off conflict.

When you communicate clearly about what people can expect in the future — even when they do not like what they will experience — you will probably reduce the frustration and anger levels they feel as a result of the experience. By reducing their frustration and anger levels, you can reduce the emotional energy that they bring to their interactions with you about the issue in question. When you reduce the emotional energy, you reduce the risk that the communication will escalate to a destructive conflict.

4 Categories : Conflict Resolution Tips, Leadership Skills, Resolving Conflict

Jul
27

Employee Motivation: Compliance or Commitment?

by Guy Harris

Whether you are trying to resolve a conflict, coach an employee, or correct your child’s behavior; you have to wrestle with your real goals. You have to ask yourself, “Do I want compliance or commitment?”

Many people might say, “As long as they do what I asked them to do, I don’t really care whether people are compliant or committed.”

I would say that if you want one-time action and results in a situation where you do not have to continue working or living with the other person, then compliance is fine. After all, in a one-time event, you don’t really care about the long-term impact on the relationship.

If, however, you are in a relationship with someone, either personally or professionally, I would say that compliance is bad goal.

In Why We Do What We Do, Edward Deci argues that compliance is really silent retaliation. I agree.

Deci’s comments remind me of the story of a young boy who insisted on standing up in class. After the teacher spoke with his mother, his mother made it clear that he would experience severely negative consequences if he got in trouble with his teacher again on this issue. The next day, as he sat in his seat, his teacher said something to him about how nicely he was sitting. He replied, “I’m sitting on the outside, but I’m standing on the inside!”

With compliance, we can get apparent cooperation and bare minimum performance while we are with people. With commitment, we get cooperation even when we are not present, and we create the possibility that the other person will work with extra, discretionary effort to get even better results.

The issue of striving for commitment over compliance is one that I sometimes struggle with as I work with others, and I believe that in most cases making the effort to connect and communicate in respectful ways to build commitment is far better than applying strong negative consequences with the hope of gaining compliance.

3 Categories : Leadership Skills, Parenting

Jul
8

Conflict Prevention: Just Fix the Problem

by Guy Harris

I am not always “on my game.” Teaching conflict resolution, problem solving, interaction dynamics, and leadership skills does not make me perfect at applying them. It does make me aware, and that awareness helps me to correct my thinking more quickly. It also makes me work on practicing the skills so that I keep getting better.

And still, I have moments of insight about myself, my thinking, and my conflict approaches that are new. I’ll share a recent insight with you that I hope also helps you. First, two quick scenarios to frame the insight:

Scenario Number One:

A few days ago, a colleague of mine received a request from a customer to address a challenge, and she did not have all of the information necessary to fix the problem. As she sought information to solve the customer’s problem, she contacted a third person who she thought would have the information and authority to correct it, and she got, from her perspective, no real assistance.

Out of frustration and near desperation, she called me to see if I could offer any insights or perspective that could help her to address the customer’s issue.

As we talked through the scenario and the various techniques she could use to move the situation towards resolution, I had what my father calls “a blinding flash of the obvious”:

I could fix the problem for her!

Scenario Number Two:

I received an email from a person who had some challenges accessing information at the Bud to Boss Community for leaders. This is the community that Kevin Eikenberry, my co-author, friend and colleague, and I launched to support readers of our book, From Bud to Boss. I really like tech stuff, like building websites, so I take care of many technical details related to that community.

As I was composing the email to let the person know how to fix her problem, I had another blinding flash of the obvious:

I could fix the problem for her!

In both cases, I entered the situation with a “Here’s the information you can use to fix your own problem” mindset. In both cases, moving to a “How can I fix this for you?” approach lead to quick resolution, clearer communication, and less conflict as I took a few immediate actions to correct the problems.

There are many situations — in coaching, parenting, and performance management for example — when the approach I started with is a better long-term answer. And, there are many situations where this approach can lead to further conflict because it fails to address the real frustration felt by the other person. Most situations have a bit of both the need for an immediate fix and some coaching about how to avoid or correct the problem in the future.

The first scenario fell in the category of having elements of both quick fix and long-term solution thinking. The second one only needed an immediate fix.

Both scenarios illustrate two key concepts to remember if you want to head-off conflicts before they start:

1. Beware of using your strengths to excess

I am logical, analytical, and relatively patient. I am good at collecting information, analyzing it, and recommending solutions to problems. I like to help other people solve their own problems so that I can equip them to better handle similar situations in the future.

That same strength, carried to excess, can sometimes stop me from taking immediate action to solve the problem and move on.

2. Ask yourself better questions

In both situations, I was initially thinking “How can I help them fix their problem?”

Somewhere in the middle of both interactions, I shifted to “How can I fix their problem for them?”

The first question probably relates to the first point I made about my strength carried to excess, and it reveals a subtle flaw in my thinking. While I wasn’t consciously thinking this way, I now realize that the first question carries a bit of “How can I avoid getting involved so that they will go away and leave me alone?” thinking in it.

The second question is a deeper level of personal responsibility than the first. It implies personal involvement and action rather than detached analysis and suggestion.

Here are the questions I ask you to consider as you work to apply the lessons from my insights about myself:

Where are you using your strengths to excess so that they become a source of conflict rather than a resolution for conflict?, and
How can you rephrase the questions that you ask yourself so that you become an active problem solver before conflicts escalate?