Section 3: Communicate Openly With Anyone and Everyone

Overview

When Anzo was first hired, it was clear he was a highly intelligent person and could bring a lot of value to the group. After several months, though, his co-workers realized they were always giving and never getting. The problem was that Anzo thought his value to the company came from being smarter and more capable than the other employees. He would give information to his boss and others in power but he would hold it back from others he perceived as his “competition.”

This created a large rift within the team. Others stopped communicating with Anzo because they weren’t receiving much value from the effort. So Anzo became less effective and more frustrated. Eventually, he was moved to a different location because he didn’t work well with his team.

Communicating effectively can be a big challenge because there are different ways of interacting in different contexts. The healthy approach is to be open and honest. This tends to be returned by others to create a stable, trusting relationship. Clearly, Anzo did not put any effort into developing an open, sharing relationship.

It is generally true that people value honesty, especially when they are brought together in teams to achieve a common purpose. This helps build confidence and openness in the team and results in efficiency and alignment.

Communication is a fascinating topic because many (perhaps most) “people problems” stem from faults in communication. Every individual has a different style of communication, yet we rarely modify our own style to adapt to that of others. Instead, we often assume that others understand and react to communication the same way we do. To help remove this blind spot, first examine others’ styles and then change accordingly. Many assessments and excellent books are available to help you accomplish this.

Second, you should be as open and forthright as you can. This creates a large number of people who tend to trust you and your motives. They will tend to give you the benefit of the doubt when you make mistakes.

This gives you greater freedom to be self-managing and to chart your own career course within the corporation. You also will create healthy relationships with a number of people with whom you can discuss contentious issues without causing damage.

A manager needs to be aware of some special requirements. When unable to disclose some information, she or he should follow reasonable conventions about what to withhold. For instance, a manager might not be able to disclose significant decisions about a reorganization until the appropriate time. This makes sense because in this case employees must all be informed at the same time or in a certain order. When a good manager does communicate a tough decision, he or she does so honestly and openly, based on a solid understanding of the supporting context.

How should a manager communicate a decision he or she might personally disagree? First, understand others’ points of view and the full context behind the decision. As was discussed in Secret 2, the decision-makers usually do have reasons and logic behind their actions. Second, it might help to communicate the process you personally went through to understand and support the decision. Third, if it is important not to communicate doubts and disagreements, don’t. It is a matter of placing the larger, more important goals of the organization ahead of short-term disagreements. Of course, there also can be times when you believe you must stand true to your own principles and integrity. Just recognize you may be sacrificing your clout in the organization and negatively affecting others around you when you choose to enter battle with managers above you.

This is quite different from acting as if you support a decision with which you disagree. If you are merely acting, then there will be many ways (inflections, body language) your employees will understand you are not being authentic and honest. Typically, this will result in huge damage to the morale of the team and the credibility of the manager. And, it will place you even further behind than when you started.

A manager’s display of cynicism can cause incredible damage. If it is important for employees to support something, then having their manager display lack of buy-in often will lead to organizational failure. In other contexts sarcasm, humor, and even cynicism can be acceptable as long as they do not lead to fracturing the organization. At times, they can be useful communication tools, but they are powerful and can do damage if applied improperly.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

—Theodore Roosevelt, US President