Managing conflict with the communication process

Improving communication in the workplace

Managing conflict with the communication process
 

As discussed, the conflict can never be avoided in the workplace due to different viewpoints, only it can be managed to get the things done and to maintain a cordial relationship.

Whatever may be the conflict, how we approach with right communication process makes a difference, and this is more of a state of mind and also be a skill that needs to be learned.
 
Before getting into the different communication processes, we need to have clarity about which conflict we would like to face. Some of the conflicts are not worth to deal with, and it is better to let it go.

The practical approaches in dealing with conflict as follows and each one has their merit depends on the conflict nature/person involved and the situation

1. Passively expressing
2. Aggressively expressing
3. Assertively expressing

Let us understand the insights in each of the communication process

Passively  expressing:
 
When conflict happens between two people, one person takes a passive approach by allowing another person to satisfy their concerns while neglecting themselves. In this process, internally, the person is suffering.
Sometimes this approach is beneficial when the other person is being “power centered” and not in a position to listen to your views.
And also, this approach is useful when you do not want to pay attention to the conflict or if the conflict is not worth to take forward.

For example, if the conflict is to have scheduled review meetings in the morning or afternoon between you and your boss. There is no point in having a debate or justifying your views to keep either morning or evening. In either case, you are going to be the “essential person” in the review meeting. Also, by arguing for this case, you are wasting your energy, and it is better to be passive.
 
Depending on the importance of the issue, you need to weigh relationships vs tasks and then decide to ignore or live with the flow. But you need to be conscious about your inner peace when the conflict happens and the way you deal with it through passive expression.
 
Let us discuss other communication processes next week!

Managing conflict with elevated thinking

Improving communication in the workplace

Managing conflicts with elevated thinking

When conflict happens between two people in the workplace, most of us use  the following methods to resolve the conflict 

1. Forcing others to accept your views with your positional power
2. Passively accepting other views without expressing your standpoint
3. Ignoring and moving on
4. Compromising -settling down in between which way both are not happy
5. Collaborating to find the intention behind others view and finding the solution which is mutually agreeing on happily.

Each method has its implication on the relationship and the quality of work.

One of the ways effective leaders adopt to deal with conflict is “working on elevation.”

For example, when the conflict happens, between the function, say from finance and marketing on delivering the goods against payment only. The conflict resolution could be going along with the opinion of finance or marketing. The effective leader solves the conflict by bringing the customer or organizational wellness into the perspective to resolve the conflict among the functions.

Similarly, in most of the workplace, the conflict between two people would be “who supposed to do what“and the conflict gets into personal friction among the individual. Even though this can be claimed as an organizational development issue, the conflict can be avoided if either one of them thinks from the third angle of the customer or organization’s perspective.

When you think or look at higher needs, the low-level conflict can be resolved. This is one of the leadership qualities in dealing with conflicts.

Let us discuss the communication process in dealing with conflicts by next week!  

Managing Conflict

Improving communication in the workplace

Managing Conflict

As we have discussed improving communication in the workplace in a normal circumstance, another testing point for improving communication effectiveness is during the conflict. Managing conflict by balancing relationships, and the result is art, and some people are good at it.

What is meant by conflict in the workplace?

Conflict is a difference in thought process, interest, opinions about something among the individuals or team

For example,
In one of the client organizations, the senior member wants to increase top-line growth, whereas the new generation executive intends to focus on maximizing profitability than sales growth. That is a conflict of interest among individuals.

Maintenance functional team members asking for releasing machines for maintenance purposes, and the production team refuses to release to meet the delivery targets. That is a conflict of interest among the group.

If you really observe the day to day interactions of every individual and team, there could be a series of differences in interest, values, thoughts, and opinions.

Why does conflict happen in the workplace?

When different people come together for a common goal, the visible difference in thought process arises due to the difference in background, exposure, functional priorities or agendas, or lack of awareness about the task or outcome.

Whatever the intentions of your thought process, there are some people out there to come out with alternative thought processes and opinions. Conflict cannot be avoided, and we need to learn different strategies to manage the conflict.

Sometimes disagreement arises due to positional status or desire to fulfill the ego of an individual.

What will happen when conflict is not managed well?

When we are not managing the conflict, there could be a possibility of

1. Damaging the relationship
2. Developing stress internally
3. Prolonging the decision and affecting the task or goal
4. Creating an environment not conducive of harmony

Let us discuss the methods of managing conflicts, communication methods in next week!

Book review: The Art of Effective communication

Recently I came across this book, and I thought this book is relevant for the discussion on effective communication in the workplace.

Even the author is not familiarly known, the contents are depth, and the relevant topics are covered for making the communication effective.

If you are interested in getting more perspective on improving your communication and influencing skill, recommend it to read, and the kindle version link is given below

https://amzn.to/2o9xjqI

Responding to Feedback

Improving communication in the workplace

As we discussed the minute difference between criticism and feedback on improving communication effectiveness in a professional environment, there are other aspects of improving feedback effectiveness.

As a sender, even though you are keen on giving feedback than criticism, the fulfillment comes only when the receiver takes the feedback also in the right perspective.

How one responds to feedback determines the quality of communication between the two.

For example, your boss or colleague is pointing out some gap in your behavior or performance, you may choose any one of the below responses, and that response determines the quality of communication between you and others.

Taking too personally :

 Feeling guilty and becoming sad about the feedback. The consequence may be that your self-esteem may go down, and you may be cribbing about the feedback. No Improvements on the corrective action or forward-thinking and in turn, no progress in performance.

Defending the feedback giver:

Defending your position with justification to the feedback giver. Likely, you may win the argument as well, but you may lose the sight of the truth of feedback. No improvements in the corrective action or forward-thinking and in turn, no progress in performance.

Analyzing the feedback with a rational approach:

Listening and seeking further clarity from the feedback giver. Getting into introspecting. In this process, your mind tends to analyze the fact and accept the need for corrective action for growth.

The point is the choice of response to feedback determines the quality of communication and progress.
Just be aware of your response to feedback in case if you are receiver!

Criticism Vs. Feedback

Improving communication in the workplace

Criticism Vs. Feedback

As discussed the definition and the reason for criticism in a professional environment, let us understand the alternative for criticism.

What is happening during criticism?

When we criticize others even intending to correct others, the receiver immediately does not recognize it as a process correction than the comments target him/ her as personal. Once he/ she feels personal, he/she start defending their action by reciprocating into arguments or going onto inferior complex or developing personal vengeance with others.

However, in professional life, how can we proceed without judging or correcting others when they make a mistake? As a leader, we cannot be blindfolded with other’s behavior. There is an alternative to criticism, that is FEEDBACK.

Criticism vs. Feedback

There is a  minute difference between criticism and feedback.

Criticism is more about judgment or conclusion, more about targeting the person or harsh in the expression, inclined more on the past.

Whereas Feedback is more about evaluating the process, more about targeting the process and firm in expression and also provide solutions to correct the behavior and future-oriented

For example,

When  your team member makes a mistake in preparing presentations with more grammatical and typo error, as a leader, you have two choices to respond

If you are criticizing, the typical expression would be "You always make a mistake in the presentation. you do not know the basic texting process."

If you are giving feedback, the typical expression would be " I find more mistakes in your presentation and i suggest that you can use the “ spell check” option before you send it to others. Learn about it".

Both statements are pointing out the mistakes to correct the person, but there is a difference in expression, value addition to another person.

Criticism - a barrier for effective communication

Improving communication in the workplace

Criticism - a barrier for effective communication

One of the barriers to effective communication is “ criticism.” The moment we get into criticism mode, either the sender or receiver stop the communication flow.
 
What is meant by criticism?
 
Criticism is our judgement about someone or somebody’s activities and expressing more aggressively.

For example,

In one organization, senior design manager found a mistake of his subordinate's design work, called the person and shouted as follows, “you are useless designer, you do not know the design fundamentals, you are simply wasting my time” ... that is criticism ( Actually the manager only recruited junior designer !!)

In another organization, the business head rolled out a new initiative to his team and said, “ you people are never going to take it to forward as I know you failed in the past in similar initiatives.“ That is criticism.

 In both examples, the words are harsh, mainly hitting the person and not giving any improvement direction. That is the characteristics of criticism.

Why are we criticizing others?

We are making a judgement on others may be with good intention only like
 

1. We want others to improve
2. We like/care them to grow 
3. We may not like the way things are  being done
4. Our inherent nature of finding PERFECTION in everything or only seeing a black dot in entire white space.

Either we are criticizing others knowingly or unknowingly, but in reality, our words and expression hurt others. Criticism is affecting others by lowering the self-image or confidence in their process.

Let us discuss the following next week.

What is happening to the sender and receiver during criticism?
What is the alternative to criticism as our intention is still to make others improve?
The difference between criticism and feedback?
The more delicate aspect of giving feedback

Setting the Context for effective communication

Improving communication in the workplace

Setting the Context for effective communication.

 
One of the common pitfalls for ineffective communication is lack of clarity on the context or background. Assumptions play a significant role in distorting the intention of communication. As a leader, we need to spend more time on setting the context clearly when we communicate any critical instructions or task to others.
 
For example,
some years back, my manager asked me to prepare a plant layout design to accommodate some more facilities. I also got into data collection and micro designing of alternative options. One week later, he called me and asked me to show the proposal, and I replied that still, I was collecting the data. He got annoyed with my response. Then, he clarified that he wanted first the quick conceptual layout for feasibility purpose to get the approval from management, whereas I was working on the detailed, micro-level plan which supposed to be done once conceptually approved. We lost time.

Here the learning is “mismatch of assumptions” by both. Effective communication should be the manager must have communicated the purpose behind his request for layout options, in what phases he wanted to go for and timeline specific. That is the context setting.
 
When we are not setting the context clearly, people will assume based on their level of knowledge and background, and the communication intent may get lost. We may argue that the receiver also should clarify the assumptions, but in reality, the giver knows more, and he/ she has to set the context.
 
Hence, if you want to improve the effectiveness of communication, the context has to be articulated clearly without giving room for assumptions. Setting the context as part of the conversation becomes a habit once you consciously practice.  

Giving undivided attention

Improving communication in the workplace

Giving undivided attention
Having discussed the importance of making other people feel good in your presence and impact of body language on active listening, let us consider other factors on emotional aspects of communication like giving undivided attention during conversation.
 
 Undivided attention:
 
Either you speak to someone, or somebody talk to you, how much care you are giving to the conversation without any other distraction is all about undivided attention.

You might have come across a situation when you are conveying something to your colleagues or someone, and they might be looking at their mobile, laptop or looking around someone or waving hands to someone than listening to your message. That is the example of divided attention. When you undergo a similar experience, either you may lose energy or the other person receives half information. In either way, the effectiveness is lost.
 
Undivided attention can be demonstrated through your eye contact with the other person or prompting the other person or nodding your head when you listen to another person. Even though it looks like good manners, it is difficult for all to follow. Hence this is art or skill to be mastered with awareness and practice.
 
This skill is required, especially when you interact 1-1 basis with others.
 
I have given below the video link indicating the importance of undivided attention during 1-1 conversation. ( as found in youtube source)
 
https://youtu.be/psdlZ4ee3qE
 
Giving undivided attention is a conscious effort and can be developed with awareness and practice.
 

Awareness of body language

Improving communication in the workplace

Awareness of body language and state of mind

As discussed last week on the importance of making others feels good in your presence to improve communication, let us consider the importance of body language on the quality of communication.

Whether in face to face or telephonic conversation, before the actual discussion, we are communicating through our posture, quality of tone, eye contact, and facial expression. That is body language. Body language is something others are seeing from you. Your body language is the outcome of your state of mind at any point in time.

If you are happy, energetic, and with enthusiasm, your posture, tone quality, and facial expression would be pleasing to others. Alternatively, when you are angry, fear, sadness, anxiety, your posture, tone, and facial expression would be terrible to others. That sets the quality of communication.

State of mind and body language are interrelated and good news is that you can change your state of mind by changing your body language and vice versa.

For example, when you feel dull, you use to sit with bending posture and your voice may be low. When you stand up, stretch and take a long breath, you feel relaxed and your voice, the expression will be positive.

The point is that you can change your state of mind by changing your posture and vice versa, and this needs to be aware when you are communicating with others as a conscious effort.

Other aspects of effective communication let us discuss next week!
 

How to display respect to others?

Improving Communication in the workplace
 

Displaying Respect 

As discussed last week, preparing others for listening is the first step towards effective communication, and one of the processes is    " displaying respect to others".

How you can display respect to others?:

There are many ways you can show respect to another person; one of the powerful methods is “ Make another person feel good in your presence” through your gestures.

How you are treating another person will make him feel good about himself, and his listening ability improves when you interact with him.

My experience on the other person’s gesture and my self-esteem as happened some years back.

My colleague and I went to our HR manager to discuss some people-related issues. Before the meeting, we checked his availability. When we enter his room, he was busy on his laptop, and he did not ask us to sit. Despite that we sat for more than 10 minutes, he did not have the courtesy to ask us to wait by stating his urgent work. In between his typing, he instructed something to us regarding the people issues, and we were not in a position to listen, and after a while, we left. In this entire process, he never looked at us, and we felt bad about it.

As we understood his urgency, we expected that he could have requested us to wait for a few minutes, and once he finished the task in the laptop, he could have closed his laptop and had given undivided attention. Those small gestures might have made us feel good.

It is natural to neglect others due to urgent work, but it does not matter for the other person. It is essential how another person is feeling in your presence. It looks like common sense and soft aspect, but that makes much difference in other people’s mind. If you do not make another person “feeling good,” you are not preparing him/her ready for your subsequent communication.

If you are rude, always reacting and unappreciative, then people may not feel self-esteemed in your presence. When people are not feeling good enough in your presence, their listening ability also reduces.

Hence, first, make other person feeling good with you by giving respect through your gestures.

Just be aware of your gestures as we need to evolve as a good human being.

Other aspects of effective communication let us discuss next week!

Emotionally connecting with others.

As discussed, to make effective communication in a professional environment, three factors are essential viz, your subject expertise, emotionally connecting with a person, and logically connecting with facts.

Having discussed the need for developing your expertise, let us understand“emotionally connecting with the person.”
 What is meant by emotionally connecting with the person?

It is preparing yourself and another person to be in a comfortable zone before and during an interaction.

Unless both are in the same level of comfortable zone, there is a chance for misinterpretation of communication.
 
Some of the factors help to be in a comfortable zone.
 Displaying respect / making others feeling good
Your friendly body postures
Your undivided attention to others
Listening and prompting
Addressing the lingering question of what is in it for me
Feedback

Naturally, not all people are capable of deep listening while interacting since many emotions are being processed inside the minds like fear, curious, the anxiety of what next, etc.

When different emotions are being processed internally, listening capability is reduced, and misinterpretation happens. So, it is essential to make others prepared to be in a comfortable zone during interaction by using the above factors.

Even if you are expert in a subject and excellent in logic and not equally good in connecting with others, your communication will get failed. It would help if you learned the art of connecting with others with simple, robust processes in all factors.
 Let us discuss the techniques with simple examples in next week!
 

when will people listen to you?

Often I use to hear from people says,” My team is not doing what I am asking them to do."

This apprehension has a lot to do with our communication process than the other people's attitude and capability to execute.

Let us understand the process of effective communication.

People will listen to us only when our communication contains ALL  the below elements.

• Expertise in the subject or creditability proof 
• Connecting emotionally with the person
• Logically connecting with facts

 Let us discuss in detail each element.

Expertise in the subject or creditability proof :

Naturally, we give more importance to the person who is saying than what is being said. If others believe that you have expertise in the subject, then there is likely a chance for active listening and in turn, execution as per communication.

We need to make others believe that we are the right person to talk about the subject. 

For example, as an accounts manager, if you instruct your team about using accounting software, people are internally checking your expertise on the software. If they feel you do not have sufficient knowledge about software, their active listening will come down.

In most of the organization, it is a challenge for the newcomers to get the confidence of their team since the team has suspicions about the newcomer’s expertise. It is the prime responsibility of the newcomer to prove his /her technical/managerial expertise to win the confidence of the people.

People may respect you for your age or position. However, their mind is working on to gauge your expertise, and accordingly, the intend of communication is received.

Hence, you need to invest your time and effort in developing competence in your core area to improve communication effectiveness

Let us discuss other success factors next week!

Improving communication in the workplace ---Owning responsibility for EFFECTIVE communication

Effective communication is not what and how much you are communicating to others; it is how well your purpose of communication is met.
 
For example, you are instructing your colleague to complete a task in a specific manner. The communication would be referred to as effective communication only when your colleague also understands the intention of your communication and completes the task as per that instruction.
 
Owning responsibility for  EFFECTIVE communication

Our general tendency is that when the task is not completed as per our intended communication, we use to blame others for their misunderstanding or incapability.
 
The first step in improving your communication skill is to accept the responsibility for your communication process. It is not others misunderstand your communication. Still, you have not yet mastered the communication skill to modify your communication process depends upon the others. Since each one is different due to background and exposure, there is always a chance for misinterpretation.
 
How you are customizing your communication style to suit different people, and the environment is all about mastering the communication process.
 
For example, as business head, if you can communicate your organization goal to your second level management team and the operating team such a way that they understand in the same way and emotionally connect with the organization, then you are an effective communicator. It requires effort in mastering the communication process. That responsibility lies with you.
 
The point is that each one of us has more potential to improve the communication process, and first, we need to own the responsibility of effective communication than pointing others. When you own, you are open to learning and experiment on the communication process and techniques.
 
Let us discuss further on the communication process and techniques!

Improving communication at workplace

Most of the interpersonal problems in both personal and professional life are due to the lack of effective communication only. If you analyze any people-related issues in the workplace, one of the causes could be poor communication, either lack of expression or information or wrong interpretation by someone.
 
When you look at effective people, they possess excellent communication skill, and they are striving to improve the communication skill continuously. Communication skill development is a life long exercise, and no one claim that he/ she is the best communicator.
 
Irrespective of your level of communication effectiveness, with awareness and effort, communication skill can be improved over some time.
  
As most people think that communication skill is all about language proficiency.In my opinion, effective communication is the outcome of Effective emotional management + Clarity in thoughts + Mastering language
 
 
 
It is all about managing the emotions well and thinking and articulating well.
 
In coming weeks, let us discuss some of the insights in improving communication at the workplace on the following aspects
 
1.Owning responsibility for your communication
2.Managing your emotions and body language
3.Preparing others to your style of communication
4.Managing conflict and maintain the relationship
5.Moving from commanding to influence in the workplace
6. Setting the environment for better communication
 
Welcome your views, concerns, queries regarding communication in the workplace!
 

Risk of Generalisation

Sometimes, we make a conclusion based on one or two experiences, coin the generalized statements and use them frequently. Eventually, we start believing in those statements as true and approach life as per the generalized statement. In reality, when we question those statements, our perception change.

For example, some of us heard about the following statements in day to day life
 
I always have stage fear
My team never misses the target
Everyone is selfish in politics
Running a business always risky
All are busy on Monday morning.
 
When you look at those statements, all are generalized by us based on one or two experiences, and we start believing as such. In reality, those are not true.

For example, when you say, “ I always have stage fear,” you generalize  based on one or two times fear experience factor as “ ALWAYS.” In reality, many times you might have managed. However, when you communicate the statements frequently, you reinforce yourself as real, and you may not take an attempt to overcome.

Similarly, when you say “ EVERYONE is selfish in politics ” based on one or two experiences, but in reality, there are people with service intentions. However, when you generalize, you start to approach everyone as if they are selfish.

The point is there is no generalization in the world and everything subject to change with reference to time, place and people. Flexibility is required the way we approach the things for improving quality of life!

How are you perceived in the workplace?

In spite of your professional competency, how others are perceiving you in a workplace is an essential factor for your career growth. When you know the perception by others, it will be an eyeopener for you for both on strength and area for improvements.

Sometimes, you may not realize your strength since it is readily coming to you. Similarly, some of the weakness or area for improvements may not be known to you. Others are experiencing both, and they are forming a perception about you. When you know how others are perceiving you, that will give clarity to shape up your personality, which will propel your career growth.

How to know other's perception about you?

• Identify 3~5 people in your organization who are interacting with you more frequently. They could be your boss, your colleagues or your reportees. Some of you may be your wellwishers and observing you from distant
• Approach them with prior permission and tell your intention of knowing their opinions or perspective about you based on the association on the professional front.
• When they give their perspectives, avoid the tendency to defend or justify you
• Thank them for their feedback and consolidate the findings. If same or similar observations are pointed out by many, that could be your strength which you can leverage further or that could be your area for improvement which you can work on that.

The above method is powerful for personal development process you can try it out once in a year.!!

Lessons learned on email communication.

Most of us might have come across the following situation in professional life.

"You might have received an email either from your colleague or boss or team or customer, and the mail content induced anger or frustration within you. Immediately you reacted to the mail by bursting all your emotions by way of words and pressed the sent button. Later on, you felt that you overreacted or subsequent mail communications led to friction in relationships or waste of time. In either way, you might have realized the incident should not have happened."

Some years back it happened to me to receive a mail from one of my clients, and I reacted very harshly in a reply mail. However, fortunately, due to some intuition, I kept in the draft without sending. I had given some time to read the contents again and again. Then I called the client over the phone, and to my surprise, the client responded to my call, patiently explained his views which were quite the opposite to what I interpreted the mail content. The problem was eventually solved and our relationship is continuing till now.

the key lessons I learned from the incident were 

1. Unlike in verbal  communication.we  may not understand the intention of the content in written communication. In verbal communication, we may understand the intention through tone quality to some extent. We need the patience to interpret the contents rightly.
2. We should avoid the temptation to react to mail communications immediately. Email as a tool is not for instant communication We can take time and respond.
3. Even the mail content evokes negative emotions; we can give some time to dilute the emotion Any problem is solvable if it is understood in the right perspective and good state of mind.

To sum up, we should not react to email communications while in emotionally feeling low. Take time and then respond for better relationships and quality of life.