Chapter 7
THE CONFUSING CONUNDRUM OF COMMUNICATION
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
—George Bernard Shaw
On a sunny day in August 1964, the S. S. Rotterdam set sail from the Netherlands to New York harbor. On board was my mother, Gilberte. She was going on what she thought was a vacation. She had no idea that she would arrive in America, meet my father, begin a family, and never return to live in her home country of Belgium.
In preparation for her trip, as a native French speaker, she'd been sharpening her English-language skills. With nearly 1,500 passengers on board, she had plenty of opportunities to practice. One evening, as the sun was beginning to set across the water, she sat on the promenade deck, learning about New York City from three of her newly made American friends. With dinner being served in about an hour, Gilberte knew she still needed to shower and change into proper dining attire. As she stood up to say goodbye, she turned to her new friend, Emily, and said, “I will kiss you many times in the French way.”
Emily stiffened and her face turned white. After a moment of shock, and some confusion on everyone's part, someone stepped in to interpret. For a French speaking–Belgian like my mother, “the French way” meant bises—little pecks on the cheeks, which is a customary way to say good-bye. Emily thought that “the French way” meant French kissing.
In other words, Emily thought my mom had just announced she was about to kiss her and slip her the tongue. This story, now a family classic, is exactly what's meant by “lost in translation.”
If you're serious about becoming a better leader, become a better communicator. Hart Research Associates found that 93% of employers consider good communication skills more important than a college graduate's major.1
Communication—personal and organizational—is essential to leadership success. There are thousands of books and articles on the subject. Yet, miscommunications and missed communications abound.
In this chapter, you'll learn why being an effective communicator is so much harder than it looks and how the default settings of the human communication system have built-in flaws. You'll also learn three of the biggest obstacles to communicating well, so you can spot and avoid them in the future.
Sometimes, a little miscommunication is no big deal. The results are comical, and (like my mother's trip on the Rotterdam) become the stuff of family legend. Other times, however, the results can be disastrous.
CATASTROPHIC COMMUNICATION
In 2002, a General Motors (GM) engineer was tasked with designing the ignition systems for the Chevy Cobalt and Pontiac G5. The resulting ignition switch was below GM's own quality specifications. In numerous instances, when the vehicles were in motion, the substandard switch would suddenly shut off the engines in the midst of driving, as well as shut down the air bag safety system.
A safety recall was issued by GM—but not until 2014, over 11 years later. In the interim, the faulty ignitions had caused numerous accidents and were responsible (as documented by GM itself) for 124 deaths. How could such a danger be allowed to persist for so long? Why wasn't the problem caught sooner?
GM's internal records show that the ignition issue surfaced as early as 2005. Yet, as the investigative report to GM's board of directors states, “Group after group and committee after committee within GM that reviewed the issue failed to take action or acted too slowly.”2
The issue was killing their customers—literally. Yet the company did nothing. How could this happen? Was it a case of collective organizational insanity? Why did they fail to act?
The awful truth boils down to a choice of words: customer convenience.
When the ignition issues were noticed early on, the internal GM people had to classify the problem by its severity. Thinking it was only a minor flaw, they labeled it as “customer convenience”: the category reserved for something believed to be merely a bother for some drivers. Because of this first misdiagnosis, later GM experts and leaders reviewing the case didn't grasp the urgency and severity of the ignition switch issue.
Had the issue been communicated as a “safety defect,” GM leadership would have jumped into action. Safety defect is the industry's way to flag a significant risk, one requiring immediate response. According to the report, “cost considerations…would have been immaterial had the problem been properly categorized in the first instance.”3
Two words. It's horrible to think that choosing one pair of words—customer convenience—over another—safety defect—could lead to such tragic consequences. Had the second two words been chosen, 124 deaths could have been prevented. General Motors would have also avoided paying out $1.5 billion in fines and compensation.
As this story vividly shows, communication is no mere abstract concept. It is the most powerful leadership tool you have. Treat it as such. Depending on how well you use it, it will greatly expand or diminish your influence.
It doesn't take a human fatality to show the negative impact that poor communication can bring to a workplace. There's an epidemic of shoddy communication happening and its effects are far reaching. Consider these findings:
- A survey in HR magazine reports that of 4,000 employees, 46% said they routinely received confusing or unclear directions, and 36% of these employees reported it happening up to three times a day. Participants estimated they wasted about 40 minutes of productivity every day trying to interpret unclear or confusing directions.4
- U.S. hospitals waste more than $12 billion annually as a result of communication inefficiency among care providers.5
- A study by leadership consultancy Fierce, Inc. found that 86% of employees cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communications as the main source of workplace failures.6
Why is there such a prevalence of poor communication?
Communication is taken for granted. It's generally assumed that it's happening. After all, we have mouths that talk and ears that hear, fingers that type, and eyes that read. Assuming all these parts are in working condition, the default is to assume that we're able-bodied and able communicators. How could we be bad at something so natural? We've been doing it, in one form or another, for our whole lives.
As such, we treat communication like a basic utility. Just like the electricity in your home, it's expected that it will just be there for you when you turn it on. The process is routine. In fact, it's so routine that you only pay attention to it when it doesn't work and you're left in the dark. Not until the outage do you notice you have a real problem to fix.
Yet, although communication appears to be a utility, it's not so basic. Electricity is binary. It only offers two options: the light works when it's on and doesn't work when it's off.
Communication is a lot more complicated. Just because it's “on” doesn't guarantee that it's “working.” What's heard isn't always what's said. And what's said can be different from what's meant. And sometimes, silence sends a louder message than words could ever convey.
Most leaders don't suffer from a lack of communication quantity. There's lots of communication going on. What's missing is quality. There's a shortage of effective communication.
The best leaders don't take effective communication for granted; they strive to continually improve their abilities. They know that the nature of transferring meaning from one person to another is rife with challenges. They accept obstacles as part and parcel of the process. They just happen to know what those obstacles will be in advance, so they can proactively deal with them.
OBSTACLES TO COMMUNICATING WELL
Even with the best of intentions, communication can easily go off the rails. In part, this is by design: the human communication system comes preloaded with major bugs. The nature of the communication process contains three major obstacles: lack of alignment, lack of shared context, and overload.
Lack of Alignment
In the game of horseshoes, the goal is quite simple. It's to throw a “ringer”: that is, to get your horseshoe around a metal stake. Getting one ringer takes some work. Getting three ringers in a row is a lot harder. Effective communication is the equivalent of landing three ringers in a row.
The rings represent what you, the sender of information, mean, what you say, and what the receiver hears (see Figure 7.1).
Figure 7.1 The Three Rings of Effective Communication
For the communication to be “perfect,” all three rings have to land on top of each other, in complete alignment. In other words, what you mean is exactly what you say, which is exactly what I hear.
That happens about as often as a blue moon.
Why does this occur so rarely? It's because most senders make a giant mistake: they assume that what they mean is what gets heard: “Of course my meaning is blatantly clear to everyone.”
Senders are confident that their intended meaning is obvious because, for them, no effort is required to make sense of the meaning. The meaning doesn't have to travel anywhere. What senders mean is crystal clear—in their own minds. They're the primary source, with zero degrees of separation. It's as if they're playing the game of telephone with themselves.
Even I—and I teach these pitfalls and know to watch out for them—am not immune. I fell into the trap of a “but it's crystal clear in my own mind!” situation recently.
My family has two longtime friends, Pam and Charlie, who came to stay with us for the weekend. They live in Washington, DC, and drove up to visit us at our home in western Massachusetts.
Our house has a driveway that allows one car to pull in from the street and then widens so that two cars can park side by side at the end. We're a two-car family, so when friends drive over, they need to park their car in the driveway behind our two cars, essentially blocking us in. It's not a big deal. We're used to it, and if we have to leave, we just do a little bit of car juggling so we can get out.
Anyway, on this particular weekend, when Pam and Charlie were visiting, I needed to leave for the airport. Because Pam's car was parked behind mine, I asked her to move her car.
She asked me, “Where do you want me to park my car?”
I replied (as I always would in this situation), “Park your car in front of the house.”
Pam paused. She looked at me funny. She said, “You want me to park where?”
I repeated, “Park your car in front of the house.”
She paused again, and gave me an even stranger look. “You're telling me you want me to park my car in front of the house.”
I started to feel annoyed. I'd already repeated myself twice and it looked like I'd have to say it again. “Yes, Pam, park your car in front of the house.”
Pam then publicly declared to the kitchen, as though there were not four, but 40 people assembled there, “Alright. I'm going to park my car in front of the house.”
And off she went.
I went out to my car, put my suitcase in the trunk, and then got in on the driver's side. I turned the ignition and put the car in reverse.
As I slowly backed down the driveway, I cautiously looked around, careful not to bump into anything or anyone. And then something startled me, snapping my attention to the right. What was that?
Then I realized what happened. Pam had parked her car.
In front of the house.
As in, directly in front of the house.
As in, on top of the flowerbeds right in front of the house. Flowerbeds that were now crushed under Pam's wheels.
In my mind, “In front of the house” meant on the curb of the street in front of the house. Wasn't that obvious? What else could I have possibly meant? How could Pam have not understood what I was saying?
Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as a projection bias, when you unconsciously assume that others share your current thoughts and feelings. Because you're you, you automatically get an all-access pass into your own brain, with all the behind-the-scenes information. In your mind, what you mean is patently obvious. In fact, it's so obvious that for anyone else to doubt how obvious it is can be a source of irritation. After all, what else could you possibly mean?
However, this bias tricks you into thinking others have the same thoughts that you do. What's clear to you, however, is fuzzy for everyone else. No one else is given that same all-access view of your brain, up close and personal. They're stuck trying to make sense of what they're seeing from a seat in the rear mezzanine. Although they don't see it the way you see it, your bias convinces you that they do. Your brain's default setting mistakenly assumes that your subjective point of view is objective reality.
If you know that, as humans, we're wired for misunderstanding, you have a leg up on most other people. You don't need to look too far to watch people fall into this cognitive trap on a regular basis. People in workplaces are repeatedly astonished that what they say isn't what gets understood. You'll hear them say things such as these:
- “I sent the email. They should know what to do.”
- “What's the problem? Why can't they just talk to the customer and sort things out?”
- “Senior management doesn't have a clue about what things are really like for us. Why don't they realize how stupid this new process is?”
In fact, anytime you hear someone start a sentence with “They should…” or “Don't they realize…” or “Why can't they…” the projection bias has reared its ugly head. And if it's you who does this on a regular basis, stop. It's time to give up your office romance with incredulity.
Leaders who deny that projection bias exists operate with faulty assumptions. The authors Clarke and Crossland call these “the four fatal assumptions of leaders.”7
The Four Fatal Assumptions of Leaders
- Constituents understand.
- They care.
- They agree.
- They will take appropriate action.
I once harbored these four fatal assumptions—and paid for it, as you might recall from Chapter 1 when I lost an election to my colleague, Gary. I had assumed that the people I worked with knew what had to happen and would just get out and vote for me. I was wrong.
When communicating, you need to work with what is, rather than what you think it should be. There's no use in denying the fact that your intended meaning will change when it's received by others. It just will. To try to deny this is to deny biology.
Lack of alignment happens when what you mean is not what you say and/or what gets heard. It is the most common and most pervasive of all the obstacles to effective communication.
Lack of Shared Context
The next challenge to effective communication results from how your message is framed. Your message is precisely that: yours. You own it, and it lives in your head. In that brain of yours, you automatically construct four walls around the message. You know what it means, and even more critically, you understand why the information is important.
Communication is your attempt to transfer this information to others. In fact, this is how the dictionary defines communication: the transfer of information. In a static, theoretical world, this definition works just fine.
But that's not how the real world works. The minds of those you lead aren't empty vessels just hoping and waiting to be filled by your message and your wisdom.
Recently, I moderated a leadership town hall for a large pharmaceutical company. Seated on stage next to me was the CEO, Isaac. I was there to facilitate an interactive session between Isaac and his audience of 300 executives. Isaac would open by explaining the company's business strategy, and we'd end with a live question-and-answer session.
Isaac's an animated guy, and his overall knowledge of the business is brilliant. But there was a major problem: his comments were convoluted. He jumped into details without giving a rationale. There was no context to what he was saying. Random thoughts sprang out of other random thoughts. People had no sense of how anything he said mattered to them.
Looking out on the audience, I could see people nodding off and tuning out. In fact, while Isaac was rambling, I felt my own eyes drifting shut—and I was on the stage next to him! Isaac was working hard, but his information was indigestible to everyone else. It wasn't until after the town hall that I was able to offer Isaac feedback and coaching to help him clarify and structure his thinking better.
Your audience, whether it's made up of one person or 300, needs a lot more than the what. They also need to know the when, where, how, and especially the why. Why should they listen to you? Why does what you have to say matter? What do they need to do differently because of what you have to say?
Lack of context sets your communication adrift. It's no accident that 59% of U.S. workers say that wasteful meetings are the biggest hindrance to productivity.8 So many of these meetings lack proper context. As a result, information flows in one ear and out the other. People feel lost, and they don't know what to do next. Confusion goes up and engagement goes down.
Overload
A few years ago, I attended a large leadership conference. With more than 2,000 people in attendance and the event spanning multiple days, there were both large plenary and small breakout sessions. After lunch on day 2, I went into a breakout workshop titled, “Leading the Next Generation of Workers.” The topic intrigued me.
As I sat down, I saw that the presenter was still preparing for his session. His PowerPoint was on the screen but not yet in slideshow mode. Suddenly, Judith, the woman seated next to me, whispered in my ear.
Do you see that? I'm leaving now while I still have the chance.
I was confused. I asked her what she was talking about.
Look at his slide deck. This is scheduled to be a 60-minute session. He's got 136 slides. I don't think I can take it!
Judith got up and walked out of the room.
Judith's feeling probably feels familiar to you. People at work are suffering from information overload. Consider that every second there are more than
- 8,030 tweets
- 66,855 Google searches
- 73,741 YouTube videos viewed
- 2,689,607 emails sent9
People have plenty of other messages competing for their precious brain cells. They're not going to focus on you just because you want them to. People don't want more information—they want insight.
Too many mediocre leaders think of other people as empty vessels to be filled. As such, they ascribe to a more-is-better philosophy when it comes to sharing information. More is not better.
Herman Ebbinghaus, a 19th-century German psychologist, did pioneering research into the science of forgetting. Since his initial work, there's been controversy over the exact percentages of how much content our minds retain. However, one thing is agreed on: forgetting increases over time. Your message will dilute with each passing hour, day, and week.
The solution is not to try to cram more in. Instead, great communicators use the idea of “teach less, learn more.” To get others to retain more of your message, your message needs to be simpler and clearer.
Lack of alignment, lack of context, and information overload aren't going anywhere. They will continue to trip up leaders for the rest of time. They're hard-wired into our human operating system. But, to use an IT metaphor, you don't have to live with this default configuration. There are hacks for this system. These hacks—specific practices to increase your communication quality and speed—are simple and easy to use. When you apply them, they'll take your communication—and your leadership—to a whole new level. You'll learn these practices in the next chapter.