Last week I spoke with a CEO, the head of a big public sector organisation, who does something unusual. She says what she means.
Not everyone likes her direct style, she noted, and when she commenced her current role it took time for the people around her to adjust. But a few years down the track the organisation is high-performing against all metrics and turnover is low. Most interesting of all, however, is the culture that has formed in the executive leadership team.
When the CEO started in her role she made a commitment to her executives that each of them would see out their current five-year contract; she explicitly made it safe for them to think, challenge and act. But she also told them they could expect to receive frank and fearless feedback from her, all the time, and that she expected the same from them.
Now, executive team meetings are a forum for healthy inquiry and discussion aimed at getting to the best decision or outcome for everyone involved. The CEO reflected that her executives keep her on her toes; if her idea is bad, they will tell her. If her plan needs to change, that’s what she’ll hear.
But she also has the backing of a cohesive, united team. She told me about returning to her office after dealing with a challenging off-site incident to find the whole executive team waiting for her in the board room. They wanted to run her through the steps they had taken while she was away to mitigate the emerging issue, but mainly they just wanted to check she was okay.
These are not people, she told me, who socialise together. They are not particularly alike. But they are bonded to each other like glue through a shared purpose, because they have done something radical: They have agreed to say what they mean, and mean what they say.
This is something humans don’t do often enough. We tell ourselves we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, speak out of turn, look silly; we have all manner of excuses for habitually not saying what we mean or meaning what we say.
The problem is that we expect other people to understand what we need and want by listening to what we say. If what we tell them is incomplete, not quite right or a complete misrepresentation of what we really mean, then what are they supposed to do – guess? And how often does that work? You see the problem. This is the paradox that lives at the heart of human interaction. It is why communication is so hard and why it so often goes wrong.
Dr John Ullmen at the UCLA Anderson School of Management writes and talks about the ‘intent-impact gap’, the difference between what we expect the person or people listening to us to think, feel and do as a result of what we say, and what they actually think, feel and do1. We judge our own communication performance on our intent, yet judge others on their impact. And drawing on sociological research from as far back as the 1960s, Ullmen warns that across human interaction the intent-impact gap is not only more prevalent than we think, but much wider than we imagine.
(An interesting aside; Ullmen’s training videos on LinkedIn have attracted more than two million views already2. Professionals constantly grapple with the repercussions of poor communication and are thirsty for knowledge and skills, but organisations are proving slow to get on this wave).
In 2020, how could we narrow the intent-impact gap? How do we start to more often say what we mean, and mean what we say? The old adage, ‘think before you speak’, is more relevant in our fast-talking, hyper-opinionated age than it has ever been.
Ullmen recommends having a clear objective, and being specific about what we want our audience or listener to think, feel and do before we begin the conversation.
I think there’s a necessary pre-cursor step of self-reflection. What biases and blind spots might I be holding, about my subject and my audience, that could get in the way? The next step is to ask lots of questions, to get the facts and learn what other people actually know and need rather than make wrong assumptions. And finally, using the right language and prepared messages, to make a subtle but powerful shift: Speak to the facts gathered and the feelings revealed, rather than the opinions I hold.
We could all do with a little help to learn to say what we mean and mean what we say; to evaluate ourselves less on the intent with which we set out, and more on the impact our communication has on others. It’s on my list for 2020 (it’s always on my list. Yes, I’m a nerd)!
Whatever is on your list, best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Thank you for reading my blog in 2019, and thanks especially to those of you who have replied with comments and insights. Hearing from you is a highlight.
See you in 2020.
Jayne