The KUPMC Blog

The following is reposted from the blog The Inspired Teacher. She offers some insights about the challenges of listening and speaking–even when we mean well.

I went to a conference recently. The first speaker was from the state department of education and I was ready to listen; in fact, I did listen, but I could not follow her remarks. Why? I simply could not understand what she was saying.

In her first sentence, she used two unfamiliar acronyms. While I paused to decode the first one, I missed several words which followed. The second acronym was completely new to me, so when she said it, I could not understand it all. Thus, in spite of a wide vocabulary, I could not grasp the meaning of her sentence.

The same problem continued throughout her remarks. I spent more time wondering if I had decoded the acronyms than I did absorbing her advice and information. As you can imagine, I was annoyed and frustrated. But suddenly I saw it as a learning experience: I was feeling the same sensations that students feel when they don’t understand the vocabulary or references that I use in the classroom.

In a related incident, I was the speaker at a staff meeting. After I presented an involved list of steps for meeting the goals in the school improvement plan, one of the teachers said, “I would really appreciate a list, so I could keep track of all these things.”

“She already told us we would get one!” said one of his colleagues impatiently, at the very moment that I held up the checklists I was ready to hand out. I paused to talk about his knowledge gap.

“You know, Justin’s comment brings up a common issue,” I said. “He has been here, and he looked pretty attentive, but he still missed, or didn’t remember, that detail. Everyone misses things. It’s human to miss things. Whenever our attention wanders for just a second, we lose a detail or an idea. It’s important to remember that when we talk to the young people in our classes. They will have the same gaps and not because of bad intentions.”

In both cases it was as if the listener was looking at a scene through a window with stickers all over it. He/she missed meaning because parts of the whole picture were obscured by blockages, whether of understanding or attention.

Add these two issues together and you get what I call the Swiss Cheese Syndrome.

Listeners are highly likely to have holes—big and small—in their comprehension of our words, just as Swiss cheese is normally full of holes. We are wise to expect gaps and do what we can to fix them, rather than let the situation make us angry or discouraged.

What can we do?

First, be aware. We have to stop assuming that if we know a given word ourselves, then everyone knows it. We can plan in advance to include simple words in explanations and descriptions. Generally, the more syllables the word has, the more likely for it to be unknown to someone. In addition, content vocabulary and scientific words must be explicitly taught, and then reviewed and used–up to a dozen times for full comprehension by all students.

Second, check constantly. Ask for a student to restate a point. Be sure to call on those average learners, not just those whose hands are usually waving. It is too easy to assume that if one person in the class knows something, then the whole class knows it. Direct your learners to summarize for an “elbow partner.”
Have each student write a summary as a “ticket out the door.” The methods are numerous once we recognize the importance of using them.

Most of all, remember that when you feel like moaning “but I TOLD them that,” it is pretty likely that some of the students are thinking, “I never heard her say THAT.” Just take a deep breath, know that it is the Swiss Cheese Syndrome in action, and try again.

The Green Tape Doctor

The Green Tape Doctor is Leisha DeHart-Davis, an associate professor in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration. She conducts research on effective organizational rules, which she refers to as “green tape.” Feel free to email her with your questions on creating effective rules for public sector organizations (lddavis@ku.edu).

Is It Time To Write a Rule?

I once interviewed a public manager who told me, “I decide to write a rule when I’m becoming stressed from people coming into my office with the same issue or problem.”

The manager’s comment suggests that rules can solve workplace problems. But when to write a rule is sometimes unclear: on the one hand, managers need administrative capacity to empower action. On the other hand, they do not want excessive bureaucracy in their workplaces.

How do you know when a written rule is needed? Here are three questions to ask:

** What is the worst that will happen if you do not write a rule? Answering this question is a good way to figure out whether a workplace issue is important enough to write a rule. If the worst-case scenario is likely and imposes unacceptable costs on organizational integrity or operational effectiveness, then a written rule may be in order.

** Are you clear on rule objectives? Written rules are well-suited to clear objectives. Even general objectives – reduced personal Internet usage or increased employee professionalism – greatly simplify rule-writing and help focus the rule on what you are trying to accomplish.

** What is causing the issue? Written rules are like the practice of medicine: prescribing the remedy requires diagnosing the ailment. Take time to investigate the causes of a workplace issue before formulating the rule. If the issue pertains to depleted sick leave, talk to employees to find out what’s going on. Written rules are more effective when designed with root causes in mind.

If the worst-case scenario is unacceptable and if you have clear rule objectives and a good grasp on root causes, then your workplace problem is a good candidate for a written rule.

Is there a workplace issue that you solved using a written rule?  What was it?

When the Green Tape Doctor returns to our blog, look for advice on creating logical rules.

In an interview in the New York Times, Peggy Klaus, author of The Hard Truth About Soft Skills, was asked “What exactly are soft skills and why should we be worried about them?”

She replied that “the hard skills are the technical expertise you need to get the job done. The soft skills are really everything else — competencies that go from self-awareness to one’s attitude to managing one’s career to handling critics, not taking things personally, taking risks, getting along with people and many, many more.”

Basically, soft skills are those that enable you to put your technical skills productively to work.

Can you resolve a conflict with a co-worker about a work plan or about cubicle distractions? Can you sell the value of your approach to your boss and teammates? Can you write an email that gets the results you need? Can you challenge someone’s idea in a productive rather than destructive way?

Then celebrate and thank your soft skills. And as you mentally make note of everyone you work with whose lack of soft skills makes them unpleasant–or even unbearable–to work with, the pivotal role of soft skills in the workplace becomes very visible. Without the soft skills to support the technical abilities of a staff, projects simply don’t get very far. Even the US Department of Labor sees soft skills as “the competitive edge.”

This is a hugely important lesson that most of us have learned the hard way as we struggle to work with those who make everyone around them miserable. But having learned this lesson, make it work for you: make sure your hiring processes are designed to measure soft skills as well as hard skills.

There are some terrific web resources to help you do this. The Soft Skills blog offers questions divided by skill area to ask about. And if you’ve ever heard of or used behavioral-based interviewing, the focus is on soft skills. Here’s one good explanation and resource. And here’s another.

Meanwhile, don’t pass up any opportunities to improve your own soft skills. They’ll be key to moving into the next job you desire, and in the interim your co-workers will thank you for it.

I noticed a trend in the course materials I’ve been creating and revising lately. No matter what the main topic, I found that somewhere in the handouts I noted that the skill wasn’t just about improving or mastering a series of tasks or honing a new ability. Rather, it was also about building and maintaining relationships.

So in the business writing handouts, for example, I highlighted that it’s worth taking the time to compose clear emails with a relevant subject line, that stick to a single message and note what, if anything, is needed from the reader in return and by when. The most immediate reason for this is that it wastes less of everyone’s time: the recipient doesn’t have to wade through unnecessary information and/or you don’t have to send a follow up asking for information that you didn’t give a due date for, for example.

But the more important issue is that business communication is about relationships. It’s worth paying attention to who, in your inbox, always starts their messages with a salutation and returning the favor–even if this isn’t your standard practice. Creating documents and writing presentations that acknowledge the humanity of those who will receive them reaffirms that we are more than the sum of what’s on our task lists.

And the business etiquette handouts likewise center the issue of relationships, building on a comment by Emily Post about the profound misunderstanding most of us have about what etiquette is. It’s not about putting on airs: it’s about how our behavior touches one another whenever our paths cross–that is, relationships.

Valuing what’s human in each other certainly has a payoff in productivity. If we’ve built relationships with our co-workers and colleagues we know who to turn to for guidance on particular issues or who to call to make sure an important piece of paperwork makes it to the top of the pile.

But I hope it’s more than that. It’s also about enhancing the time we spend at work and about making sure we get and give the encouragement we all need to have days filled with as many activities as possible that speak to our hearts as well as our minds.

So be efficient, but not to the point of being brusque and negatively impacting a relationship (thanks to Paul for commenting on this in a recent post!).

And be chatty and personable, but not to the point of frustrating your partner in the conversation who may have some important work to do.

Does remembering that it’s about the relationship as much as accomplishing the task at hand cause you to rethink you’re approach to anyone or anything in your work environment?

In planning the curriculum for the business writing class I teach, I reviewed George Searles’s text, Workplace Communication: The Basics, a book that I found to be very readable and very helpful.

Searles offers many terrific lessons and a great deal of succinct advice. But there was one “aha!” tidbit in particular that I found to be profoundly important for those who represent the public sector in their communication. That tidbit was the idea of reader-centered phrasing in one’s writing–that is, phrasing that focuses on the reader’s interests and knowledge rather than the writer’s.

For example, a listing of office policies and contact information may indicate that “We don’t take phone calls after 3pm on Wednesdays.” With reader-centered rephrasing, this becomes “You may reach us by phone until 3pm on Wednesdays.”

Where the first statement is likely to elicit a frustrated sigh and perhaps a knowing statement made to a friend about the expected work ethic in a government office, the second is unlikely to even give the reader pause.

It’s amazing the difference a few words can make, isn’t it?

Compare: “We cannot process your claim because you did not submit the required forms,” with “We will process your claim as soon as we receive the required forms.”

If this latter statement also includes a second sentence listing what those required forms are, so much the better. Perhaps this information was shared in a previous communication, but when it takes only 20 seconds of your time to list itagain, you gain that much additional goodwill from the reader. Just imagine yourself as the recipient and you can see the difference it makes.

Heaven knows that goodwill from citizens toward government offices is something it would behoove us to cultivate any chance we get.

Now, it’s one thing to resolve to use this sort of reader-centered phrasing as we go forward responding to inquiries, applications, and the like. But what about all those templates you use to streamline your communications: the files you open, change the name of the recipient, update the date, and send to print? What about all those form letters used by your colleagues?

I invite you to pull out one of the letter or email templates you’ll be using in the next week and review it for any opportunities to revamp the sentences to be more reader-centered. Then share any changes you made in the comments below!

In a post today on the Harvard Business Review blog, Marshall Goldsmith makes this very important point:

“People have less time today, which means the value of that time has increased. Leaders who waste their workers’ time are not looked upon favorably.”

I’d simply add that this applies to co-workers as well. If you make an effort to be sure that you’re using your portion of the meeting time and presentation time well, your colleagues and staff will notice and appreciate it.

The challenge, of course, is asking ourselves which details are truly relevant to the situation at hand. We’d love it if others were interested in the full back story and all of the supporting reasons for our decisions.

But in practice, we get antsy and impatient when others share more information than we need. We need to get in the habit of remembering this when we’re doing the sharing.

What can you do to make sure you aren’t eating away at others’ time and patience when you have information to share?

The current fiscal crisis has created a lot of challenges in the workplace. But this brings with it a lot of opportunity for innovation.

Have an idea to streamline a process? You’ll likely find a pretty receptive audience.

So make the most of that by writing up your proposal with clarity. Save your readers the time of wading through the clutter of unnecessary words, and let your idea shine. Own it.

Addressing this issue in his always insightful blog, business writing guru Kenneth W. Davis suggested recently that we try “kicking the props away” in our writing and offers this gem from Patricia T. O’Connor and Stewart Kellerman and their book about online writing:

“Some puffed-up writers use long words, techie talk, trendy terms, and convoluted sentences to cover up or deceive or sound important or go along with the crowd. Most people who inflate their writing, though, are simply insecure, often for no good reason. They don’t feel their ideas are strong enough, and they prop them up with elaborate language.

If your ideas are any good, they can stand on their own. So kick away those unnecessary props. All they do is turn a strong writer into a wuss.”

Read more of Davis’s weekly nuggets of wisdom on his Manage Your Writing blog.

The popularity of Stephen M.R. Covey’s 2008 book, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything, suggests that there’s an inherent recognition of how central trust is to pretty much everything else in our personal and professional lives.

At the most recent session of the Emerging Leaders Academy, PMC director Charles Jones spent time with the participants talking about what he foresees for the future of the public sector. His presentation focused on three issues: efficiency, adaptation, and trust.

It all goes better, Charles noted, when there is trust.

Stephen M.R. Covey agrees, offering this communication example at the beginning of his book: “In a high trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing and people will still get your meaning. In a low-trust relationship, you can be very measured, even precise, and they’ll still misinterpret you.”

So how do we build trust? The circular answer is, of course, by being trustworthy. But what does this look like? Here’s the list that Charles shared:

• Tell the truth. If you can’t, explain why. Small lies kill trust.
• Keep promises. Promise less and deliver more.
• Admit mistakes; and say you’re sorry
• Trust others. To be trusted, you must first trust others.
• Don’t micromanage, use rules to empower vs. distrust.
• Hire and promote integrity.
• Walk the talk.
• Respect the ideas of others.
• Say “no” clearly when you have to, but explain.

So easy, and yet so challenging. What would you add to this list? What examples do you have of how trust really matters or how the things on this list really do build trust?

A strange disconnect seems to exist between how we see email when we’re the writer and how we see it when we’re the reader.

As readers, most of us are impatient. We’ve got a hundred other things to do with any moment of our time so we want things to be, as a professor friend likes to say, concise and precise. Opening an email, we are unconsciously thinking: Give me the relevant–and only the relevant–information, get to the point, tell me if something’s expected of me, and stop.

But most of us, and I certainly include myself in this, seem to forget our experiences as readers as soon as we step into the writing role. When it’s our information about our project, we want to make sure we include all the details to make as strong a case as possible for whatever we’re sharing and whatever we need.

The trouble is, our main point can get lost in all those details. Our readers find themselves needing to invest extra effort in finding the heart of the matter because we didn’t clearly highlight it for them with the written equivalent of a flashing neon sign. They may or may not make the investment.

And because it’s so clear to us what we’re asking for from people, we may not notice when we leave out a clear statement of expectations, request, or assignment complete with specific requirements and due date.

It’s a similar experience to what we may have experienced after asking our spouse to put dinner in the oven. It’s so obvious to us that this dish should be covered that we may not think to say so–only to arrive home to a dryer-than-intended meal and a spouse who assumed that if it needed to be covered we would have said so.

Before getting frustrated with others for not doing what we believe we asked them to, it’s probably worth taking a look at our written request to assess whether the information about the request and the deadline was clearly outlined. Sometimes it will have been. But other times not.

It might become easier to leave out some of the details we see as so important when we remember that leaving them out may mean that the recipient will actually read our message, while including the details may mean that the wordy email doesn’t get read at all.

What habits have you developed to make sure that the necessary information is included and the unnecessary details are not? Share your tricks in the comments below!

The new session of the Emerging Leaders Academy got off to a great start this week–well, at least from my perspective! I hope that the participants felt the same.

While much of the first day consisted of getting-to-know-one-another activities and discussions of what we all expect of the program, we also did our first skills session. The topic on the agenda? Communication skills. Specifically, listening.

Many people have a great deal of awareness about the importance of communication skills to workplace success. But if asked about what these skills include, most would note speaking and writing, the abilities that allow us to clearly and effectively communicate our messages, goals, and priorities.

What is often neglected in our thinking about communication skills is the piece that’s necessary in order for us to create a message others want to or need to hear in the first place.

Are our ears and our intentions open to hear what people are saying around us so that we can truly discern how we can contribute best to the projects in our organizations? Are we attuned to what our customers and clients want from us to make sure the products we offer truly serve the needs they have? This is especially important for those of us in government where we don’t have competitors offering our products and where citizens can feel frustrated when they don’t feel we’re doing our best to understand and meet their needs.

Among the many habits that get in the way of our listening is the practice of interrupting. In a recent post on her I’m Listening New website, Jill Chivers reflects on two well-intentioned types of interrupting, correcting and cheer leading, that I think nearly all of us do. She asks us to consider the effects of both of these and invites us to tune in to track our own habits of interruption to see how it affects conversations. Click here to read the full post.

What if you decided to listen more deliberately today? What would you learn? Try it and find out, and share your story in the comments below.