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 learned about two questions that can help you get various stakeholders to shared consensus about goals. If you have actually practiced them you probably are beginning to recognize how to improve the quality of information between team members, suppliers, and customers.
In this post we will dive deeper into hidden information and how people’s personal egos sometimes create issues that can spiral out of control. Now we look at what happens when you don’t have the lay of all the land and are building your map from scratch.
Number 3. Unclear Starting Point
Sometimes people may be unclear or “in denial” about the “current state” they are starting from. They don’t like to admit it, of course. But it is not uncommon for teams that have been working together for some time to have topics they have tacitly agreed NOT to talk about. Often this takes the form of, “If you won’t point out these vulnerabilities, I won’t mention your flaws.”
This means that during the analysis and requirements phase of any project, it is important to politely but firmly dig deep into the assumptions that are not necessarily being put on the table, while simultaneously being sensitive to the need for parties to save face.
Recommended Solutions: Use deep rapport and observation skills to make sure people feel comfortable when asking questions about these ego sensitive topics. Also, it can help to ask these questions in private or at least with sensitivity to who might lose face. This is crucial. If you embarrass some team member it will be difficult to regain rapport, trust, and cooperation with them.
Listening for Universal words like “Always” and “Never,” and phrases that imply “...this is just the way we do (or always have done) it around here,” are easy cues that should be gently challenged. Words like “can’t,” “don’t,” “must” and “have to” also are cues that imply rules or standards are at work that may not be explicitly in shared understanding.
Sensitively asking a question like,
- “I’m curious, what is the underlying intention behind that rule?” or
- “I’m confused, what would be the consequence if we decided we need to change that standard?,”
often provides an inroad to understanding the hidden agenda or missing data that tend to derail results at a later point in a project.
If you don’t already have great people skills in sensitive situations like these, you can learn more about Rapport and Observation Skills from Technical Leadership Skills course – Authentic Leadership Transition.
Also, notice that at the beginning of these two additional questions there are short phrases like “I’m curious,” and “I’m confused” that are placed there because they tend to make the question that follows sound softer. In fact, we call these types of phrases, “softeners.” You don’t want to come off as challenging the other person’s ego, so use these softener before questions so that you don’t sound like you are interrogating them. Other softener phrases might include: “I am wondering…” and “could you tell me please…”
If you will add these two questions to the two you learned last time and find a way to practice them you will be rewarded when the come naturally to you at the time that you most need them.
Next time, in Part 4 of this series, we will explore how the leadership errors of over and under managing often arises out of the communication problem of not distinguishing cleanly between “processes” and “things.” Once you get the hang of applying this idea appropriately you will be able to fit your leadership style to match the needs of your staff and peers (and even management).
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