2. Getting Through: Responsibilities of the Sender

It was a gray and gloomy day when we pulled into the ski-area parking lot, and decided to sit a spell to see whether the sun might break through the clouds. As we waited, a carload of skiers pulled in next to us. Undeterred by the fact that the mountain had now vanished in the fog, they started unloading their gear. Idly watching them, I noticed that they had left their headlights on, and told one of them. The fellow nodded, but he didn’t turn out the lights.

Odd, I thought. Why did he ignore what I told him? Why wasn’t he paying attention? Why didn’t he listen to me?

A few minutes later, as group members prepared to set forth, they started speaking to each other—in sign language. Ahhhh! It wasn’t that they hadn’t listened. It was that they couldn’t hear. I pointed to their headlights. They got the message.

Both in our personal lives and in the workplace, most of us have, at times, felt that others weren’t listening to us. But by “not listening,” we generally don’t mean that they were unable to hear. Rather, we mean that we introduced a change, prescribed a standard, offered an idea, proposed a solution, or provided advice—and they didn’t do what we wanted them to do, or they did it wrong, or they did something else.

But perhaps it is our way of communicating that leads others to seem not to listen. A manager named Ken showed clear frustration not long ago when he asked me how to get his customers to recognize which products his help desk supports. Ken said his staff had designed a screen of information listing the supported products, yet customers continually asked for help with other tools.

“This product screen is the first thing customers see when they sign onto their PCs. They can’t miss it,” Ken explained. “They see it every single day, but they still ask for help with products we don’t support. How can we get through to them?” In other words, how can we get them to listen?

But was the problem really that customers weren’t listening? Certainly, that was a possibility, but other factors also could have contributed. Maybe the customers didn’t understand the screen, or maybe they did understand but resented having the standards unilaterally imposed. Or maybe they just didn’t see the point of the message since help-desk personnel continued to help them with the very products the screen claimed they didn’t support.

Ken’s reaction reflects a false assumption to which we all succumb at times: that a message sent is a message received. Ken assumed that because he had put forth some information—in this case, the product screen—his customers must have received, understood, and accepted it. When the customers suggested otherwise, he faulted them for not paying attention.

Everyday experience proves that merely sending a message provides no certainty that it will be received. Letters get mis-delivered, voices are drowned out, e-mail messages vaporize in Cyberfluff. But sometimes, the fault does lie with the sender. Therefore, before finding fault elsewhere, it’s wise to start by looking within. Ask yourself, “Am I communicating in a way that led the other party to appear not to be listening?”

This chapter describes ten types of messages that don’t get through as intended and details the actions you can take to increase the likelihood that they will.

1. Unnoticed messages

2. Misstated messages

3. Missed messages

4. Cluttered messages

5. Hidden messages

6. Off-putting messages

7. One-sided messages

8. Unexplained messages

9. Conflicting messages

10. Befuddling messages

When people face an information overload, their in-boxes are piled high with number-one priorities, and they need a speed-reading course just to get through their e-mail, conventional methods of getting their attention just won’t work. You must get their attention before you can hold their attention. One way to get and hold attention is through “stickiness.”

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explains the notion of stickiness, the component in a message that makes it so captivating that it “sticks” to the largest possible number of people. Discussing the difficulties of effective communication, Gladwell observes, “. . . the hard part of communication is often figuring out how to make sure a message doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. Stickiness means that a message makes an impact.”¹ Gladwell concludes that simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information can affect how memorable a message is and how much impact it has. Taking Gladwell’s concept one notch further, I’ve developed my own set of suggestions for increasing the stickiness of written and spoken messages, as elaborated in the paragraphs below.

¹ Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000), pp. 24–25.

² Paco Underhill, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).

³ Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (New York: The Free Press, 1991).

Notice the titles that intrigue you, and think about how you can create the same kind of intrigue in your material. Aim for titles that will grab people’s interest and pique their curiosity. For example, what about a proposal entitled “How to Benefit from Customer Complaints” or a set of guidelines entitled “Seven Surprisingly Simple Steps for Spectacularly Savvy Service”? Or, in Ken’s case, how about a product screen labeled “Products You’ll Love and the People Who Support Them”?

The same idea applies to e-mail messages. If you want your message to stand out, use a creative subject line: “A defect-tracking idea” is more likely to attract attention than “Hello.” Create subject lines that are meaningful; then, more recipients will notice your messages—and actually read them.

⁴ Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs (New York: Avon Books, 1984).

Consider how you might use provocative opening lines such as the following in your own reports, proposals, memos, and newsletters.

• If you think 2,000 calls per quarter to the Support Center is a lot, wait until you read what customers have accomplished as a result of our help.

• This set of guidelines about security procedures is for people who hate to read guidelines about security procedures.

• For everything you always wanted to know, but didn’t know who to ask (about the products we support, that is), call us!

One IT group added whimsical clip art to its new customer procedures. Customers, in contrast to their previous reactions to procedures, actually looked at the new, illustrated documents. And customers who look at new procedures are more likely to follow them than customers who don’t. Another group seeking customer approval decided to periodically telephone people in two “test” customer departments just to ask how things were going. Despite no other changes in service, the group found department personnel increasingly pleasant to work with.

To minimize risks, test your new approach before fully implementing it. For example:

• If you’d like to try presenting a two-day course as four half-day sessions, try out the new format with a longtime client who will give you honest feedback and observe how the change affects enrollment, energy levels, retention, and subsequent requests for support.

• If you think customer service could be improved by answering the phone differently, and your usual greeting is “Good morning, service desk,” answer every third call with “Service desk, how may I help you?” Observe whether the new wording affects how customers respond.

• Instead of printing all copies of your next survey on white paper, try printing half on bright yellow paper, and see whether people return more yellow copies than white copies.

If the tests have no impact, at least you haven’t invested much. And if a test backfires, such as by upsetting or confusing some customers, you can explain that it was only a test of a new method, and then simply return to your previous approach or to something that the customer would view more favorably.

Keep in mind, though, that these attention-getters aren’t worth much if the information itself is a snooze-inducer. So, steer away from using the passive voice, and rid yourself of the notion that business writing must be formal. A conversational, down-to-earth style will win you readers, especially if you write as if it’s you doing the writing, revealing your personality and viewpoint as well as technical content. Remember: Mind-numbingly idiosyncratic multisyllabic circumlocutions will impress people only for as long as it takes them to crumple your document and toss it. Obfuscate at your own risk.

I hasten to add that the satirist and cartoonist Scott Adams offers a somewhat different perspective about obfuscation. In The Dilbert Principle, Adams notes that a key to advancing in management is to substitute incomprehensible jargon for common words so as to convince other people of your intelligence. He writes, “. . . a manager would never say, ‘I used my fork to eat a potato.’ A manager would say, ‘I utilized a multi-tined tool to process a starch resource.’ The two sentences mean almost the same thing, but the second one is obviously from a smarter person.”⁵

⁵ Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions (New York: Harper-Business, 1996), p. 41.

Therefore, if you suspect your message is being ignored, start by questioning whether you yourself might be responsible. I learned this lesson the hard way. During a seminar for an IT group, my client asked that we take an early and short lunch break, so at 11:30, I told the group, “We’ll stop for lunch now, and resume in forty-five minutes.”

At 12:15, I was ready to continue, but where was everyone else? Ten minutes passed. Three people returned. I started thinking of the rest as The Stragglers. As more minutes passed and The Stragglers still didn’t return, I began to think of them very negatively; they were rude, irresponsible, disrespectful.

Finally at 12:40, my patience exhausted, I announced that we’d get started. “But it’s not time yet,” one fellow insisted. “You said we’d begin again at twelve forty-five.” The other two nodded in agreement.

“What? No way!” I exclaimed. I had said we’d resume in 45 minutes. I know I did. I’m absolutely positive.

At 12:45, the remaining class members filed back into the room. Every one of them. Somehow, they all had heard me say 12:45. I was forced to concede that maybe, just maybe, that’s what I had said. Despite good intentions, I meant one thing and said another.

Despite your best efforts, there will be times when you mean to say one thing but say another—and don’t realize it. This classroom experience taught me that if something seems at odds with what I intended or anticipated, I have to begin by asking: Could it be me? Could I have said or done something other than what I intended, which somehow accounts for my current situation? These are useful questions to ask before finding fault with others.

Person’s name—message—person’s name

That’s the message, from beginning to end. If people aren’t anticipating being paged, they might not hear it.

Even if you are certain you said what you meant to say, sending your message just once, or in only one way, may not ensure that it gets through. I remember speaking to a software developer who was angry that a faraway team member had failed to respond to her request for information. She said, “I sent him a message on Monday and he hasn’t answered. If I haven’t heard from him by Friday, I’ll call him.”

She was missing the point. If a message you send is truly important, then sending it just once, in only one way, probably is not enough. It’s also unwise to wait too long before sending it a second time, especially if you’ll spend that time grousing about not having gotten a response. If you want to be sure people get your message, send it again with a note saying “Just in case this didn’t reach you the first time . . .” Or follow the first message at intervals with a friendly reminder that you’re looking forward to a response.

Sometimes, a person will choose to send a message only once, hoping that it won’t get through. As Marie Benesh, an IT consultant, astutely observed, sometimes the sender’s real message reflects a kind of power trip (“I’m so important and I sent you my important message. Now it’s up to you to respond.”)⁶ But political manipulation is not a true communication issue and is therefore outside the scope of this book. I believe that most people are genuinely interested in having their message get through.

⁶ Marie Benesh, private communication. Benesh (www.mbenesh.com) is coeditor, with James Bullock and Gerald M. Weinberg, of Roundtable on Project Management: A SHAPE Forum Dialogue (New York: Dorset House Publishing, 2001).

This multi-message approach worked well when used by a project manager I consulted with some years ago. Engaged in a large software-development project, he had created a team within the larger project’s staff to handle a task that was new and unfamiliar. The team leader had written a description of the team’s role, and had sent it to the rest of the group, but the group’s requests to the newly created team made it clear that many group members did not fully understand the team’s role. Team members felt frustrated, but what they experienced was fairly typical. When a new and unfamiliar task is introduced, it’s unlikely that everyone will “get it” from a single explanation. The team needed to do more to ensure that its message got through.

Once team members were made aware of what the real communication problem was, they clarified their role in different ways, using several formats and channels. First, they issued a written, follow-up explanation to all group members, giving concrete examples of requests that were both within and outside their domain; second, they reiterated the scope of their responsibilities in e-mail to the other project members who sought their services; and, finally, they reinforced the message during face-to-face project meetings.

Similarly, Ken’s product screen might have benefited if he had used multiple formats, wordings, or channels to notify customers of product standards. Communication surely will be improved if you find out how your intended recipients prefer to have information sent to them. The better you can accommodate their preferences, the more likely it is that your message will be heard.

When thousand-foot falls (or the organizational equivalent) are not an imminent risk, such caution may be excessive. However, implementing a simple “ack” procedure is a wise policy. Some e-mail programs allow the sender to ask for a “notification of receipt.” Once the e-mail has been opened by the recipient, a message pops up, asking the reader to acknowledge receipt. A message is then automatically sent by the recipient’s e-mail client to the sender. Alternatively, if you send important information, and want to make sure it has been received, explicitly ask the recipient to confirm receipt. Or, create a project or team standard stating that people must automatically acknowledge the receipt of certain categories of e-mail. The relief of knowing that your message was received will more than outweigh the nuisance of the extra e-mail.

One reason for the silence was that the format-change request was on the second page of the letter, in a paragraph that included other information. Except for this request, the letter was identical to the ones sent in previous years to confirm the annual meeting. Is it any wonder recipients didn’t notice it?

Similarly, a project manager who had created a newsletter was puzzled when customers failed to notice the date of a key meeting described on page one. The problem was that the date was buried deep within the text of an article and printed in the same font as the surrounding text.

When reviewing documents from my clients and others, I frequently find that key information is buried within less essential material. In one noteworthy instance, details pertaining to network security were buried within a section on procedures for registering for training classes.

Simple techniques can help you ensure that critical information stands out, such as by using boldface or italics, an eyecatching font, a contrasting color, a bulleted excerpt, or a border around the key points. In the process of freeing your message from its cluttered surroundings, you might also find you’ll need to unclutter people’s minds. Consultant and prolific author Jerry Weinberg once told me that a reader suggested that he could communicate more clearly in his writing if he made his examples of inappropriate workplace behavior more distinct from his examples of appropriate behavior, such as by using different fonts. It seems that reader had trouble telling which were which.⁷

⁷ Gerald M. Weinberg, private communication.

To improve e-mail readability, keep each line reasonably short; my preference is around seventy-five characters per line. Divide the message into short paragraphs; they’re easier on the eye than paragraphs that extend from the top of the screen to the floor. Keep the message brief, focusing on one topic rather than many, if possible.

I confess that I offer this last recommendation strictly as a suggestion, since I’m a frequent offender. Nevertheless, the longer the message and the more topics covered, the less likely it is that anyone, even the most interested reader, will read it all the way through, let alone retain it.

If a long message cannot be avoided, try to place the most important information at the beginning. Newspaper reporters use what they describe as an inverted-pyramid approach to writing articles, putting the most important information in the opening paragraph. Each paragraph that follows is successively less important in conveying the essence of the story.⁸

⁸ The December 11, 2000, issue of Forbes quotes Lee Iacocca describing his experience as layout editor of his college newspaper (from his book Iacocca), “As the layout editor, I figured out pretty quickly that most people don’t read the stories. Instead, they rely on the headlines and subheads. That means that whoever writes those has a helluva lot of influence on people’s perception of the news.”

The inverted-pyramid approach accommodates a crucial reality—which is that most people read only the first few paragraphs of a newspaper story. Unfortunately, in composing e-mail messages, most people do not follow the wisdom of newspaper journalists, but instead use a related geometric approach that I whimsically think of as the inverted rectangle. No part of a message stands out as more important than any other. Meanwhile, people are lost in an infinity of messages, and I’ve yet to hear anyone shout “Hooray, another batch of interminable messages!” We could help ourselves and each other by applying the inverted pyramid format to our e-mail messages.

Emphasizing what’s important is necessary in spoken information as well. I discovered this fact while scuba diving. Since my husband and I were novices, Tom, our instructor, lectured us on what we needed to know. “To check your oxygen level, do this. If you feel pressure in your ears, do that. If your mask fills up with water . . .” Your mask fills up with water?

As we sped to the dive site in our motorboat, Tom warned us scuba-newbies about staying close to the bottom to avoid the turbulence caused by pockets of fresh water that can propel a diver toward the surface. He didn’t stress this point, however, or emphasize its importance, and I barely registered what he had said. When a pocket of turbulence suddenly propelled me to the surface, I got caught in a whirlpool and couldn’t catch my breath. Tom emerged quickly from the depths, rescued me, and said, “Now do you see what I mean by staying close to the bottom?” Oh!

When speaking, you can use the verbal equivalent of the visual indicators I listed previously, by saying something like, “The following points are particularly important.” Or you can use both visual and spoken signals, as e-business guru Paul Jacobson does in his technical training classes. When he presents a particularly important point, he waves a red flag.⁹ Is this technique silly? Yes—and it works! Humor can be wonderfully effective in helping people retain key points.

⁹ Paul Jacobson, private communication. Paul gives wonderful presentations on how to hold an audience’s or class’s attention. For additional information on his techniques, see the Information Systems Resource Group at www.isrg.com.

Have you ever tried to convey information that’s buried in clutter, and then wondered why your audience didn’t receive the message you intended? Review the way you communicate in both written and spoken form; you’re likely to find examples of cluttered messages.

But locating any particular sign appeared to me to be impossible; this smidgen of a store had posters, cardboard cutouts, grocery displays, lost-and-found notices, and discount offers attached to every shelf, taped to every wall, protruding up from the floor, and even suspended from the ceiling. And the only thing on the counter was my collection of groceries. Unless . . . I moved the groceries aside, and there, taped to the counter, was a sheet of crinkled blue paper on which someone had scribbled a tiny handwritten list of the credit cards accepted by the store.

Pop was correct; there was a “sign” on the counter. But it was positioned where few people would have thought to look, and it was in a form they might not have recognized even if they did. Pop assumed that since he knew where the information was, then the customers would know, too. If they didn’t, it must be their fault—or so his attitude implied. However, information is worthless if the intended recipients can’t easily locate it when they need it, or can’t see or hear it without strain.

I was a victim of this kind of unintentionally covert communication once at a hotel in which I was a registering guest. At check-in, the clerk told me that I had a message, and he handed me a sheet of paper. Fine, but where was the message? Then I noticed it in the upper-left corner in a light shade of depleted-cartridge gray:

Karten, Naomi
04-10-2002 14:39:31
From: Lee, Stacy
Pls talk to david hall while you’re in town about a class he wants

I considered ripping off the top corner of the sheet and returning the rest to the clerk to use in case messages arrived for other guests.

I encountered a similar example of a nearly hidden message when a client asked me to review a draft of his service level agreement. I provide this service for many organizations, but in this instance I had to say no. Why? My client’s company must have taken type-size lessons from the aforementioned hotel: I would have needed an industrial-strength magnifying glass to read the agreement. I told my client that if I couldn’t read it, it was unlikely that those whose support would be necessary to its success would be able to read it either. Resist the temptation to shrink important information. Unreadable documents don’t get read.

If your customers seem to ignore your message, you might want to make sure that they actually have seen it. One way or the other, you do need to get their attention.

The questions posed in Chapter 1 are good ones to review as we consider how we each can increase our personal effectiveness:

• What are you currently doing well?

• In what ways are you part of the problem?

• What can you do better or differently?

• What can you change immediately, and what will take time?

• What commitments are you willing to make?

That’s exactly the attitude I heard when I listened to a client’s telephone support staff as representatives assisted callers with technical problems. In diagnosing a caller’s problem, one support rep asked that oh-so-common question: “Have you changed anything?”

The caller gave that oh-so-common response: “No.”

The discussion that followed led the support rep to realize that the caller had, in fact, changed some settings.

The rep’s comment? “Oh, so you did make a change.”

The rep didn’t say, “You stupid customer! I suspected it all along! You said you didn’t, but actually you did!” Unfortunately, though, her voice communicated this message, nevertheless.

“Attitude” is one of those words whose very use suggests a negative connotation. If we talk about someone’s positive attitude, we’re likely to describe the way in which it’s positive: We say that it’s an agreeable attitude, or an enthusiastic attitude, or a service-oriented attitude. When we simply say that someone “has an attitude,” however, we usually mean an offensive, arrogant, or displeasing attitude. Do you communicate with an attitude? How you say something is at least as important as what you say if you want others to accept your policies, proposals, and advice.

As Richard Farson points out in Management of the Absurd, “. . . it’s crucial to listen to the music as well as the lyrics, the feeling behind the words as well as the words themselves.”¹⁰ Often, though, the music so overpowers the lyrics that listeners hear only the music. In fact, if there’s a certain edge to your voice, the other party may reject your ideas, no matter what they are. Even the best advice is unlikely to get a fair hearing if the recipient is insulted, offended, or put off by the manner in which you communicate it.

¹⁰ Richard Farson, Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership (New York: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 58.

Unfortunately, we’re not always the best judge of how we come across when we communicate. I once turned on the radio in the midst of an interview program that invites callers’ questions, and the first voice I heard was my husband’s, posing a question in his I-think-you’re-an-idiot-and-I-want-to-stump-the-chump voice. Afterward, I asked him if he had intended to sound so aggressive. He said he hadn’t; nor had he realized that he had sounded that way. I offered my opinion that he might have had better luck chump-stumping if he had used a kinder tone—a point that’s easier to identify when hearing another’s tone than one’s own.

If your tone conveys a blaming, arrogant, or you’re-a-jerk-I’m-a-genius attitude, it’s hard to fault those on the receiving end for dismissing not only the information, but the sender as well. The same is true of messages that convey weariness, boredom, or a lack of enthusiasm. For example, an IT vice president I hadn’t met sent me an e-mail asking me to contact him. I called and reached his voice-mail. In his recorded greeting, he sounded lackadaisical and not very vice presidential. The attitude he conveyed was: I don’t care. I wondered whether this was strictly his leave-a-message voice or whether it was how he really sounded, but I left my message anyway.

As I discovered once we spoke, he was outgoing, animated, and easy to talk to. I wondered why he hadn’t created an outgoing message that would reflect these qualities.

Well, if you think your way is better, let’s give it a try.

Read this statement aloud several times, affecting in successive turns a tone of anger, frustration, fatigue, boredom, outrageous arrogance, and absolute certainty that the other party is dead wrong. Then, read it in your friendliest, most upbeat, enthusiastic, other-oriented, ready-to-lend-a-hand self.

See the difference? Subtle shifts in pitch, volume, and emphasis can dramatically impact the message the other party receives. People learn to affect these shifts at an early age; indeed, toddlers routinely employ them to appeal for what they want. As adults, we need to be conscious of how our tone of voice affects whether our message gets through.

In addition to tone, certain mannerisms can be off-putting, as a woman learned in one of my workshops. I had assigned groups of people to practice gathering information by holding mock interviews with “customers.” Other members of this woman’s group told her that she sounded impatient when she conducted the interview. She replied that she wasn’t impatient, and said she couldn’t understand their reaction. They explained that the deep breaths she took intermittently made her seem exasperated.

The “customer” confirmed this reaction, saying, “I felt that you were in a hurry to get it over with. I thought you might be upset if I asked any more questions.” This feedback proved to be a major “aha!” for this woman, who explained that she simply liked to take deep breaths, and had no idea that it might be causing customers to shut down. With this awareness, she was able to improve her style of communication.

In Ken’s situation, the wording used for the product screen might have conveyed an unintended attitude to customers, but he would have had a still-bigger problem if his customers had detected an off-putting attitude from the help-desk staff. If even just one staff member communicated with customers in an arrogant, offensive, or disinterested manner, customers could have reacted by ignoring the group’s other messages.

Learning about other people’s perspective entails talking to them. The very process of your asking a question and then listening to the response may encourage people to listen to you in return. Ken’s staff could have benefited from spending more face-to-face time with customers, separate from their product-support work, to learn about the customers’ context. How do they use their software? What capabilities are most important to them? What concerns them about the products and the product standards?

By learning more about how the world looks from the customers’ perspective, Ken’s group would be in a better position to pitch product standards in terms that speak directly to their customers.

If you’re in a similar situation, focus on how the other party will benefit from adopting your recommendations or standards:

• What do they stand to gain?

• How will their lives become easier?

• How will they save time, or turn out better work?

• How will their performance improve?

• How will they become more likely to be seen as successful in the eyes of their higher-ups?

By doing this background work, you’ll discover how to communicate in a way that encourages people to be more open to your ideas. You may also find yourself becoming more open to theirs. Perhaps you can each adjust your thinking to create a meeting of the minds. In doing so, you’ll discover that customers may do it your way because your way and their way have become the same.

Yet, it’s not the policies, standards, and guidelines themselves that people resist; it’s being confronted with rules without the whys and wherefores. If it’s important that specific ideas be accepted, explain the reasoning behind them.

The experience of one group that had been wrestling with alternative approaches to solving a difficult problem illustrates the value of providing the reasons behind a decision. People in the group were incensed at the apparent arbitrariness of their manager’s decision about how to handle the problem. Believing their views had been trampled on, group members demanded an explanation.

The explanation clarified a great deal. As the manager described his reasoning, group members learned that he had discussed the alternative approaches with a subset of the very group to be affected by the decision. In making his decision, he took into account the risks of each option, as well as the increased work load that might result. Did his explanation make everyone like his decision? No, but by increasing their understanding of what was behind it, they were willing to accept and support it.

In Ken’s case, for example, the absence of product standards would have hurt his staff’s ability to competently and rapidly support customers. Conversely, the presence of product standards meant that customers would receive faster response, quicker problem resolution, cost savings, and greater support for more complex software problems. Customers might not eagerly embrace these reasons, but knowledge of potential benefits might encourage more customers to accept the standard.

At times, the absence of an explanation can create a dilemma for both parties. A systems development director told me that he repeatedly asked his staff members to tell him about problems they encountered, but they kept ignoring his requests. He asked me what he could do to get them to keep him informed.

I suggested that a good first step might be to find out why they didn’t do what he asked. Did they forget? Were they not taking his requests seriously? Were they afraid of what might happen if he knew more about the problems they were experiencing? He needed an explanation from them.

But it is very likely that they needed an explanation from him, too. Why did he want to know about their problems? How was he going to use the information? What were the consequences when he didn’t have it? How would having it enable him to help them?

As their manager, he would be more likely to get their explanation by first offering his own—provided that the environment wasn’t a punitive one. In general, people who are willing to convey the reasoning behind their own decisions, requests, and actions are more likely to enjoy successful twoway communication.

Conflicting messages are common in technical-support groups like Ken’s. If his group violates its own standards by supporting products that its standards claim it doesn’t, it is communicating a conflicting message.

Whenever there is a contradiction between what you say and what you do, it’s the latter that people notice. So don’t expect others to comply with standards that define the boundaries of your services if you frequently overstep those boundaries.

Being responsive means occasionally making an exception. Just be aware of the message an exception communicates: “We may say one thing, but sometimes we do another.” Be careful not to cross that fine line beyond which people will cease to trust you.

Do you assist customers even when that assistance violates your standards? Do your actions contradict your words? Don’t be too quick to say no. If you’re unsure whether you act in contradiction to what you’ve communicated, ask your customers. Often, your contradictions are blatantly obvious to them. If you discover that you’re guilty of a pattern of conflicting messages, it may be time to reexamine the difference between your words and your deeds. Adjustments to one or both may be necessary to ensure they are in sync with each other.

I experienced this kind of ambiguity-induced befuddlement at the gym while using the exercise machine that simulates climbing steps. When I selected the fitness-test option on one particular stepamajig, the digital display asked me to choose my “level” from a 10-point scale. Assuming the higher the level, the harder the exercise, I selected Level 6. Then, the machine asked for my age. Let’s say I entered “27.” Next, it asked for my weight. Well, um, I entered “96.” The contraption directed me to exercise for three minutes, periodically urging me to step faster. As I climbed to what felt like the top of the Empire State Building, it kept shouting at me to step faster.

When the three minutes ended, the display panel informed me: “Your fitness is 44.” What? Is that good or bad? I haven’t a clue. Does it mean I’m a fine aerobic specimen, or that I’d better start upping my huffing and puffing? I wish I knew. Is “44” relative to jocks who use such machines regularly or relative to those who have revealed their statistical secrets to this specific machine? Or is it relative to a population of 96-pound 27-year-olds? I’ll never know.

Generally, people who prepare written information want it to be understood. The problem is that they know what their information means, and can’t conceive of its having any other meaning (or no meaning at all!) to others. Yet situations like my stepamajig experience are a reminder of how easy it is for messages to create confusion. Clients sometimes ask me to review the guidelines they send out to customers. As an outsider, I can quickly see writing that might confuse the intended audience. Having not written the material myself, I can review it objectively. As a result, glitches, goofs, and contradictions leap out at me. I can give valuable feedback as a result of my distance from the writer.

But don’t stop there. Have material reviewed by content experts and prospective recipients. Both types of reviewers will suggest improvements that you might never have considered. A third category of reviewer—someone who has no connection to the material at all—is sometimes the most valuable of all. Such reviewers, totally removed from the situation, often find egregious errors that those close to it miss.

Despite your best attempts to communicate clearly, it’s easy to cause confusion. No one is immune from using language that, although grammatically perfect and thoroughly spell-checked, is other than what we intended. And oh, what embarrassing errors we’re capable of! I’ll never forget the time when, if it had not been for reviewer feedback, I would have omitted a mandatory not, without which readers would have crowned me Idiot of the Year.

Don’t trust your instincts to determine whether your policies, standards, procedures, instructions, and explanations make sense. Collaborate with others and become each other’s reviewers. Or send it to me, and I’ll let you know what I think. Keep in mind, though, that my feedback will represent the perspective of a 96-pound 27-year-old whose three-minute rating at Level 6 is a perfect “44”!

If you face a situation like Ken’s, in which the message does not seem to be getting through, consider informing and involving your intended recipients. Informing and involving are key communication strategies. When people function in a manner other than what you’d like, it’s risky to presume to understand why they are doing so. Instead, seek out their reasons for their actions. Sometimes their explanations will surprise you. Help them become aware of the impact that their actions have on you. Describe what you need from them, and invite their input.

Organizations that inform and involve those on the receiving end seem to have both fewer problems to solve and faster resolution of those that arise than organizations that fail to communicate. People who have a role in proposing and supporting solutions are more likely to endorse, promote, and take responsibility for their success or failure. And, when you’re on the receiving end, you can improve the quality of the messages you receive by communicating with the sender about problems that arise and by suggesting ways to eliminate them.

You might also find it helpful to do a communication assessment, using one or both of the following approaches:

• Using the ten types of messages discussed in this chapter, identify situations associated with each in which your personal or organizational messages aren’t getting through. Consider what you might do to change the situation.¹¹

¹¹ Note that these ten types don’t account for all the reasons that messages don’t get through. Numerous other possibilities exist. For example, in BusinessSpeak, Suzette Haden Elgin describes how we each have a preferred sensory mode, such as sight, hearing, and touch, that influences the way we communicate: “I can’t picture that” versus “It doesn’t sound right” versus “It falls flat for me.” She notes that during relaxed circumstances, people use all three sensory modes, but under stressful circumstances, they tend to become locked into their preferred mode. Therefore, she suggests that recognizing someone’s preferred sensory mode and, when possible, matching it through your own choice of words can help to build rapport, increase understanding, and persuade others to agree with what you say. See Suzette Haden Elgin, BusinessSpeak: Using the Gentle Art of Verbal Persuasion to Get What You Want at Work (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), pp. 33–37.

• Analyze problems you’re experiencing in which the person or group you’re communicating with doesn’t seem to be listening. Ask yourself: What actions, attitudes, or behaviors have been displayed that give me the impression that they’re not listening? Could any of the types of messages in this chapter account for the situation? If so, what changes might encourage message recipients to listen?

Are frustration and grousing about others not listening really better than finding out what the underlying problem is and working to solve it? The next time you claim that others don’t listen, stop and ask yourself how you might be contributing to the situation. Then decide what you can do differently to ensure that your messages get through.