Technical Management
#22-12-18-06: Being Understood #2
Being Understood #2
“Imagine Being Understood - Again”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, December 18, 2006
Good evening!
I want to spend one more blog entry on the topic of “context.” In the last blog I introduced you to the phrase “I didn’t steal your wallet.” and I showed you how if you repeated the phrase several times with emphasis on different words each time, you could convey different meanings.
For example, below I’ve written the same phrase over and over again. I’ve made one of the words “bold” and blue. As you read each phrase out loud, speak the bold word with emphasis and notice what happens to the meaning of the whole phrase.
1. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
2. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
3. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
4. “I didn’t steal your wallet."
5. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
Notice how the meaning of each phrase changes as you change the word emphasized. This changing or transmission of the “meaning” of a communication based on non-verbal cues instead of the meaning conveyed by the content is called “context”.
Therefore, we can say that a human communication is made up of “content and context.” And as we can see in the five phrases above, the meaning structured by the context can and usually does “override” the meaning conveyed by the content.
This is a huge conclusion. Let me repeat it:
The meaning conveyed by the context usually overrides the meaning conveyed by the context.
So…
IN FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION....
Context is conveyed by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue.
Context is conveyed by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound.
Context is conveyed by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process.
IN PHONE COMMUNICATION...
Context is NOT CONVEYED by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.
Context is conveyed by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound.
Context is NOT CONVEYED by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.
IN EMAIL COMMUNICATION...
Context is NOT CONVEYED by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.
Context is NOT CONVEYED by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound, because you can’t hear the person you are communicating with.
Context is NOT CONVEYED by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process, because you are not in the presence of the person you are communicating with.
Therefore, the whole meaning of the communication must be conveyed by the “content” and we have seen that content is a poor way to communicate meaning, unless you are conveying completely unambiguous information.
It should be clear now why emails are so dangerous as a communication tool. They are very short on context. Therefore, if you want to use email as a form of communication that is more than just raw data, it is important to spend the time in the beginning of the email necessary to establish the context. The introduction portion of the email should establish the way in which the email is to understood.
My rule of thumb is, if I want to communicate with someone, my first choice is to meet with them face-to-face. If that’s not possible, then I’ll call them on the phone. Only if I can’t meet in person or call them on the phone will I use email as my communication vehicle. And then, I’ll spend a good deal of the first part of the email establishing the context so that the person reading my email will know exactly what I want the meaning of my communication to be.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 12/18 at 07:58 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Management • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Communication for engineers • Soft Skills for engineers • Soft Skills for Technologists • (0) Comments • Permalink
#21-12-12-06: Being Understood
Being Understood
”Imagine Being Understood”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Good day!
Imagine… imagine what it would be like if whenever you communicated with anyone, you were… completely understood. Imagine what it would be like to say something to someone face-to-face, and… be completely understood. Imagine writing a memo or speaking on the phone and always being clearly and… totally understood. In fact, imagine the unthinkable… imagine sending an email and always, always have the recipient understand exactly what you meant in the email. No more misunderstandings. No more weird responses.
Alas, imaging all that is indeed a fantasy. It’s hard enough being understood when you are in front of someone talking to them, let alone have an email accepted and understood, as you want. It just doesn’t seem to be in the cards, does it? It seems to be… part of life.
I had this fact driven home to me last week, and so I’m writing about that experience in this blog. Even though I teach and coach communication excellence to technical professionals and managers, the issues that I coach and train on are so ingrained in our neurological makeup as human beings, that I still succumb to the mistakes we are all prone to.
Here is what happened. I’m completing a book on transitioning from technologist to technical manager and I’m currently talking to several possible editors for my book. I had been intermittently communicating to one potential editor, via email, for several weeks and then, due to other commitments, I hadn’t communicated with her for a couple of weeks. When we finally reconnected via email, we still did not know each other very well and so I hadn’t yet decided whom to engage as my editor.
The editor I’m speaking about here had sent me previous emails without a lot of “context”. In most communications, context is mostly made up of body language, voice tone, and other “non-verbal” cues that we pick up, often subconsciously, from the other person. It’s easy to pick up context in face-to-face communication and a little more challenging to do so in phone conversation, but very difficult in emails.
For example, below I’ve written the same phrase over and over again. I’ve made one of the words “bold and maroon”. As you read each phrase out loud, speak the bold word with emphasis and notice what happens to the meaning of the whole phrase. Here we go.
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
Now notice how the meaning of each phrase changes as you change the emphasized word. This is what I mean by “context”. The words, that is, the content, stayed the same, but because the “context” changed the meaning of the phrase changed.
Back to the email from my potential editor. So, after not communicating with her for several weeks, I sent her an email to reconnect and to tell her that I would not be making a decision regarding my editor selection until after the first of the year.
I then received an email from her in response to my email. In it, she made a reference to something that she had mentioned in a very early email, and that reference took me back to that early email. In the current email there was very little “contextual information”, it was mainly content.
Since there was very little context, and by that I mean, there were not a lot of messages about how I was supposed to interpret current her email, I was left to interpret her email on my own. Since she referenced a topic from a long-ago email, I decided (subconsciously) to establish the same context as the older email. And that context was a little confrontational. So because there were no new contextual cues I interpreted her current email based on the old context which was aggressive.
I decided to respond to her by referencing the aggressive “tone” of her email and indicated that I was surprised by her aggressive response. Within 15 minutes I received an email back from her indicating that she in no way intended to be aggressive and was merely telling me about some things that were going on in her life.
I had completely miss-read her email. I had looked for contextual cues, found none that I recognized and therefore made my own interpretation of the meaning of her email based on past contextual cues. (Fortunately, we were open enough in our communication that we could adjust our communication in near real time.)
Unfortunately however, this miscommunication is exactly what happens all too often in your world too. Doesn’t it? We send a message, and without spending sufficient time to establish the context so the person knows how to interpret our message, we leave it up to the receiver to decide how to interpret our message. And, as often as not, they interpret it incorrectly. This can be avoided if we will just spend the time to establish the context up front. In fact, those of you who have worked with me will remember this phrase;
“Send the content only when you’ve established the context within which it is to be interpreted.”
................or another way to say it is........
“Don’t send the content until you’ve established the context”
They key is to understand that this will never go away. It happens to all of us. The key is to understand that it will happen and to keep the communication channels open. This is also why;
“The responsibility for effective communication rests with the sender of the message, because it is only the sender who knows what the message was intended to mean.”
The receiver doesn’t have a clue as to what was intended, only the sender does.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 12/12 at 01:55 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Management • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Communication for engineers • Soft Skills for engineers • Soft Skills for Technologists • (1) Comments • Permalink
#15-10-30-06: A Million and One
Have It Your Way
”A Million and One Ways to Lead!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, October 30, 2006
Good evening!
If you’ve been reading my recent blogs you have probably gotten the seemingly radical message that there are a million and one ways to manage and/or lead. There is the best way to manage or lead in any given situation and the best way … depends.
It depends on the context, the situation.
This is the reason that, if we are to measure a successful leader by the amount of financial reward he or she accrues, we find that in the world, there must be a million and one different ways to lead because there seem to be all sorts of ways to lead and make money.
In fact, I hear people say things like, “Real leaders care about their people”. Not necessarily. Some do and some don’t and whether they do or they don’t doesn’t guarantee success. I’m sure you’ve known leaders who have cared about their people deeply and failed and leaders who have not really cared about their people, in fact abused them (verbally), and still they produced a hugely successful operation.
So we are back to the same answer… success is not tied to how you treat people…only. Success is not tied to how well you understand business. Success is tied to six parameters that all come together to define a context. The successful leader finds the most effective way to pull the strengths from each of the six parameters to make decisions that lead the organization forward successfully.
One of the six parameters in Contextual Leadership© is the expertise of the direct report or the team compared to the expertise of the manager. That means that depending upon the quality of the people you bring on board, that will have a huge influence on the management and leadership choices available to you.
In fact, one of the reasons that Jack Welch, the ex-CEO of General Electric was so successful, was that he wanted to function within a specific set of management and leadership styles and that dictated that he keep certain of the six Contextual parameters relatively constant.
One of those parameters that he needed to keep constant was the quality of the people. That is, the only way to narrow his management choices consistently was to be certain that he had a specific quality of employees reporting directly to him. That is why he spent so much time on his employees and that is why he used the A,B,C evaluation system. Jack’s goal was to provide him with a type of direct and indirect report (one layer below his direct reports) that would allow him to use a specific range of management and leadership styles; those that he preferred.
Had he been less diligent regarding report selection, he would have had to range further in his application of management and leadership styles.
By controlling closely the quality of the employees who report to you, you control one of the important parameters that will dictate how flexible you must be in your application of management and leadership styles in order to be successful.
(Note: I’m not a personal friend of Jack Welch. I have not interviewed Mr. Welch. The conclusions I have drawn here are based on my own understanding of management and leadership, new concepts of management and leadership that I have developed, and the books I have read about Jack, interviews I have seen with Mr. Welch, and speeches I have heard given by Jack Welch.)
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/30 at 08:30 PM Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • (0) Comments • Permalink
