14

Distortion in Communication

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

–Robert McCloskey

Why is it that a prospective customer buys our competitor’s product after (what we thought was) a hair raising, absorbing and convincing presentation? Why is it that at the end of a status-review meeting, the boss blows his top saying that the project is going nowhere when you thought all was kosher? It simply means that the receiver has not acted the way we intended him to act. How many times have you had misunderstandings while communicating with someone and said, ‘That is not what I meant!’ or ‘I am being quoted out of context’? With all good intents and excellent content, there is no guarantee that the recipient will receive, interpret or act upon the message in the way that the sender actually wanted. The result? Broken relationships, unsuccessful deals and a whole lot of heart burn. What is the cause for all this? Distortion.

In this chapter, we start with identifying the different barriers to communication and trace how distortion sets in at each stage of communication because of these barriers.

We also suggest some measures to reduce distortion at each stage. After looking at how distortion occurs in some common scenarios of communication, we conclude the chapter with common-sense tips to minimize distortion.

 

Fig. 14.1 The ideal world of communication

14.1 Barriers to Communication

There are several barriers to communication. These barriers manifest themselves in different ways and affect different phases of communication. In Table 14.1, we have summarized the common types of barriers to communication and how they affect the different phases of communication. The net result of these barriers is that they give rise to distortions.

Table 14.1 Different barriers to communication

14.2 Distortion Through the Stages of Communication

As you can see from Snapshot 14.1, each person just makes a ‘minor’ change to the input he got, but eventually, the compound effect of all the changes resulted in a complete change of meaning!

Distortion is anything that causes the recipient to understand, interpret or act upon the transmitted message in any way different from what the sender intended. Why does distortion happen? Distortions come from several sources. In Chapter 13 on communication cycle, we presented the elements or stages of communication. We reproduce that figure here (see Figure 14.2).

 

Fig. 14.2 Elements of communication revisited

Every stage can—and does—add distortion. Distortion feeds on itself. Each distortion that is added compounds the possibility of misunderstanding exponentially. Eventually the final message that the recipient gets is completely different from what the sender intended and hence, the action taken by the recipient is completely different from (and sometimes opposite of) what the sender actually intended. Let us now see how distortion gets introduced at every stage of the communication process.

First of All, a sender has to think through what he wants to communicate. There may be problems in this thought process itself. It is possible that the sender does not have adequate knowledge about what he wants to communicate. When the original understanding is poor or muddled, it is obvious that the expression will also be unclear. There is only so much you can sugar-coat plain ignorance. The person may have to do more research on the topic and may not have the time or resources to do it. He may have his personal biases and blind spots that prevent him from thinking along the right directions to enable effective communication. A possible antidote to help minimize distortion at this level could be for the speaker to only communicate about topics he is familiar with (or even passionate about). If he is not fully familiar with the topic, he should do sufficient research and dig around and arm himself with the required information.

The next source of distortion could be in the inability or ineffectiveness on the part of the speaker to formulate and articulate his thought process effectively. This could come about because of several factors:

• Lack of Familiarity with the language: This is especially true when the language of communication is not the speaker’s mother tongue or native language.
• Lack of Appropriate reinforcing stimuli like body language, eye contact and voice modulation: These stimuli may not only not reinforce the message but may even contradict the message!
• Lack of Familiarity with the media of communication: Some people may become ‘stage conscious’ or ‘camera conscious’. They may be perfectly decent communicators on a one-on-one basis, but may get put off when they have to speak standing on a podium, under the glaring lights of a camera or a projector.
• Creeping in of nervousness while communicating: A fully prepared person may get cold feet while communicating and this may mar the effectiveness of communication.

The most effective way to overcome the distortion due to ineffective formulation is through continuous practice. In the case of spoken communication (especially presentations), it is essential to practice, rehearse and perfect the delivery as much as possible.

Distortion can be introduced by the media of communication. When you use a phone, the lines may be bad. When you use e-mail and have painstakingly formatted the message with various fonts and colors, it may get lost because of poor rendering of the e-mail at the recipient’s end. When you use video conferencing, the ghostly, jaded movements you see because of communication latency may act as a distraction. Media is just a part of the overall environment. When you are using a projector with a remote control, perhaps your lack of familiarity of operating with the remote control can make your presentation look jaded. Even being in a new environment or room can add to distortion.

To account for such media/environment-related distortions, it is important to reinforce the message through multiple media. Such redundancy serves to balance out any possible disadvantages of a single medium. You can follow up a phone conversation by a ‘MOM’ or documented minutes of the meeting; you can augment a mail exchange with a personal visit where possible; you can SMS a person if the mobile signal is not very clear. All these methods of redundancy and reinforcement appeal to common sense. Of course, such reinforcements do come with the additional cost of time and effort but if they achieve to synch up the parties involved in communication and reduce any misunderstandings, they may all be well worth it.

Distortion can be caused by the receiver’s inability to understand the message as it was intended. This can arise from bias or preconceived notions that the receiver may have about either the subject or you, the speaker. Just as your inadequate thinking process can result in distortion, the receiver’s inadequate thinking process, or lack of knowledge, could also result in distortion. A possible mitigation strategy to reduce distortion due to this source is to do a thorough audience analysis (discussed in Chapter 15). You might have to educate the recipients about the subject matter or get them to have favourable disposition towards your point of view so that they can understand the message as it was intended. Also, the use of redundant media discussed in the previous paragraph would also help improve the understanding of the recipient.

If a recipient does not understand a message as intended, there is recourse to a feedback loop. The feedback loop is supposed to minimize distortion. But in geographically distributed teams (using media like e-mails, phones and chats), this avenue of feedback loop is not always used effectively. In order to use the feedback loop effectively, the recipient should use some of the common-sense approaches like asking questions or for clarifications, paraphrasing what he heard and by the process of active listening (see Chapter 17). Distortion due to ineffective use of the feedback loop is exacerbated by the inherent shyness to ask questions that we see in Indian engineers.

Finally, as we saw earlier, the intent of communication is to make the recipient act. In an ideal situation, the way the receiver acts on a message is exactly the same way in which the sender intended the receiver to act. But distortion can prevent this from happening. In addition to all the distortion caused by earlier stages, inability to act in the intended way is in itself a distortion. One of the causes for this could again be inappropriate audience analysis. At the end of the day, if the audience does not act on the message the way the sender intended, then it defeats the purpose of communication. The mitigation strategies we have outlined against distortion in the various phases can help steer the recipient to act in consonance with the sender to achieve the original objectives of communication.

In Table 14.2, we have summarized the above discussion covering causes for distortion in each phase and how to minimize the adverse effects of distortion due to these causes.

Table 14.2 Distortion in the various phases

14.3 How Distortion Occurs in Various Business-Communication Scenarios

Later chapters of this book discuss the various communication scenarios that present themselves in typical business environments. In this section, we will see how distortion sets in these different scenarios and what can be done to minimize distortion in such cases.

14.3.1 Presentations

Distortions sneak into presentations quite easily because of several factors:

Nervousness: Presentations can give cold feet to an inexperienced person or sometimes even to the most seasoned pro. When a person is nervous, the most appropriate words don’t always come out and sometimes even the most inappropriate words, that convey the opposite of what was intended, may be used. All this can lead to distortion.

Lack of Preparedness: Presentations in which a presenter is confronted with a possibly heterogeneous audience calls for a lot of preparation. Preparations include audience analysis and understanding the objectives of communication as well as anticipating the questions that the audience will ask. If the questions are not anticipated properly, it can lead to answers that are not clear and can in fact lead to straying away from the message to be conveyed, thus leading to distortion. Also, when questions are not answered properly, it erodes the credibility of the speaker and sets in bias in the mind of the receiver.

Ineffective use of visual aids, body language and voice channel: Sometimes the different channels of communication give conflicting or confusing messages, different from what is spoken. For example, a slide in a presentation may indicate certain data is contradictory to the argument being put forth; the body language and/or the voice may betray a lack of enthusiasm and energy. These can muddle up the message being conveyed and hence, lead to distortion.

Ineffective time management: Time management is crucial to a presentation (as much as to any form of communication). As we will see in Chapter 21 a presentation has to have a proper closure wherein the presenter stresses the key points. Ineffective time management, when a presenter spends an undue amount of time in a part of the presentation, can lead to insufficient time for the closure part and hence the audience may walk away with different notions than what were intended.

14.3.2 Group Meetings

Distortion in group meetings often arises because of two major reasons:

First, not everyone is on the same page. People may be straight-jacketed about their own piece of work without really knowing the big picture. People may be oblivious to or not empathetic to the needs of others. This may result in people taking stands that create bias and hence, the message gets blocked.

Second, inefficient meeting management can result in people not taking turns and can thus cause cross talk and poor understanding. When a group meeting is over a conference call or video conference, distortion could be even worse because it is even more difficult to take turns. Lack of Reinforcing and redundant face-to-face contact and body language further increase distortion.

As we will see in Chapter 24, effective meeting management entails setting a clear agenda, making sure that all the people know their roles and responsibilities ahead of time and following through with lucid minutes of meeting and action items. We have summarized these by the acronym PROOF —Planning, Reaching out, Organizing, Orchestrating and Following through.

14.3.3 Status Meetings

Distortion in status meetings generally arises because of the unwillingness of people to candidly share the status. Especially when there is bad news, people may sugar-coat the bad news to make it appear that things are kosher. As a result, people (especially managers) may walk out of status meetings with a feeling of complacence only to be given rude last-minute shocks later on. A clear mappingof‘planned vs. Actual’ for every week and also putting together a clear plan for the upcoming period would help in getting some objectivity in status meetings and thus minimize distortion.

In Snapshot 14.2, see how distortion sets in a status meeting. The text in italics below gives the comments about the specific interaction.

You can see that there is distortion everywhere in the above meeting. The manager seems to meander without any clear goals. Ravi is not being specific about his work. He does not seem to be aware of the implication of his work for Deepa. Finally, the manager has not explored all possible options for resolving the issues. A better approach to the above scenario that would minimize distortion and increase clarity could be as follows (see Snapshot 14.3):

14.3.4 Written Communication

Distortion in written communication is highly prevalent in geographically distributed teams. Even if India and the USA use ‘English’, the two ‘English’ es could be very different in style and substance. The metaphors, language, spelling are all very different. As this is a crucial aspect for communication across global teams, we have dedicated one full chapter (Chapter 39), to address the issues of writing styles and to give some common-sense suggestions to achieve clarity and consistency.

14.4 Distortion in Communication Within Globally Distributed Teams

The avenues for distortion increase significantly in globally distributed teams. We have already mentioned the effect of language in causing distortion. Culture is another major dimension that causes distortion. For example, while the US culture is to speak candidly, the Indian engineer may tend to be ‘soft’. The metaphors— especially sports metaphors—tend to confuse people and convey the wrong message. Even some of the gestures are different across cultures and this may have a negative impact in making sure that the sender’s message reaches the receiver in the desired way and causes the receiver to act in the intended way.

14.5 In Summary

If we were to summarize three key points in minimizing distortion in communication, they would be the following.

More specific the details you go into, lesser the chances of distortion. This minimizes the chances of misunderstandings, assumptions and biases.

If you put yourself in the shoes of the audience, you can get a better ‘under-the-hood’ perspective of how they look at things. This will help you to think and formulate the message in a way that will reach home for them.

Where possible, reinforce your message through multiple channels—verbal, vocal, visual aids, body language, etc. Always follow up spoken communication with a written confirmation.

Despite all the precautions you take, remember that complete avoidance of distortion is simply not possible. Just accept it, watch out for it and make a conscious attempt to minimize it (see Box 14.1)! Someone said that in life, only two things are certain— death and taxes. You can modify it to add distortion in communication to that list.

 

Fig. 14.3 The real world of communication with distortion