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Perhaps we are looking at the slow crawl out of the recession: a CBI report published yesterday shows that UK manufacturers are more optimistic as the outlook for factories is at its most upbeat for over a year.  Around 27% of firms are expecting to raise production levels this Autumn -  a sure sign things are improving.

However, a report published in July claims that whilst UK companies are better placed to take advantage of an economic recovery than their US counterparts, it is their communication and skills gap that could let them down.

The McKinney Rogers report, undertaken with executives in over 100 large and medium sized companies, highlights that one of the biggest challenges for companies coming out of the recession will be to ensure their strategic plans are effectively and quickly implemented. 

Businesses expect that their markets will be dramatically changed by the recession and the best will be able to capitalise on the opportunities that this presents. Despite UK companies being relatively able to adapt to the changing environment, disagreement and conflict in senior teams coupled with skills gaps at operational level and weaknesses in communicating internally will hinder recovery in many companies.

Changeworks Communications offer a strong solution to this through a programme of internal communications. Our Embodied Brand programme and our new 3 day course: ‘High Performance through Accelerated Business Conversations’, are powerful ways to accelerate your business out of the recession.

Watch the video to find out more:

the chart widely used wrongly!

’93% of communication is non-verbal’.  How many times have you heard that one quoted on communication courses or by well dressed consultants? In the original researchers own words “Whenever I hear this misquote, I cringe!”

I said a silent ‘hoorah’ to myself yesterday when I heard Albert Mehrabian interviewed on Radio 4′s ‘More or Less’.  For every communication and many NLP courses that I have been on, the trainer has quoted that old ’93% of communication is non-verbal’ blarney. I have been telling everyone not to believe this for sometime now.  Of course, effective communication involves far more that just words – specifically tone of voice, pitch and quality of voice, facial expressions and other non-verbal language are critical in being understood.

But next time you are told that the words that you say only communicate 7% of the message that is understood, you now know that (officially) this is a misrepresentation of the original work and simply untrue.  Common sense tells us that this is not true: how can you possibly expect to instruct someone about how to bake a cake through non verbal communication? But we love to quote simple summaries of complex research and this asinine conclusion is exactly how our brains take a more complex and meaningful ‘deep structure’ and translate it into a ‘surface structure’ that is, at a best, a partial truth.

So, as we know in this deep to surface structure translation, there are deletions, generalisations and distortions: so what has been deleted in this study.  Well Albert Mehrabian’s study was purely done on single word communications to test the effective communication on positive, neutral or negative feelings.  For example, the speakers would say positive, neutral or negative words with a mixture of positive, neutral or negative tonalities and facial expressions. In this way, the study revealed that it was the vocal element (tonality etc) and the facial expressions that people believed (when it comes to communicating feelings), even if the words spoken completely contradicted the feeling expressed through vocal or facial expression. 

 So, let’s take the lesson from 41 years of believing half-truths: sometimes the complex cannot or should not be summarised into simple numbers and a memorable construct or we miss important learnings. 

Listen again to Prof Mehrabian on Radio 4 tomorrow at 8pm or on BBC iPlayer.

the art of conversation

In business, we gain trust, collaborate, learn and increase our collective wisdom through conversation.  But how many conversations are truly productive?  How much time have you or do you spend in meetings where issues aren’t resolved, understanding is not gained and actions fail to materialise?  How many such meetings degrade into a competition about who can get their opinion over in the most persuasive way?

 I overheard a conversation between a marketing director (MD) and a product development director (PDD) recently.  It went something like this:

MD: “You know our new targets for increasing sales in the next quarter? Well, my in my revised marketing plan I recommend a series of high profile webinars, linked to trial offers of the products, to do this. What do you think?”

PDD: “We tried webinars in my previous company and they failed miserably.  And the trial offers will undermine brand values and hit margin. So I really don’t think that will work.  In my revised development plan I have outlined a proposal for upselling the new X product to existing large blue chip users, that way we retain our premium brand image.”

MD: “But you will never attain the targets we have been set with that plan.  The market is too niche.  My plan is more about volume and we have much more chance of hitting those tight targets.”

PDD:  “Well its my brand that you are working with here and I won’t recommend your plan to the CEO.  It’s just too risky.  He will also be worried about the financials behind it.”

And on it goes.  Two people clearly stating their opinions but making some not-so-obvious mistakes to get to true collaboration and thereby missing the opportunity to reach a solution that is bigger than the sum of the parts.

There are some common, yet often hard-to-spot blocks, to productive dialogue and conversation which I mentioned in the previous post.  So how do we turn such conversations around to accelerate business performance and success?

We engage in the dance of conversation.  By balancing advocacy (clearly stating our own opinions and thinking without being attached to them – quite zen really) with inquiry (staying open and curious to the others point of view and ideas even if they are in conflict with ours). 

Here’s a few things to consider:

• Build rapport and stay in rapport when you are disagreeing – if you are able to develop deep rapport, it is amazing what difference it makes
• Undertand how thoughts and emotional state affect our behaviour and non-verbal communication – manage your own state to stay in dialogue even if the other person is annoying or irritating you
• Recognise the logical levels of change and tap into higher motivating levels to work in a more powerful way with the other person (i.e.’chunk up’ to find commonality in beliefs and values or purpose)
• Use language skilfully – recognise any assumptions or inferences that you are making and stick to the facts.  What is missing or what are you ‘not seeing’ ? What are you generalising or distorting?  What conclusions are you jumping to? Go back and just stay with the facts.
• Help others see where you are coming from by sharing your thinking with them clearly – clearly reveal how you came to your conclusions (based on fact). Encourage them to challenge your thinking – welcome and embrace this, as it is only through staying open to challenge that we get to a higher level of reasoning
• Aim for reciprocal inquiry : Actively listen to the other person (i.e. don’t just listen for the gaps in their conversation so that you can get your next point in!) and use questions skilfully to elicit and fully understand the other’s point of view:
  • “What data have you used to get your plan?”, “how are you seeing this differently to me?”, “how did you reach your conclusions?”, “Remind me what your overall purpose or goal is here”

Of course, Changeworks Communications has much more to share about this.  Our three day ‘ABC’ course, “Achieving High Performance through Accelerated Business Conversations” is part of our Embodied Brand (TM) programme.  And teaches you how to have powerful conversations that will change the way you work.

The brain builds new connections through social contact

Did you know that communication is a huge factor in increasing organisational learning and collective intelligence? Through individuals’ participation in dialogue, conversations and even their use of social media, learning is boosted significantly.

A recent study on social learning at the University of Washington shoiws that social relationships play a significant role in adult learning.  Self-managed learning, done collaboratively with high levels of interaction with others is far more powerful than just reading or watching or listening.  This is because knowledge retention, which is an important aspect of learning, especially as we get older, is only possible when accompanied by human interaction.  Adults need to be socially stimulated to learn.

The use of social media such as forums, twitter, blogs, and other online communities is thought to build cognitive flexibility.  As people using these channels and tools are regularly multi-tasking (ie twittering whilst in meetings), it is thought that this behaviour builds new pathwasy and connections in the brain.  Use of such communications tools is thereby increasing innovation in individuals’ thinking, and helping them to learn and apply learning.

If I think about how I have learnt the skill of video and photography: much of it has been ‘self learning’ through a  mixture of ‘hands on’ trial and error (this is the ‘activist‘ in me) the use of online communities such as expert forums, blogs, twitter, online video and then interacting with other individuals via phone, email etc to ask specific questions, share my thinking and find solutions to my problems.  From this I notice that my own learning improves rapidly, but that by communicating with others, the collective wisdom increases.

It is through dialogue and conversation with others, with the help of communication tools such as those provided through social media, that we learn to learn and learn to innovate.  So learning is really about communicating through conversation and dialogue.  And communication, applied in this way, can boost organisational learning and group collective wisdom; and be a source of innovation.

Productive dialogue and conversation within organisations can increase the organisation’s knowledge capital and increase competitive advantage through learning and innovation. But much of organisational communication and conversation is not productive.  Here are some of the common blocks to learning through dialogue and conversation:

1. Too much opinion stating – people attempt to influence others to their way of thinking rather than understand others point of view
2. Defensiveness to having one’s point of view challenged – being too attached to our opinions and not willing to stay open and curious to others’
3. Assumptions and conclusions – rather than focusing on fact, we tend to be blind to missing data and easily make conclusions and assumptions. This leads to a failure to separate fact from fiction.
4. Lack of reflection in action – not many people have yet developed the ability to reflect on one’s thinking in the midst of action (a great aid to improved dialogue)
5. Poor use and understanding of the deep vs. surface structure of language – ie deletions, generalisations, distortions etc that we all make in everyday conversation (heavily related to 3) above)
6. Lack of good questioning and listening skills – to elicit inquiry of other’s perspectives. 
7. Lack of deep curiosity about others views and opinions – especially when they are different to ours.