Soft Skills for engineers
Inter-Personal people skills for engineers
#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
#11-10-16-06: Micro-Management or Bust!
Micro-Management or Bust
Managing for results AND empowerment
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, October 16, 2006
Good evening!
It seems lately that everywhere I turn, much of what I read about management and leadership keeps pointing to the same set of management deficiencies. It may be the major issue of managers and leaders; not just technical managers and leaders, but all managers and leaders. And quite simply it’s the inability of managers to manage so as to achieve results. Do any of the following three scenarios ring true for you?
1. You are a new manager. You have been given responsibility for a project and you have also been given three direct reports. The direct reports are all technically competent people. They have been out of school for several years and have been accomplished individual contributors. You sit down with them, discuss the tasks they will each be doing and you then send them on their way to accomplish their tasks. At the end of their respective task schedules, none of them has completed their tasks as they said they would, either on time or to the level of detail they and you anticipated. What has gone wrong and what should you have done?
2. You have a disruptive direct report. This direct report is constantly challenging your authority when they are alone with you. When you and they are in a team meeting, the direct report seems cooperative. But when you are not there, this direct report tends to undermine you in front of other people. This direct report doesn’t seem to feel the sense of commitment regarding getting tasks done on time that you do. Missing a schedule is just not that big a deal.
3. You give a task to a direct report. This direct report has a mixed track record. The direct report sometimes completes tasks on schedule. Other times they miss their schedule. You don’t want to be known as a “micro-manager” but you are uncertain if the person will complete their task if you give them an independent hand. But you choose to give the person a good deal of independence anyway. The project slips and the direct report has an excuse for the inability to complete the task on time. After several attempts to give this person an independent hand you decide to step in and manage them closely so the task can get done. What went wrong? What should you do differently next time, if anything?
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? Do you have direct reports who behave like this? Should you manage closely or manage loosely? Should you ignore how people want to be managed and just manage to get the task completed?
Over the last several months, much of what I’ve read in business and technology magazines, and much of what I’ve heard from my clients, points to this one issue; how does a technology manager manage to get results and build a sense of empowerment and independence in employees at the same time? Or should a manager even try to accomplish these seemingly competing outcomes?
WHAT TO DO?
In order to answer these questions I first want to establish some common ground. And the first area of common ground is this: I want us to agree that the only tool a manager has is communication. It doesn’t matter if you have hire and fire authority of if you don’t; you still only have your ability to communicate as your tool of influence. Threatening an employee with termination if they don’t get the job done is still just a means of communication. A means called “intimidation”. So let’s agree that as a manager your most powerful and only tool is communication.
If it is true that communication is your only tool, then the next question is “How do you use communication to manage for results without making an employee feel that you do not trust them, that you don’t want them to make decisions; basically how do you manage and yet make an employee feel that they are empowered to make certain decisions on their own?
These will be the questions I’ll address in the next couple of blogs and I’ll use the three examples I presented at the beginning of this blog as examples.
See you Thursday.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/16 at 09:26 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Communication for engineers • Soft Skills for engineers • Soft Skills for Technologists • (0) Comments • Permalink
