IT Resource Center The Changing IT Landscape

Mastery of Communication Skills Generate High Career Returns

February 1, 2002

IT Professionals often consider technical skills to be the key overwhelming component of professional success. In the Surrex article published December 14, 2001, "Leadership Skills are critical to IT Professionals," we discussed the importance of leadership. In the Surrex article published January 18, 2002, "Be prepared to Objectively Evaluate and Communicate Your Productivity," we discuss why IT professionals must be prepared to openly communicate the efficiencies you bring to the table. This article is a discussion of communication skills as critical components of leadership and productivity. While technical skills are very important to the IT professional, communication skills are playing an increasingly vital role.

A recent EDITORIAL by Tim Van Slambrouck, at MindWalk Consulting, LLC moves us down the path of becoming an effective communicator:

In all the writing on leadership mastery, a common element always listed is the ability to communicate well. Whether it be communicating the vision, mission, strategy or tactics, the ability to do this well is largely agreed upon. Yet improving communication as a whole is a very large undertaking. What is the area of communication, if worked upon, that leads to the greatest results most quickly?

In our opinion, the skill that is most quickly and easily leveraged in your business is the conversation in which a request is made. The large majority of our conversations during the workday are those in which the objective is to get someone to do something, or in which someone is asking us to do something.

While this is the most frequent type of conversation, it is rarely the most effective. In fact, mastery of this one communication skill will have higher returns than almost any other. So our purpose in discussing these conversations is to quickly give you a way to assess your effectiveness and that of those around you, as well as to give you several immediately applicable ways to increase your effectiveness in this arena of communication.

If you have ever said to yourself, frustrated, "I cannot believe that he didn't do that yet," or, confused, "I never said I would do that." Or if you have heard others in your organization say, "We continually discuss those things in our meetings, but nothing ever gets done." These are examples of the breakdown in communication we will address here, and it is the same breakdown, an ineffective request.

To make an effective request, several conditions need to be present:

1) a clear request
2) a clear understanding of the request
3) agreement on the outcome, both what and when.

This sounds quite simple until we analyze the actual conversations we are in. Very often the first criterion is broken, immediately resulting in a breakdown, but that breakdown does not become evident until much later. For example, Alisha, sales manager, stops by the office of one of her salespeople, Jake. During her conversation with Jake about their last meeting with a large prospective client, she says, "It's going to be really important for us to get in to see Jim, before they make their final decision next week. We really need Jim to see how much we support their success." Jakes agrees with her assessment and nods enthusiastically. What do you think happens next? Note your own expectation of the outcome at this point.

As you can guess, this conversation is potentially doomed; if either of them believes that a request has been made and agreed to. Let's look at it through the elements of an effective request.

A Clear Request

This may seem to be obvious that two people who are speaking to each other would know whether or not a request is being made. But that does not hold up when one or the other is not clear about the nature of their conversation. Let's look at the example.

Alisha and Jake are both in the room, speaking with each other, but it is unclear whether either, neither, or both think a request is being made. Perhaps Alisha believes she has made a request for Jake to contact Jim. Or perhaps, Jake believes Alisha has made a commitment on her part to contact Jim. Or maybe, Jake believes Alisha will get another of their colleagues, who has a personal relationship with Jim, to contact Jim. Or perhaps, neither of them is expecting any action, and Alisha was just thinking out loud. This is how lack of clarity that a request is even being made can lead to very different expectations. What was your expectation of what was going to happen?

Your expectation, based on that snippet of conversation, may lead you to the typical breakdowns in your organization. Because organizational culture influences communications, an interesting phenomenon to observe, is whether or not the same conversation breakdown is taking place in multiple conversations in your organization?

Some of the questions we could ask here are:

Do both Alisha and Jake know that a request is being made?
Who is making the request? Of whom?

Solutions to this breakdown:

A very direct solution to this lack of clarity would be for the person making the request to say just that, "I would like to make a request." In this case, who is making the request, and the fact that a request is being made, is now quite clear.

A Clear Understanding of the Request

Since we don't know if or what request might even have been made in Alisha and Jake's conversation; it becomes less likely that the request is understood. But here is where a great many conversations go wrong. The person asking believes that, because a request was made that one was understood. This is often not the case. You can observe this happening when you have the experience of expecting that something was going to get done a certain way and it didn't. When you inquire, the other person has no idea "that's what you meant."

Questions to consider is this type breakdown:

Was the person requesting action clear in their own mind what they expect to happen?
Was there a clear request being made?
Do both people understand the request?
How do we know?

Many times we think what we have said is crystal clear (it may be), and based upon that, we believe the person of whom we are asking something is clear on what we mean (they may or may not be). Our clarity does not indicate whether someone else is clear. Only by them telling us what they intend to do, are we then able to assess whether or not we are "on the same page." This may seem like a lot of back and forth to come up with a simple request for action, but the absence of this precision is what gets many of us into situations that are frustrating.

Solutions to this breakdown:

Make sure you are clear what your request is. Clearly articulate that request. Find out what the other person has heard. Use questions and answers until both of you agree that the request is understood.

Agreement on the Outcome

The final place where breakdowns occur is the specific way in which the request will be fulfilled and the timing of that fulfillment. After all the work you have done to get to the clarity for both parties, forgoing this last element of a request can easily happen. An extremely simple example of this is a request to "have that report to me on Thursday." For some of us that means, "before I get to my desk on Thursday," for others it means, "sometime on Thursday," and for others it means "end of the business day Thursday." When two of us with different meanings agree to a request, it is highly possible one of us will be disappointed, if not downright outraged.

Another subtlety of this request is the form by which the report is delivered. I may favor E-mail, while you favor hard copy or even a bound, formally presented report. See how more and more variables enter into the reality of whether we have really agreed on the what and when of the outcome?

Questions to consider in this type breakdown:

What is actually going to happen and by when?
Do I have preferences about timing and format that have been communicated?
Do I know something about the other person's preferences?

As we get to know the preferences and customs of those in our organizations, it becomes easier to navigate these differences. However, in making sure that we are making agreements that we can keep, it may be worthwhile to become more aware of our and other's preferences. One way to do this is, in each conversation that results in an outcome slightly different than what we may have wanted, learn what preferences led to the outcome. This requires checking in with the other on whether or not the outcome was to each person's satisfaction. Also, asking if the outcome could have been "better if".

Solutions to getting agreement:

Be very specific about your request, what constitutes being complete, and when (considering what you really mean by when). Discuss what the other person is really going to do. Consider what might happen if your request cannot be fulfilled on time or to your satisfaction. What contingencies might you want in place? Do you want advance notice if a commitment cannot be met? Do you want an alternate plan available if the first outcome cannot be achieved?

These are just some ideas for where to begin. The easiest way to begin, is if you have been frustrated in any way by not having a request fulfilled, use this model to check where might the process have gone wrong. Then design the next series of conversations to see if you cannot improve your outcomes. Do this first in your own conversations. Then check out whether or not your organization's culture is fostering a certain type of breakdown. Analyze that and determine where you might be able to intervene. Experiment and keep in mind your efforts will make your conversations more effective. Good luck!

Tim Van Slambrouck
MindWalk Consulting LLC...
Helping organizations and individuals live their potential

Copyright © 2001, all rights reserved. Please feel free to copy or distribute along with this copyright notice and information about contacting the author(s). The authors are: Donna Fowler and Tim Van Slambrouck, Mindwalk Consulting, LLC. Visit their website at www.Mindwalk.net, or contact them at Central OR Office: (541) 549-6634, Northern CA Office: (650) 344-4144.