Over the years I’ve asked that first question of more than 500 clients and their 7,500 respondents in face-to-face, one hour interviews. Far more often than not they start out by telling me what my client says of himself—he’s a good communicator. But when I drill down into those responses, as I’ll inevitably do, the picture is usually quite different. The answer was a shock to my system. At bottom their definition of a good communicator is someone who can share information and avoid conflict. That understanding is not going to help people who want to succeed in today’s marketplace.
So why does it matter? In the new economy, where conversations are the new organizational power, the demands for communication expertise have rocketed. It’s not just the obvious flattening of organizations or the need for more bottom-up and less top-down communication. But the challenge of attracting and retaining talented people has spurred senior execs to look at communication very differently. And that’s not all. With product launches, quality control, client relationships, multi-disciplinary relationships all needing nearly daily attention from all levels of the organization, conversations and communication skills have taken on very significant bottom line value. For example, if high-level conversational expertise is not available, potential sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars each may never get to first base.
The consequences of those demands are that once obvious, even “natural,” skills are light-years away from today’s needs.
Take, for example, questioning skills. Distinctions such as yes/no or open-ended/closed-ended questions are kindergarten competencies. Professionals today need to understand how to use questions to build relations and trust with people. How to gather information about complex products or services. How to dig into mindsets and mental models that get in the way of effective decisions. How to find out what motivates a person and what demotivates. How to gather information when an individual is not at all certain that he or she wants to reveal that information. How to sequence questions to open up a situation rather than close it down. And especially, how to get employees to reveal their opinions, explain the data on which those opinions are based and, when possible, ask questions that will open up the conversation to change. Effective business questioning has no relationship to lawyerly interrogating and the judiciary. It’s collaborative, not adversarial.
But astute questioners also recognize that as responses to their questions surface, they will inevitably require them to rethink, revamp and, often, drastically change their own ideas—doing it in such a way that makes for authenticity and productivity.
Nearly every communication skill will require far more learning than any of us ever got in those two basic college communication courses. Furthermore, understanding or knowing the competency has little correlation whatsoever when it comes to doing and executing. In short, effective communication and conversation within the business organization are making demands that few of us are ready to respond to professionally. Spooked by all this information? That’s as good a motivator as anything else.
Flickr photo: Search engine people blog