The Funniest Joke About Communication I Ever Heard

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Just Can’t Communicate

I heard Zig Ziglar tell this joke about communication many years ago.

A woman meets with an attorney and says “I want to divorce my husband!“

“OK” the attorney responds, “let’s start with a few questions first.”

“Like what?” she asks.

“Well, do you have any grounds?”

“Yes, we have about 5 acres out in the country.”

“No, I mean do you have a grudge?”

“No, but we have a nice, wide carport and a storage shed.”

“Let me ask this a different way. Do you have any complaints about him?”

“Like what?”

“Well, does he beat you up?”

“No, I’m up at least an hour before him every day.”

“Well, what about your role here? Do you ever wake up grouchy?”

“No, when he’s in a bad mood I just let him sleep.”

Exasperated, the attorney finally asks, “Why exactly do you want to get a divorce?”

“Well,” she replies, “the guy just can’t communicate!”

Communication Fail

Our biggest struggle with communication is when we simply assume it happened. You can hear the assumption in the language people use. You may have heard statements like this from others or even coming out of your own mouth. I know I have.

“It made perfect sense to me!”

“How could I be any clearer?!”

“Why can’t you understand this?!”

“What do I have to do to get through to you?!”

“Do I have to say it again?!”

Yes, You Do

So the assumption that communication happened just because we said something is a strong impulse. And despite evidence again and again that it doesn’t work that way, we persist. And communication fails.

Did you ever play the Telephone Game when you were a kid? You may remember how it’s played. Everyone sits or stands next to each other. One person whispers something in the next person’s ear, usually some silly phrase or complex sentence. That person then whispers it to the next and so on until everyone hears it. The last person then repeats what they heard, which is usually only vaguely related to what the first person said.

Why does it come out like that? Shouldn’t the message successfully pass along accurately every time? In fact, it almost never does. Here are some reasons why:

As listeners, we are not always focused as much as we should be on what is being said. Since the speaker can only say the phrase once, we have to rely on what we think was said.
Related to that, our brain tends to fill in the unfamiliar with the familiar. So words that were missed get substituted with words we know.
As speakers, our own tone, inflection, pronunciation, and mindset effect how the words come out.

Communication Success

Relating that to our daily communication, what we say and how we say it has a great effect on what people hear. The environment in which the conversation took place makes a difference. The mindset of the listener also has an impact on what they hear and how they interpret it.

So for communication to be successful it is important to be aware of our own emotions and attitudes. We must also be mindful of the emotions and attitudes of the listener. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who is angry or upset or fearful or stressed? How about when you were angry or upset or fearful or stressed? How well did that really go?

A farmer who wants to grow crops doesn’t just throw seeds out and hope they grow. The farmer will prepare the environment where he wants things to grow. He might till the ground so the dirt is fresh and airy. He might fertilize and water the ground. When spreading the seeds, he might make sure they end up in the right place for optimal growth. When he sets up the environment correctly, anticipates weather and other conditions that can negatively impact the crops, and provides ongoing care then the farmer can enjoy a successful harvest.

Tips for Better Communication

If we truly desire to communicate successfully, like a farmer sowing seeds, we have to make sure we have the right environment.

Check Your Own Emotions. When we are emotionally charged we are more concerned with having our say than we are with communicating.
Check the Listener’s Emotions. While sometimes it is unavoidable, it’s best to not attempt communication when the other person is experiencing high emotions before the conversation begins.
Choose Words Familiar with the Other Person. You ever have someone talk to you with jargon totally unfamiliar to you? People connect better with words they already have a relationship with.
Ask for Understanding. Don’t assume they know what you mean. Ask them to repeat back what they hear you to say. It keeps them involved in the communication and it ensures that it actually occurs.

So, I’m curious. What’s the funniest or dumbest thing you have heard someone say during a communication breakdown? Share it here in the comments or email me at psimkins@BoldlyLead.com.

Five Tools Every Leader MUST be Using to Boldly Lead Their Team

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And How to Add Them to Your Toolbox

It is complicated and challenging being the leader. Especially a leader with a position of authority.

Demands are everywhere. Demands for more efficiency, more productivity. Do more with less. Keep everyone engaged. Reduce turnover. Make a profit. Get the reports in on time. Get more clients or customers. Answer emails. Hire good people. Get rid of unproductive employees. Fix problems.

It’s easy to get lost in all that. It’s also easy to forget what you were put there to do to begin with.

Your primary job, no matter your title, is to Boldly Lead your team.

What does it mean to Boldly Lead?

To Boldly Lead means to be strong and courageous when facing the demands of the day. It means to always place your primary focus on the people in your team and providing them with what they need to accomplish their goals or deadlines. It means to protect your team when they need protecting.

To Boldly Lead means grabbing the corners of the blanket and shaking them forward; giving them hope and vision. It means navigating for them and bringing clarity in all situations.

To Boldly Lead means you place people first, because it is only through your people that things get done consistently and productively.

[tweetthis hidden_hashtags=”#BoldlyLead” url=”http://ow.ly/B5b3309TP7a” display_mode=”box”]To Boldly Lead means that your people are your highest priority at work![/tweetthis]

Boldly Lead with Critical Skills

If you want to Boldly Lead your team, there are tools you need to be ready to pull out and use constantly and consistently.

Empathy

To show empathy for others means that you have an interest in and relate to other people’s feelings. We show concern for when members of our team have issues, especially when those issues have a lot of emotional content. In an interview in Success Magazine, noted author Simon Sinek says it is as simple as saying the words “Is everything OK?”

He gives a great example that he documented in his book Leaders Eat Last. In an interview with a Marine Corp officer about what makes them so special; why every Marine is ready to lay their life on the line for each other. The officer said you could go to any Marine Corp mess hall and you would see that the least in rank eat first and the high officers last. Putting the needs of our team members – especially their emotional needs – before our own goes a long way towards showing that they are important. What you get in return is commitment.

Start with asking. “How are things going?“, “Are you ok?“, “How are you feeling?” And then listen. Don’t judge, don’t try to fix.

LISTEN.

Emotional Intelligence

More than just a buzzword, it’s an important skill for a leader.

Author and psychologist Daniel Goleman identifies five qualities you must demonstrate to achieve a level of emotional intelligence:

Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Motivation (or passion)
Empathy
Social Skills

In other words, it’s not just enough to be self-aware (“I know I am a jerk sometimes”) we must also learn to control that and have the passion for others to want to, the empathy to understand how it impacts others, and the social skills to implement it.

Emotional Intelligence can only be effectively achieved through a commitment to daily personal growth. Develop a plan of intentional growth that helps you become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and follow a specific plan of daily improvement.

Strategic Planning

This is where vision and navigation come in. Seeing the road ahead and the path to take. Anticipating the roadblocks and obstacles and knowing how to overcome them or get around them. Coaching your team on how to move ahead and stay consistent with your mission and values.

Communication

Author and former presidential speech writer James Humes says it best: “The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

Is it any wonder that survey after survey, year after year, identifies communication as the number one skill sought by employers?

Learn and develop active listening skills. Study not just what to say but how to say it. Understand how personality types affect how we communicate. You will use this tool every day, all day.

Calendar

What does a calendar have to do with being a leader?

Use it to schedule your personal growth time (minimum 30 minutes a day), your reflection and navigation time. Everything you absolutely need to do.

I don’t know who originally said, but I heard it from Michael Hyatt: “What gets scheduled gets done.”

What else? Fill in the calendar with every person’s birthday, partner’s birthday, anniversary, children’s birthday, work anniversary, and other significant dates. Add a reminder to each. Make a point of recognizing each of them.

Making them important by remembering what’s important to them.

What tools do you use to Boldly Lead your team? Identify tools you need to add to your toolbox. How are you going to change things?

Share your thoughts here or email me at psimkins@BoldlyLead.com.

Employee Engagement Is Not That Simple

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Oversimplification Can Be Dangerous

I Can’t Believe They Tried This!

Reading an article in the Huffington Post recently, the author tried to simplify the definition of a popular buzzphrase used in the corporate world. The term was “Employee Engagement”. They said simply that it was the new way of saying “Internal Communications”.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Making it simple is not always helpful. In this case, it could be fatal!

The article was titled The Growing Importance of Managers in Employee Engagement by Gail S. Thornton. Now Gail is a communications professional, so I can understand her tendency to classify it as a communications issue.

illustration of a Boss talking with employees

Employee Engagement – More Than Communication

And to be sure, excellent communication is a critical part of fostering employee engagement. But it’s not the only thing. To focus just on that component of employee engagement is similar to just relying on your belt buckle to hold your pants up; without the belt it’s not going to be very effective at accomplishing the mission.

Communication is the promise ring of employee engagement, but caring is the diamond. Leaders must communicate, but the communication rings hollow if they don’t truly care for people on their team. I know lots of great communicators who don’t really care for the people in their organization; communication is just a tool for manipulation.

[snaptweet]Communication is the promise ring of employee engagement, but caring is the diamond. -Paul Simkins[/snaptweet]

When a leader cares and communicates with care, real meaning is brought to the communication. The communication involves listening a lot more than talking. It involves open pipelines where people are free to speak up and speak out. When that happens, people feel they count and are counted on. That’s when engagement is possible.

There are other factors as well; such as knowing when to empower and when not to, refusing to be a rescue boss, providing guidance, making expectations clear, and creating a safe place to fail.

[snaptweet]Saying that employee engagement is simple is to assume your employees are simple. They’re not. And neither are you by the way. -Paul Simkins[/snaptweet]

Communication is an important factor of employee engagement, but don’t go thinking that it IS employee engagement.

What factors do you consider when you look to create an engaged workplace? How do you decide what to communicate and when?

Zombie Nation Rises!

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Beware Your Workplace Zombies!

Are you worried? Even if you don’t believe in Zombies (and I don’t) you should be worried. A Forbes Magazine article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2013/06/26/most-american-workers-are-zombies-but-theres-hope/) released this week summarizes a Gallup survey recently conducted that found that 70% of US workers are “disengaged” from their employment. In other words, they have become mindless zombies at work, going through the motions of their jobs. Now the poll defines engagement as being actively involved with the company goals and vision, feeling passionate about what they do, and working to innovate and improve the company. I would add working to improve the company bottom line as well. So by contrast disengaged means that they are simply doing the minimum; showing up, doing what is required and nothing more, not applying any creative thought. And the extreme is worse; they are UNHAPPY in their job and more than likely exhibiting that in a variety of ways, including a reduction in productivity. They estimate that this is costing us collectively HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS through lost revenue and lost productivity. The real concern is that the trend seems to be growing instead of shrinking. And it is not relegated to simply large corporations.

Cure for Zombie Nation

The good news is that there is HOPE! There is a CURE FOR ZOMBIFICATION! And it begins with the LEADERSHIP of the organization; whether the executive level of a large corporation or the owner of a small business. You can re-engage your employees and turn this around. The secret lies in FIRE. No, not firing them all and hiring someone else; you are simply getting rid of a known in favor of an unknown; not to mention the expense involved in recruiting and hiring a new employee. It also doesn’t lie in lighting a fire under them. Threats and intimidation has proven time and again to be highly ineffective in both the short and long-term in today’s workplace. In fact, I don’t think it was ever truly an effective tool. The real solution lies in LIGHTING A FIRE IN THEM! The employee who finds their own motivation and passion will awake from their zombie slumber, re-engage, seek performance excellence, improve their productivity, and as a result positively impact YOUR BOTTOM LINE. In fact, the Gallup poll strongly suggests that the highly engaged employee leads to the kind of growth you desire for your organization. But you cannot provide this motivation, it has to come from within the person. All you can do is provide the environment in which an employee can find that motivation. Employees find motivation and passion when the feel hope; hope for their future, hope for the future of the organization. If you can provide that, you will begin curing the zombification process.

Administering the Cure

So how do we get there? Here’s a some things to consider that have been proven over time in many situations to provide the right environment for employee engagement.

Communication

For too many managers and business owners, the extent of their communication with their staff consists of mumbled good mornings and “how are sales today?” Employees respond to open communication; this is especially true if you employ GenX and GenY people. You need to do more than just acknowledge their presence, you need to acknowledge their impact….to them directly and also indirectly by going public with it. You need to communicate your vision to them. How can they have hope in their future and the organization’s future if they don’t know where it is you want to go with it?

They also need to know that the door is open for two-way communication. They need to have confidence in the knowledge that their opinion and input is valued. They need to know they have room to make mistakes and to take responsibility for those mistakes and learn from them.

Mostly, they need to hear that they matter to you and the organization. If your attitude is that employees are a dime a dozen, be prepared to set aside those dimes because it will be all you will be able to pay because it is all you will have left.

Connecting

Confidence in open communication occurs when you have made a connection to your employees. When you take the time to talk with them, learn about them and their situations and their hopes and dreams, then you are able to connect with them and build that confidence in a relationship. Building that relationship does not necessarily mean going out for beers together, but it does mean recognizing that there is, beyond all the titles and roles, a person there who feels things just as personally as you do. You are invested personally in what you do which is why YOU are productive; how is that any less for your employees?

Focus on Strengths

This was mentioned in the article but has been a mantra of mine for some time. In job interviews and performance evaluations, the topic of strengths and weaknesses is brought up and then never addressed again. In the evaluation, we identify what we think their weakness is and then tell them to work on it. STOP! If you make an employee focus on their weaknesses you are creating two negative situations; one is that you have placed focus on their deficiencies instead of on where they make a positive impact and the other is they will ignore bolstering their strengths to focus on improving their weaknesses. Where are they the most productive for you, in their strengths or in their weaknesses? And let’s say they do work on their weakness, by how much? At best, they move from poor to mediocre. Meanwhile, their strengths are not improving and their productivity is lower and they are unhappy because they are not in their sweet spot. Find ways to increase their strengths and team them with others (inside or outside) to overcome their weaknesses.

Reward the Behaviors You Desire

Too often, we only focus on employees when something is wrong. So we emphasize the wrong behaviors because that is the only time anyone pays attention. It’s the same with your kids; if the only way a child gets attention is when they do something wrong (and they CRAVE attention) what do you think they are going to choose to do? You can’t ignore bad behaviors, but you can minimize the attention spent on them and spend more time focusing on the positive impacts. Spend time EVERY DAY catching them doing right.

Immediate Action

This is especially a challenge for small business owners but I have found it is often a challenge for corporate management as well. The time to act is now. Go to your calendar and open up some time to casually sit and talk with your employees one-on-one. Not in your office, but in a breakroom or on a bench somewhere or take them to a coffee house. Talk about where they feel they are most effective and ask them how you can help them be more effective. Assure them that they have value. Do it today, because the longer you wait the less likely you are to do it. What you don’t want to do is look back and say, “I shoulda…”

Make YOUR day more productive by applying the zombie cure.

Remember to KISS

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I like the title here; not only because it is somewhat catchy, but also because this week Sherry and I celebrated 18 years of marriage. She has been a tremendous blessing in my life and has believed in me even when I have not always believed in myself (yes, it happens to everyone). So, certainly a kiss has been on my mind.

It’s also an acronym, of course, for Keep It Simple, Silly, the admonition originating with either the Navy or Lockheed’s Skunkworks depending on who you believe. It’s a reminder for me at least that in the midst of complexity I need to fall back on simplicity. Especially when I communicate, I need to keep it simple. As a speaker, there is a tendency to want to create complex, intricate phrases and flowery statements because it is important that we sound like we know what we are talking about. But my objective isn’t to boost my reputation, it’s to communicate something I believe is important enough to share. Therefore, I need to keep my message simple.

I have been participating in a discussion on LinkedIn with other professional speakers about whether you should memorize your speech and just get the main points down in a outline and speak off the cuff. Naturally, it is a polarizing topic for those who care about those kinds of details. The pro-memorize people believe it helps you sound more professional and polished. The pro-outline people believe it makes you sound less rehearsed and you speak more from the heart.

For me, I have a hard time writing it down unless it comes from my heart. And I can’t possibly do an outline, it’s just not the way I think. And I think it misses the point. The point is to communicate with your audience; not just spew information, but communicate. To communicate, you have to first connect with the person or audience to whom you are speaking. Without that connection, your words fall basically on deaf ears. You may get nods of acknowledgement, but you won’t get action and you certainly won’t get any commitment. And this is true whether it is a speech before a large audience, addressing a board of directors, one-on-one with an employee or boss, or speaking to your best friend or your spouse or child.

Here’s the thing: no one connects precisely the same way as someone else. And this is where the discussion on LinkedIn goes awry. For some, the only way they can have the opportunity to effectively connect with someone is if they feel secure in the words and expression and may only get that from memorization and rehearsal. Others may feel uncomfortable delivering by rote and if you are uncomfortable then there is no way you can make anyone else comfortable; therefore you won’t make a connection. So those people work best by speaking from the heart, letting the words flow as they may. So the point is don’t worry about choosing this way or that way; let your mind and heart get together and create the flow. And don’t forget the most critical way you communicate: LISTEN!