A More Perfect (Good and Getting Better) Communication
Though the team-building/leadership specialists have provided us with great templates for communication, most do not give us any examples of what the finished product should look like. It can be a complicated topic, but it is my hope that after reading this article and doing your own study, you will come to agree that to truly develop a team, we must work on both our mindsets and our communication. As we look at the specialists’ teachings, I will share simple ways in which to apply them, and then point to how certain mechanisms can pull us towards the opposite of improvement. Throughout the reading, I hope we can keep this article’s title in mind. We cannot achieve perfection, but we can make the world a better place if we work towards it.
In the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, Greg McKeown and Liz Wiseman tell the story of how a group of recruits were asked to go into battle before their training was over. They performed well, but when they were back to take their final test with a different tank leader who was not so good in their communication; they failed. They could not focus because the way in which they were spoken to interfered with their psychological safety. With low psychological safety and high-performance standards, we tend to end up in the anxiety zone. Luckily, they got another chance with the head commander as their lead, and they passed. Many things are affected by the level of psychological safety including team member attitude, turnover, loyalty, and morale; team cohesiveness and success; and leadership effectiveness.
In the class Intro to Psychology, we learn about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. His theory is that we are all naturally motivated towards an upward trajectory on the pyramid, with the goal of making the world a better place for ourselves and others. Although there are lots of things that can inhibit us from being motivated towards this goal, how we are spoken to by the people on our everyday teams is often the most important. Building/maintaining mutual respect is the foundation of a healthy relationship, and it is also vital for maintaining healthy levels of psychological safety. Maslow’s Maslow on Management is “essential reading for all managers”.
In the book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation, Timothy R. Clark talks about these additional aspects of psychological safety. I can remember when I stopped consulting with shop managers because the way they would speak to me would degrade my psychological safety, and hinder my development. I would just do their work myself: ordering the materials, and scheduling deliveries; making important decisions with the help of the builders, homeowners, and inspectors; and even developing/implementing new procedures. Although doing these things was beneficial for my growth, this certainly could have created problems if I had not been as experienced.
This next book was so good that I will use the official review: “In Brave New Workplace: Designing Productive, Healthy, and Safe Organizations, Julian Barling argues that we should focus on creating environments in which employees can flourish, rather than relying on the resiliency of workers to withstand difficult working conditions. Synthesizing centuries of research from scholars such as Abraham Maslow, Fred Herzberg, and Richard Hackman, among others, Barling identifies seven elements that are key to building an exceptional workplace: high quality leadership, autonomy, belonging, fairness, growth, meaning, and safety. Barling illustrates that small changes make a big difference in the long term — perhaps especially during the most trying times — and that effective, evidenced-based interventions are needed to achieve productive, healthy, and safe, work.”
Barling’s chapter on autonomy was particularly insightful. He pointed to studies showing the negative effects of when workers feel overcontrolled, all the way up to an increased incidence of heart attacks. I would like to focus on what is said here about how “small changes make a big difference in the long term”, and how it is most important “during the most trying times”. Mutual respect can slowly or quickly break down, but the impact can be devastating. In trying times when we are stressed or hurried, we tend to put all our thinking into fixing problems and not into how we speak to others. We can make improvements in this area by finding what causes problems, and then developing and applying better ways of communication.
The late W. Edwards Deming spoke of the importance of mutual respect in the workplace during his quest to improve quality of production. He is well known for his work helping the post-WW2 Japan manufacturing sector outperform that of the United States, particularly with the automobile.
The following is a quote from Amy C. Edmondson’s book Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy.
To demonstrate what communication in an authoritarian model looks like, we can look at the way people speak to slaves, servants, and animals. “Get the horses ready.” “Take Mr. Wendell’s coat for him.” “Don’t chase that cat.” When we start sentences with action verbs, it is hard for people to know if we are asking or ordering, even when we are using an asking voice. Considering how important it is that people do not feel overcontrolled, it is important that we use wording that clearly shows that we are asking. Although using careful and clear communication is more important when we are speaking to strangers, and even more important when we are speaking to those who might be dealing with post-traumatic stress; it is also important when we are speaking to the people who we live and work with.
The picture below is from Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 by John C. Maxwell. This is the template that I followed as I worked my way up to be a small project manager in a trades industry. There is a lot from it to reflect on, but we can see in the last line that a leader “asks”. More specifically, this is “asking if” a person can do something. A basic example is, instead of saying: “Go get the box”, we could ask: “Could/Can you go get the box?” If we have less of an idea of whether a person can actually do something, or to increase our chance of getting a reply, the following might be better: “Are you able to go get the box?” You might agree that new team members have high motivation when starting out. When we have high motivation, we are always looking for ways to help our team. We could simply make a statement or ask for a volunteer in this situation: “We need someone to go get the box.” or “We need a volunteer to go get the box?” Concerning the idea of doing things like sitting down together to eat lunch. It can help, particularly if it helps us become more careful in our communications, but it is much better to discover and move towards a careful and clear communication. Here is an article from Dan and Carol on the importance of asking vs telling.
Regarding new or young team members, most might not be very affected by poor communication at first. That usually changes over time as they develop into people who can think and act on their own to complete tasks. It is during this time that communication becomes more important because this is when the need for autonomy increases. An enlightened management understands the increase in this need and strives to use a careful and clear communication from their first day to ensure long lasting mutual respect, which is vital for ensuring the healthy and effective control of a team.
For a large part of my research, I worked in the transportation industry as a Pick-up and Delivery Specialist (Truck Driver). The work involved going to places where communication was often poor while there was also a lot of directions to convey. I will give an example. Instead of saying: “Take these boxes to the airport. Make sure they are secured tight. Don’t go down 1st Street. Make sure you stop and pick up the boxes at the post office on the way back.”, we could say: “We need to take these boxes to the airport. They are fragile so we will need to secure them tight. I would avoid 1st Street because there is construction. (Suggestions work well when there is flexibility in how things are done) We also have boxes to pick up at the post office on the way back.” There is a lot of team-building power in using the word “we” in this way. Sometimes just making a list will be easier and lead to less mistakes: 1. Boxes to deliver to airport 2. Need tight securing (fragile) 3. Construction on 1st Street 4. Boxes to pick up from post office on way back.
Also in this industry, some companies have moved to referring to employees who support the drivers as Driver Support Staff to shift them away from any unhealthy mindset. At least one company has changed the title of those who assist new drivers in learning from Trainers to Mentors. And the people who designed the load offer system appear to have done so according to teaming principles: the driver support staff send the load offer, which includes important things like locations, and pick-up and delivery times. This is equivalent to “Can you complete this task?”. The driver then makes the calculations, and either accepts the load, or requests a change.
One of my favorite talk show hosts is pretty good at communication with most people, unless you are a caller who did not turn their radio down, or you are using speakerphone, or someone he does not agree with. Concerning the new field where we speak to our internet devices, occasionally he will say “Just tell your Alexa to…”. Maybe it would be better if we used careful and clear communication when speaking to internet devices also. It is good practice. The same goes with how we speak to the animals in our lives. We can use Albert’s quote below as a guide, or litmus test.
Concerning the word “please”, here is an excerpt from one of Joanna Faber and Julie King’s books: “If I started the session by telling you all to ‘Please sit still and stop talking’, how many of you would feel warm and cooperative?” No one raised a finger.” The reality of why we use the word “please” is simply that we do not feel right about telling others what to do. Using a statement might work good here: “Our guest is ready to speak now.”
In the books Humble Inquiry and Humble Leadership, Edgar Schein talks about how most surgeons maintain a transactional environment with those they see as under them, consistently telling them what to do. In one instance, a surgeon accidentally removed the wrong organ. Others on the team knew that the surgeon was making a mistake, but it was an environment where even sharing an idea could be considered a threat to authority. I would describe Schein’s philosophy as- approaching others with humility in communication. An example of humble inquiry might start with: “Do you know what box we need?” Staying humble can be difficult. I remember how unhealthy power pulled at me after obtaining my journeyperson license.
If you were wondering if this way of communicating can work with young people, Hunter Clarke-Fields makes the case for it in chapters 5 and 6 of her book Raising Good Humans. I would say the same about Joanna Faber and Julie King in their books. Considering how children are often spoken to in an authoritarian way, I think we should consider how using that method could influence the way that we speak to people in other areas of our lives.
Concerning statements starting with “I am going to have you…” or “We are going to have you…”, this creates an I-vs-you or we-vs-you environment. Team building is about creating an us environment. I am sure many have heard the phrase “there is no I in team”. And looking over McGregor and Ouchi’s theories of management types in the following picture, would you think that theory X management would create theory X employees?
In James MacGregor Burns’ 1978 book Leadership, he differentiates between transactional leadership, where leaders see others as merely people to be used; and transformational leadership, where leaders see others as equals who “can be lifted into their better selves”. One of his last and shorter books was Transforming Leadership. Its last chapter was very influential on me.
The following quotes are from Stephen Covey, the author of the popular book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He speaks of the role of servant leadership and trust in creating a transformative servant leadership culture.
In this next part, I would like to point to how power can move decent people towards not being the best leaders. In the Power Paradox, Dacher Keltner talks about how his team found in their experiments that people under the influence of power became “more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view”. Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist also found that the influence of power “impairs a specific neural process, ‘mirroring’, that may be a cornerstone of empathy”. So, if we have a lowered level of empathy, we might not be as concerned about how we speak to others. Surely, some of this can be attributed to limits of brain resources; if our brains are using a lot of resources in making decisions, there may be less available resources for other areas. I don’t think we can automatically put people who are not careful and clear with communication in the ‘problem with power’ box. We should consider that a lot of influential people get/hold onto power through ultra-competitiveness, and the way they speak is often taken up by their followers. https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain
The following video is about Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s study of the Keekorok baboon troop. It can help us understand how, what some refer to as our reptile or monkey brain, is still a part of who we are even though we have evolved some. Originally there were troop members who were under the influence of power: dominance hierarchy, competition, control, etc.; and it was a time of unhappiness and stress for all the baboons. Then, one day the problem baboons all ate some tainted meat and died. Suddenly the troop was a place of happiness and low stress. Occasionally, a male from a different troop who had the bad behavior would join but would soon learn that things were different there. For decades now, happiness has remained.
Sadly, in my research I came across books that were intended to teach people how to use the psychology of dominance hierarchy to gain more success than others. As we see with the Keekorok baboons, achieving success in this way ends up leading to unhappiness for everyone.
In summary, being careful in how we communicate is vital for building and maintaining mutual respect, which in turn is vital for building and maintaining healthy levels of psychological safety. Being careful in how we communicate is like being careful to avoid potholes when we are driving. If we are not careful, we are more likely to end up with problems which can sometimes seem to be unrelated. I will use Sir Michael Marmot’s words to finish: “What we are trying to create is a better society that promotes human flourishing.” Below you can find just a few more quotes, including two from James MacGregor Burns’ Transformational Leadership. Thank you!
“Leadership self-actualization is pursued through a process of mutual actualization with others, motivated in the words of political theorists Agnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér “by commitment to a value or a purpose that stands higher than the person.” When I wrote my book “Leadership” in 1978, I described this process as one of “leading by being led.” The leader’s self-actualizing qualities are turned outward. They emphatically comprehend the wants of followers and responds the them as legitimate needs, articulating them as values. They help followers transform them into hopes and aspirations, and then into more purposeful expectations, and finally into demands. Leaders, I hypothesized, rise one step ahead of followers in this political hierarchy, but continued progress depends on their ability to stay closely attuned to the evolving wants, needs, and expectations of followers; in short- to learn from, and be led by followers. And it requires a commitment to a process in which leaders and followers together pursue self-actualization. Their wants for belongingness, for esteem, are recognized and satisfied, efficacy is enhanced, and the potential for self-fulfillment- to become everything that one is capable of becoming, as Maslow put it, is activated. What leaders and followers become above all are active agents for change, capable of self-determination, of transforming their contingency into destiny.” -James MacGregor Burns
“The ultimate attainment of happiness is a cherished dream, but as a goal of transforming leadership, we must view it more as a process, a pursuit. The impoverished or suppressed person lives in stasis with meager hopes or expectations, but with acutely felt wants. A leader addresses these wants with challenges to things as they are, with solutions and the ways and means to achieve change, and if this initiative hits powerfully and directly, it will motivate the person in need to action. The leader may be only a family member or a concerned friend, a local cop or a social worker, a freedom leader, and the change at first- only a small step up, but lives begin to be transformed. The psychological process may be as critical as the material. A leader not only speaks to immediate wants, but elevates people by investing in them a sense of possibility, a belief that changes can be made, and that they can make them. Opportunity beckons where none had appeared before, and once seized upon, opens another opportunity, and another. So a pursuit of happiness, happiness as more than a chimera, more than pleasing sensations or gratifications, but as something substantial, something essentially good begins. This pursuit will take many forms amid confusion and uncertainties and setbacks, but one factor is consistent, the needs are defined and their satisfaction sought on the needing person’s terms. The crucial factor in this dynamic comes into play at the outset, the building of efficacy. The wanting person initially suffers not only material but also psychological and spiritual deprivation, feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness, and powerlessness. Nothing seems to work and nothing can be done about it, but as possibilities appear and are realized, feelings of efficacy are nourished. A sense of empowerment fuels the pursuit of happiness. The desire for self-fulfillment is activated, which Abraham Maslow described as people’s need to develop to the full stature of which they are capable. As individuals draw together into action to achieve their needs, their collective efficacy unites them into a transforming force that may surpass the causal role of the original leadership. In this way, people make change, and eventually make history. All this is change from the ground up. In the broadest terms, transforming change flows not from the work of the great man who single-handedly makes history, but from the collective achievement of a great people. While leadership is necessary at every stage, beginning with the first spark that awakens people’s hope, it’s vital role is to create and expand the opportunities that empower people to pursue happiness for themselves. Lau Zi’s wrote in the Tao Te Ching- “Bearing yet not possessing, working yet not taking credit, leading yet not dominating, this is the primal virtue.”” -James MacGregor Burns
