In a survey of communication problems across 34 Engineering and IT projects the following five categories accounted for practically all of the communication breakdowns and confusions that affected project delivery schedules or costs. Do any of these sound familiar from your experience?
- Assurances Problems
- Meanings of Goals Poorly Defined
- Hidden Information
- Micro Management / Under Feedback
- Why don’t they care like I do?
In the last post we addressed internal miscommunications that lead to over zealous, “control-freak” management, and overly-loose management strategies that prevent people from getting the information that they need to become really good their work quality.
Now we turn to the number one most common, avoidable communication error that causes projects to derail, creates costly rework, and negatively impacts careers. That is…
Number 1: Discounting Diversity
By this we don’t mean whether a person is of a particular race, or nationality, or gender. While that type of diversity may be important, the variety of ways of thinking and behaving that causes the most trouble for engineering projects comes from much simpler differences than culture or gender.
Practically every new leader makes the mistaken assumption that others are like them and therefore should think the way they do (or at least should value the same things they value). We call this the “most common error.”
Because of this assumption, we mistakenly believe communications have been clear, and we believe we have consensus on requirements, quality standards, timing, or costs, when in reality we do not. Our assumptions are usually founded upon ungrounded abstractions of language so each party thinks the other understands things their way, but invariably we don’t.
Unfortunately, this is typically not discovered until “declaration of completion” and “review for acceptance” when it can be quite costly and painful to fix.
Recommended Solutions: Team members, and leaders in particular, need to track what parts of understanding are fuzzy and still undefined, both for themselves, as well as for team members, customers, and stakeholders.
At the beginning of a project, it will often be the case that things will be poorly defined, but it’s necessary that a common understanding based in details that could be seen, heard, and felt (as if they were already tangible) unfold before stakeholder expectations become set. Checking for shared understanding by asking other people to explain what they understand is one useful skill team leaders can learn to facilitate tracking of ambiguity. But first you must develop the habit of monitoring how fuzzy your understanding currently is.
Think for a moment about some goal, project requirement, or target that your team is responsible for. If you had to describe it so that another person could paint an accurate picture of that goal from your description, could you do it? If not, is their someone on your team who could describe the desired outcome at that level of detail? Are you sure that that is the same image that your customer, client, or the downstream team that will receive your work products, has in mind? If not, then it is very likely you will generate a result which others will disagree with later.
As a project progresses new information typically is generated that refines your understandings. The art of human engineering management is to keep tabs on all of the committed objectives along with the level of fidelity of their definitions as well as the customer’s understanding and expectation of those “requirements.”
The Meta-Model Challenge Questions are another tool that can help leaders to specify the details of any communication, refine the fidelity of requirements representations, and remove the confusions while ferreting out details that are distorted or missing.
This is a set of 5 distinctions you can learn to listen for in your own, or in other people’s, communications that indicate what data is missing, deleted, distorted, or overly generalized. Each trigger distinction is paired with a specific question that, when asked, recovers the missing or distorted particulars so you can fill in the details and build a rich enough shared representation of what is being communicated to be successful.
If you are committed to growing your leadership skills and avoiding these sorts of communication breakdowns, we can help. We teach the details of the Meta-Model Challenge Questions procedure as part of our Authentic Leadership Transition course. Like any new behavioral skill, you have to practice to make it a fluid part of your repertoire of interpersonal strategies, but through exercises these interpersonal techniques will come as naturally to you as the engineering skills you learned in school and in your technical career.
We specialize in working with new leaders and project managers who have risen from the role of individual contributor in technical, science, or engineering careers to become a leader in your organization. Because we also rose from an engineering background, we can show you the tools that make great engineers and scientists into great leaders. Why should you have to reinvent the wheel?
These are skills like intentionally building rapport, negotiation for commitments, appropriate assessment, grounded interactions, and communication that guides other’s experience. Skills like these were less important when you an individual contributor, but they become paramount when you want to become the best leader that you can be.
If you are serious about mastering the skills of leadership, let us show you the way. Give us a call at +1-512-507-5464. We provide trainings, individual coaching, and facilitate customized team workshops that will make you successful in your new role. But we would love to have a conversation with you about your specific needs and organize or suggest a program of learning to meet your particular requirements.
