A Simple Fix for Miscommunication Part 2: Putting It Into Practice

(From my Fast Company Blog)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on miscommunication in the workplace, and how so much of it is caused by the fact that people routinely fail to realize how little they are actually communicating. We think we’ve said a lot more than we actually have.  As a result, our colleagues are left guessing as to what we meant, or what we want from them.  All too often, they guess wrong.

Judging by the popularity of the post, Fast Company readers can relate.  You know how frustrating it is to be on the receiving end of communication that is confusing or vague.  But most of us have no idea that we are guilty of the same crime.  It’s easy to see why – after all, we know what we mean.  Unless we are confronted directly about how poorly we are communicating (something people are generally loathe to do, for a number of reasons), how are we to know if we’ve said enough?

I received a number of emails asking how to put the insight gained from the last post into practice on a daily basis.  Here are three strategies you can use to make sure that you are saying everything that needs to be said.

1)    Take a few moments before communicating to identify the key points you need to get across. Write them down if you think you might forget something when you are actually conversing (this is very common).  If you think any of your key points “go without saying,” you are probably wrong.

2)    Create a process for assessing understanding.  Everyone on your team needs to participate – don’t single anyone out.  When you communicate something to a team member, end the encounter by asking them to summarize in their own words what they heard.

For this to work well without anyone feeling patronized, you need to make it clear that this is not a test – your concern is that you didn’t communicate effectively, not that they weren’t paying attention.  Also, it has to work both ways.  When your team member brings something to your attention, you should summarize what you heard as well.

Without direct feedback, there is no way to figure out if the message was fully received.  But people are reluctant to provide this feedback if there is no explicit process in place.  They worry about looking foolish, or irritating the communicator (particularly when the communicator is the boss.)

3)    Invite questions should they arise.  Sometimes, you don’t realize that you didn’t understand what a colleague asked you to do until you actually try to do it.  At this point, it can be embarrassing to go back and admit “I don’t get it.”  Take the embarrassment out of it by reminding your team members that you are always happy to answer any questions that may come up later.  When you are asked for clarification, provide it with enthusiasm.

I know that all of this seems like a lot of work, and it is.  But the extra time and effort you put in to improving your team’s ability to communicate will be well worth it.  You’ll spend far less time fixing mistakes and putting out fires.  Your team will be more motivated and productive.  And you’ll have confidence that everyone is finally, and permanently, on the same page.

2 Ways to Get Kids to Eat Vegetables (That Actually Work!)

As a part of every check-up, my pediatrician asks me about what my children (ages 2 and 4) are eating.  “Are they getting lots of vegetables?  Especially dark leafy greens, and iron-rich foods like broccoli?” she asks, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

“Oh, absolutely.  Lots.” I reply, while avoiding direct eye contact.  I’m not exactly lying – my kids are getting plenty of healthy foods.  They just aren’t really eating them, at least not as much as I’d like them to.

I’ve heard all sorts of advice about overcoming the Vegetable Problem.  Hide them in other foods, serve them first and leave the chicken and pasta for later, add lots of seasonings for flavor, make a big fuss over how much you love broccoli to fool them into thinking it’s delicious.  In my experience, these techniques aren’t all that helpful.  So like many a desperate parent, I have decided to resort to bribes.

Psychologists (myself included) frequently warn against using rewards to encourage behavior in children, because extrinsic rewards like treats, money, or even effusive praise can undermine a child’s intrinsic motivation to do something they already enjoy or find meaningful.  Once a child is rewarded for eating particular foods (the logic goes), they are less likely to eat those foods willingly once the rewards are removed.

While studies have shown that the danger of rewarding desired behaviors is very real when it comes to activities children already enjoy, like reading or solving math problems, it’s possible that rewarding a child for eating vegetables might prove more effective.  When your child already doesn’t like vegetables, there isn’t any intrinsic motivation to undermine.

In fact, new research by psychologist Lucy Cooke and her colleagues at University College London shows that with rewards, children not only eat their vegetables, but learn to like them, too.

At the beginning of the study, 422 children (ages 4-6) where shown six vegetables  (carrot, red pepper, sugar snap pea, cabbage, cucumber, and celery).  They were asked to taste a piece of each, rate how much they liked it (on a scale from yummy to yucky), and put them in order of best-to-worst tasting.

The researchers focused on the fourth-ranked vegetable for each child, inviting them to eat as much as they wanted, and measuring the amount eaten (usually, not much.)

The children were then offered that vegetable again on each of the next twelve days.  Some of the children were offered a tangible reward  (a sticker) for eating it, some were enthusiastically praised for eating it, and others were not given any kind of reward.  (Children in the control group were not offered the vegetable each day.)

At the end of the twelve days, and again after 1 month and 3 months, the researchers offered the vegetable again to all the children, but this time without any rewards, and observed how much they freely chose to eat.

Initially, after the rewards were removed, the children who were given a tangible reward ate the most of their vegetables.  Those who received praise, and those who were simply exposed to the vegetable each day, ate less than the sticker group, but still ate significantly more than the control group.

But after three months, the sticker group was no different than the praise group – and both groups were eating nearly twice as much of their vegetable, of their own free will, than the control group kids.

So if you want to encourage your children to embrace the delights of broccoli and green beans (and be able to look your pediatrician directly in the eye), try introducing rewards into your dining routine.  If you aren’t comfortable with the idea of paying your kids to eat, the good news is that some enthusiastic cheerleading works just as well in the long run.  Personally, I’m planning on investing in a lot of stickers.

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Giving Employees the Feeling of Choice, When You Are Really Pulling The Strings

A Guest Post for SmartBlog on Workforce:

Most managers and leaders have, on a regular basis, the unenviable task of trying to get other people to adopt particular goals.  Companies have agendas, and employees need to support those agendas if the company is to succeed.  But if you want your employees to live up to their full potential, it’s not enough that they do what you tell them to - that they work hard and meet deadlines because you said they have to, and you are watching.  Ideally, you want the members of your team to see that the goals they are pursuing have real value.

In fact, you want them to make the goals their own – and with good reason.  Again and again, studies show that the greatest motivation and most personal satisfaction comes from those goals that we choose for ourselves.   Self-chosen goals create a special kind of motivation called intrinsic motivation – the desire to do something for its own sake.   When people are intrinsically motivated, they enjoy what they are doing more, and find it more interesting.  They feel more creative, and process information more deeply.  They persist more in the face of difficulty.  They perform better.  Intrinsic motivation is awesome in its power to get and keep us going.

Autonomy is particularly critical when it comes to creating and maintaining intrinsic motivation.  But in the workplace, goals have to be assigned.  What’s a manager to do?

It turns out that it isn’t so much actual freedom of choice that matters when it comes to creating intrinsic motivation, but the feeling of choice.  Choice provides a sense of self-determination, even when choice is trivial or illusory.

The good news is, while true autonomy in the workplace can be hard to come by, the feeling of choice can be created fairly easily, using these three tips:

Tip 1: First, and most obviously, your employees need to understand why the goal they’ve been assigned has value.  Too often, managers tell their employees what they need to do, without taking the time to explain why it’s important, or how it fits into the bigger picture.  No one ever really commits to a goal if they don’t see why it’s desirable for them to do it in the first place.  Don’t assume the why is as obvious to your team as it is to you.

Tip 2: When the goal itself is predetermined by Management, allowing your employees to decide how they will reach the goal can create the feeling of choice necessary to be intrinsically motivated.  Allowing them to tailor their approach to their preferences and abilities will also give them heightened sense of control over the situation they find themselves in, which can only benefit performance.  (If you can’t give them total free reign, try giving them a choice between two options for how to proceed.  If even that is not possible, skip directly to Tip 3.)

Tip 3: If you have to assign both the goal and the method for reaching it, try creating the feeling of choice by inviting your employee to make decisions about more peripheral aspects of the task.  For instance, if your employees have to attend weekly team meetings to improve communication and collaboration (with both the goals and method for reaching it predetermined), you can have team members take turns deciding what the topic of the meeting will be each week, or even what kind of lunch will be ordered in.  Studies show that these more peripheral decisions create a feeling of choice, even when the choices aren’t particularly meaningful or relevant to the goal itself.

Take time to reflect on how you might be able create a greater sense of autonomy in your own workplace using these three steps. Choice is incredibly motivating – to bring out the best in your employees, harness its power.

Why Chewing With Your Mouth Open Can Make You Seem Powerful

When A Little Bad Behavior is a Good Thing

(From my Fast Company blog)

Powerful people often act as if the rules don’t apply to them, or that even if the rules  do apply, they don’t really care.

Research shows that when people feel powerful, they are more likely to act according to their own goals, rather than what’s best for the group.  They are less sensitive to what’s happening around them, disregard input from others, and ignore social norms.  They are more sensitive to their own internal states and feelings, and  care less about what others may think of them.

(And this happens even when the experience of power is new or temporary -there’s something about power that seems to immediately turn our vision inward).

The net result is a lot of bad behavior – not necessarily illegal, but certainly obnoxious.  Powerful people are apt do all sorts of socially inappropriate things.  They interrupt more frequently, invade personal space, take credit for other people’s ideas, make insulting remarks, and are more likely to engage in sexual harassment (ok, that last one actually is illegal).

One study actually showed that powerful people are even more likely eat with their mouths open.  I had noticed that one myself in graduate school.  It often seemed like the more prominent and well-regarded a professor was, the more unpleasant he was to share a meal with.

One of the great ironies of all this bad behavior is that while we may find it personally offensive, breaking the rules of good conduct actually makes these people seem even more powerful.

New research from psychologists at the University of Amsterdam shows that when someone violates a social norm, we assume, often unconsciously, that they are somehow free to do what they want.  In their studies, men and women who took someone else’s coffee, brushed minor mistakes under the carpet rather than correcting them, put their feet up on the table, or flicked cigarette ashes on the floor, we judged as more powerful than those who were better-behaved.

Despite being seen as rude and somewhat unpleasant, the rule-breakers were seen as more influential, more likely to hold a leadership position, and more able to “make life difficult for others.”

I hate to be an advocate for bad manners, but since so much of any individual’s success depends on how they are perceived, it’s worth taking a moment to think about how a little strategically bad behavior might raise your profile.  Eccentric is better than offensive, because eccentricity is about breaking the rules in relatively harmless ways, and keeps ill will to a minimum.

Being able to project an air of indifference, to make it seem like you don’t really care what other people think (even if you really do) and are free to do whatever you want, will leave others with the impression that you are a force to be reckoned with.    Just do yourself a favor, and however you decide to break the rules, keep it legal.  And seriously, don’t chew with your mouth open.

Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them

Think back to the last time your boss assigned you a new project or task at work, or the last time you tried to tackle something really difficult in your personal life.  How did it feel?  I’m guessing scary, right?

While some people seem eager to tackle new challenges, many of us are really just trying to survive without committing any major screw-ups.    Taking on something totally new and unfamiliar is understandably frightening, since the odds of making a mistake are good when you are inexperienced.  Small wonder that we greet new challenges with so little enthusiasm.

How can we learn to see things differently?   How can we shift our thinking, and approach new responsibilities and challenges with more confidence and energy?

The answer is simple, though perhaps a little surprising:  Give yourself permission to screw-up. Start any new project by saying  “I’m not going to be good at this right away, I’m going to make mistakes, and that’s okay.”

So now you’re probably thinking, “If I take your advice and actually let myself screw up, there will be consequences.  I’m going to pay for it.”  Fair enough.  But you really needn’t worry about that, because studies show that when people are allowed to make mistakes, they are significantly less likely to actually make them!  Let me explain.

We approach most of what we do with one of two types of goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and already know what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning a new skill.  It’s the difference between wanting to show that you are smart vs. wanting to get smarter.

The problem with be-good goals is that they tend to backfire when things get hard.  We quickly start to doubt our ability (“Oh no, maybe I’m not good at this!”), and this creates a lot of anxiety.  Ironically, worrying about your ability makes you much more likely to ultimately fail.  Countless studies have shown that nothing interferes with your performance quite like anxiety does – it is the goal-killer.

Get-better goals, on the other hand, are practically bullet-proof.  When we think about what we are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that we may make some mistakes along the way, we stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur.

Just to give you an example, in one study I conducted a few years ago with my graduate student, Laura Gelety, we found that people who were trying to be good (i.e., trying to show how smart they were) performed very poorly on a test of problem-solving when I made the test more difficult (either by interrupting them frequently while they were working, or by throwing in a few additional unsolvable problems).

The amazing thing was, the people who were trying to get better (i.e., who saw the test as an opportunity to learn a new problem-solving skill) were completely unaffected by any of my dirty tricks.  No matter how hard I made it for them, students focused on getting better stayed motivated and did well.

Too often, when the boss gives us an assignment, we expect to be able to do the work flawlessly, no matter how challenging it might be.  The focus is all about being good, and the prospect becomes terrifying.  Even when we are assigning ourselves a new task, we take the same approach – expecting way too much too soon.

The irony is that all this pressure to be good results in many more mistakes, and far inferior performance, than would a focus on getting better.

How can you reframe your goals in terms of getting better? Here are the three steps:

Step 1:  Start by embracing the fact that when something is difficult and unfamiliar, you will need some time to really get a handle on it. You may make some mistakes, and that’s ok.

Step 2:  Remember to ask for help when you run into trouble.  Needing help doesn’t mean you aren’t capable – in fact, the opposite is true.  Only the very foolish believe they can do everything on their own.

Step 3: Try not to compare yourself to other people – instead, compare your performance today to your performance yesterday.  Focusing on getting better means always thinking in terms of progress, not perfection.

Too Much Miscommunication At Work? A Simple Fix

From my Fast Company Blog:

“I’m sure he understood what I meant.”

“I’m sure it was obvious.”

“It goes without saying…”

The most common source of miscommunication in any workplace is a very simple one:  people routinely fail to realize how little they are actually communicating.  In other words, we think we’ve said a lot more than we actually have.

Psychologists call this the signal amplification bias (because we can’t resist slapping esoteric names on things – calling it the “I’m Sure It Was Obvious” Effect would be much more to the point.)

Studies show that the vast majority of us tend to believe that our behavior is much more expressive than it actually is, and this occurs across a wide variety of situations.

For instance, we often think people know when we’re lying – that our discomfort with deception is obvious - when they rarely have any idea.  We also assume that others understand our goals and what we’re trying to accomplish, when in fact they don’t have the first clue.  Most of what we say and do every day is open to multiple interpretations, and when other people try to figure out what we really mean, they are apt to guess wrong.

We are particularly likely to be “sure it was obvious” with people we know well or who we’ve worked with for a long time – we assume our thoughts and behaviors are transparent, when they are far from it.  So, ironically, the risk of miscommunication is greater with a close colleague than a brand-new coworker.

When we assume that other people know what we’re thinking, and what we are expecting of them, we do them a real disservice.    Assuming that we’ve been clear about what we wanted, we blame them when things don’t go as planned.

The next time you catch yourself thinking “I didn’t expressly say that to Bob, but it should be obvious…” STOP.  Nothing is ever obvious unless you made it obvious by spelling it out.

Remove the phrase “It goes without saying” from your mental lexicon, because it is total rubbish.  If something is important, then it goes WITH saying.  Make a point of saying exactly what you mean, and asking for exactly what you want, and you will be pleasantly surprised by often you get it.