Communicating in a Human Way
When it comes down to it, many of our problems in the workplace are due to bad communication. Learning how to communicate well is a skill worth learning, especially if you are a leader of a company. Traci and Rob discuss how to develop those skills and the best models of good communication.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast. Where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because, it's not just business—it's personal too.
Traci:
Hi, and welcome back to the Overly Human podcast. I am one of the cohosts, Traci Barrett from Navigate the Journey. And joining me as always is my partner in crime Rob Harr from Sparkbox. And we are so happy to be coming back together and sharing our thoughts and experience. Today's topic is going to be about communication.
How are you Rob?
Rob:
I'm good Traci. Doing real well. Living the dream.
Traci:
Living the dream in Columbus—no, Dayton. What did I just say?
Rob:
You said Columbus.
Traci:
Can we edit that out.
Rob:
It's close.
Traci:
Somewhere in Ohio, you are living the dream.
Rob:
Somewhere in Ohio things are good.
Traci:
That was a great example of communication or miscommunication, dialing it back and then restabilizing ourselves. So-
Rob:
You caught yourself midway through that.
Traci:
I caught myself midway. Apologies. So, excited to talk about communication today. How about you?
Rob:
Yeah. This is something that I can't tell you how much time and energy has gone into thinking about this topic, trying to figure out how it works for the humans here at Sparkbox and all of my other relationships that exist. So this is something that I think that when we were putting together, kind of topics to talk about that... Yeah, we had a, I think a list of 25 topics and this was one that was like, "This has to make the cut."
Traci:
Oh, absolutely. It's a repeated theme and my work and... I mean it's funny because it's such a workplace topic. But it's just such a human topic. It's just every relationship aspect of our lives, even our small interactions at the grocery store. Everything revolves around how we communicate. And it is a skill that we have to think about. We have to be intentional about. We have to learn. And it affects how we're perceived and how we perceive others.
Rob:
Oh, it totally does. And, one of the things that I'm constantly reminded of is, every time that we hire somebody new or bring someone new into a group of any size, the number of communication paths goes up by the number of people who are already there. And it just gets crazy. How complicated it gets, how quickly it gets. For me, a little bit of lessons learned was... When we started Sparkbox, 11 years ago now, we all sat in one big room together. And communication just happened passively. You actually just couldn't stay out of everybody else's business because you all sat in one room. There was no walls, there was no privacy. And for all the problems, sometimes that could create. It also meant that everybody knew what was going on all the time.
Traci:
Exactly.
Rob:
And now that we're a grown-up company I guess, or as close as we've ever been, with 51 people as of Monday. And it's crazy how many times we have to say things just to make sure everybody's heard the same message.
Traci:
Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting even to think about that growth trajectory for you guys. And then also to think about the patterns and trends around communication and the things that have affected you that weren't even your choice like technology, right? So not just the fact that your team has grown, and that adds a layer of complexity, but then how you communicate to each other and to your clients has changed. So, now you're using things like Slack and email much more frequently than you probably did when you first began. You also have remote employees.
Rob:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Traci:
That's a whole other layer. So when you think about how complex our communication patterns and tools and avenues have become, it's... Obviously all of it was entered into the world as a way to ease communication, to make things faster and easier. But with that, when we're thinking about it from a human perspective, there's a lot of things that can trip us up and cause issues and lack of communication or lack of clarity on top of just our human relationships. Because we have all of these avenues and we're inundated with so much coming at us every day.
Rob:
Yeah, that's for sure. And just the simple idea of, like you said, the remote stuff is a whole other level of challenging and... Like how do you communicate and have tough conversations with people that you don't get to see that often. How do you build... So much of that with remote stuff comes down to the whole idea of trust.
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
And how do you build that without some co-location and you miss some of the emotional regulation that happens when two people are in the same space. And it's something that I’ve thought a ton about. I definitely don't think I have all the answers but, we've gone so far that, for a lot of our communications stuff anymore to actually build like an internal communication plan... Almost marketing plans internally, to talk about things.
One of the statistics that I keep hearing over and over again is that, it takes what, seven times for somebody to really hear something.
Traci:
Yes, yes. And oftentimes as leaders you feel like, "Oh my gosh. I'm saying it so many times that either I feel uncomfortable. Because I'm giving off the impression that people aren't intelligent enough to have heard me the first time, or I can't believe they don't remember, because I've said it three other times."
But as soon as you get that statistic in your mind, I think it really helps. Because, instead of thinking, "Oh, I'm saying this for the sixth or seventh time," you just see it as part of your job as a leader and how you should be communicating. Knowing that clarity is the kind way to be a leader. And ambiguity is very unkind in the workplace.
So, one of the best favors you can do for your coworkers, is to communicate, to over communicate. And that helps solve some of the signs that we see when we know there's a communication problem in a team. We see things like, work is duplicated or things fall through the cracks or we see projects at the end, look not anything really what we thought they were going to look like. Are people checked out or shifting priorities. You see one group of people has this thing as a priority, another group of people have something completely different. Those are all the signs that there is a lack of clarity. That we haven't been communicating properly or more fully as leaders or as coworkers with each other.
Rob:
Yeah. Like you said, I think it's really tough because, we're a team of 50 and everybody needs to hear me say something seven times. And usually a lot of different ways to be said verbally, make sure it's written down somewhere, make sure it's referenced. Because everybody consumes those things so differently. And one of the things that we've had some that's interesting challenges with, is even how that sits on top and next to growth of the company. So we've said things a bunch of times, everybody heard us and we hire somebody new and they haven’t heard it at all. And what does that look like?
Traci:
It's also, understanding that you're a team, right? So, not all of that weight can sit on the shoulders of the leaders. It needs to sit on the shoulders of everybody on the team. So if we're all looking out for each other, and we all have each other's best interest in mind, then we're going to communicate and make sure everybody's on the same page. When the problems arise, when people get too siloed, or they start caring about their own projects or they're prioritizing themselves over maybe the mission of the organization, then we start to see divisions and communication starts to fall away.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
But when we are a high performing team and we're looking out for each other, and the interest of the agency or the company, then, people are more engaged and they really want to communicate and make sure that new person who just joined the team, doesn't feel left out in the cold or doesn't understand what's going on. They'll care for that person.
Rob:
And that's ultimately what we want, right?
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
We want everyone to become... To have part of that communication plan and know what they're communicating. The other thing that I think a lot about when we talk about communication, and you mentioned this a little bit ago and I picked up on is the ambiguity, right? Like not leaving things unsaid or not clear. And one of the things that I know happens is, if you don't tell the complete story, people write their own.
Traci:
Right.
Rob:
And some of the things that I've heard over the years about the story that people have made up in their head and we've not, been complete or explained enough, it's been some crazy, crazy things. Things that when I hear them I'm like, "Oh, that's not even attached to reality. That's impossible." But the context that we have as people is not anybody else's context. They're not coming with the same understanding.
Traci:
Yes. Yes. And one of the number one communication problems that I see on teams is, that either you're not communicating fully, or you over-communicate. Meaning... And usually the not communicating fully usually comes from the leadership at the top. Communicating too much, crossing lines, maybe gossiping, sharing things you shouldn't. Those types of over emotional expression tends to happen amongst the team. Right?
So it's an art, right? Emotional intelligence is all about balance. And so, you really want to find that balance of communication. So, the example you were using is, when we don't communicate fully, meaning we give our teams full context. Right?
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
Because in our minds, in your mind, say you're coming to tell the team, make an announcement on a certain decision, you've thought about that decision for weeks maybe. Hours upon hours, right? So you've ruminated over the whole thing. But you're not compelled to tell them your whole thought process and how you got to the decision. Typically leaders will just kind of give the nuts and bolts and that's it. Move on. What we miss out on that is, we're not really laying out the full context for people. So they fill in the blanks on how you got there. Or they fill in things that aren't true. And we have a tendency with certain paranoias and whatnot, not knowing. Sometimes we will paint a more negative picture than a positive picture on why somebody may have come to that decision or made that choice.
And so you're absolutely right. Taking a breath, giving the full context, and in the whole picture of how you got to a certain point, and really communicating fully to your team, is so helpful. And in that way, they're not going off and then amongst themselves over communicating, talking about it, filling in their own blanks and painting a story that's off base.
Rob:
Yeah. That's totally true. It's like how do you... Because you're right. Like you don't make decisions on a fly. You think about things, you process, you do all that. And that's it's easy to skip over some of the, either the givens that you assume that everyone has or things that you forgot because they were early thought process step for you.
One of the things that we've started doing that's worked really well for our internal communication here at Sparkbox is, since we have some regularly scheduled ways for my business partner, Ben, and I to communicate to the team... We do these monthly coffee hours. Is we have a quick section where we go through each month and talk about things we're thinking about and why we're thinking about them.
And those are things that we're trying to foreshadow, potential later decisions or policy changes or things we're going to do, without having the nuts and bolts figured out yet. It's just really simple stuff like, we're in the process right now of rethinking our sick time policy. So, the last month I sat down and said, "Hey, by the way, I think this is something we're thinking about. This is why we're thinking about it. I don't know where we're going to end up yet, but just know that, don't be surprised when the next coffee hour or two, when I come back and say, 'Hey, this is the new policy for this.'" We started doing that about six months ago. We started seeing that trend where people were like, "Well yeah, you told us it was coming. We just didn't know what the details were yet."
Traci:
That's great. And do you feel that opens up the opportunity for people to speak in? It gives them more of a voice to say, "Hey, here are my thoughts. Here's my two cents," while you're contemplating these decisions.
Rob:
Yeah. I think it totally has. We also have office hours every single week that we open up for the team. And usually after, we're doing some of that foreshadowing of things to come, somebody will show up and be like, "Hey, I've got a couple of thoughts." And one of the things that I think that I've learned over the years is, sometimes just being in a place to listen to people's thoughts and hear them, even if you take pieces of that. Or maybe you aren't able to, for whatever reason, they still feel heard. They feel like there was an opportunity to speak into it.
Traci:
And all the research shows that, that is the most powerful tool for employee satisfaction, is being heard. When we do research, we find that employees actually... It's not that they have to be heard and their opinion has to be adopted. Like what they want to happen, has to happen. That's actually not top priority. What's top priority is, they're just heard. So if you decide something different than what they suggested, that's okay. Because they feel like you heard them and you weighed up the options, and you made a decision. Where people become completely disengaged and dissatisfied, is when they have no voice at all. So even if they agree with the decision you made, if they haven't been heard, they feel there's a certain disconnection there.
Rob:
Making people feel like you're good at communication and good communication is happening, is there're feelings attached to it, right? There are so many times where you can point back and I can think of clients and employees, different things where somebody in the moment will say, "Well, you never told me that." And it does zero good at that moment for me to point out say, "Well no. I told you exactly here." Because they still didn't feel they heard it in the way that they wanted to communicate. And that does not changed their perception of what's going on right then.
Traci:
Right. And that goes back to something you mentioned earlier, which is trust. I mean trust is the foundation of every healthy team. And how do we cultivate trust or build trust on a team? It's human connection, period. Knowing each other, increases our level of trust. And when we have that trust, then we can have more vulnerable communication with each other. We actually care about each other. So if we take our conversation from the broader communication of like communicating company-wide, and we take it down to more of the one-on-one communication, we realize that teams... There's so much one-on-one communication, right, between team members, between bosses and employees, and there's reviews, and there's praise, and there's constructive criticism, and there's all sorts of things wrapped up in formal communication and informal communication.
But a healthy team, knowing how to communicate with each other, and knowing how to communicate with each other well, is all built on that trust. It's built on caring for each other personally. And one of my favorite books is Radical Candor. And I just love her model of, if you really want to communicate well with each other one-on-one, you have to care personally and you have to challenge directly. And if you can get that formula right, you're going to have amazing traction with your team. And you're also going to have super healthy relationships.
Rob:
And that makes just about everything easier, doesn't it?
Traci:
It does. I mean, if you're going to spend this much time with each other, aah. How many times do we come home from work and it's just like you're just reliving a conversation. You're wishing you had said something differently or they said something and you realize, "Oh my gosh. I think that was actually passive aggressive stab at me." And you're reliving these conversations and what a robbing of our time, of our joy, of the so many things.
And if we can have healthy connection with each other and we can communicate openly, we can be vulnerable, we can feel safe. You know, where we can admit our mistakes. Where we can be curious and not. We would take ownership for our own choices and decisions and things we've said as opposed to blame shifting. What a better day we're going to have. Better home life we're going to have. A better sleep at night.
Rob:
I love sleep. Yeah.
Traci:
I love sleep too.
Rob:
Okay. We've talked a little bit about one of the biggest number one challenge you mentioned, which is not fully communicating. I'd love to hear your thoughts a little bit about the too much.
And you were saying this is more among peers. This is something that I've seen. I mean, I have worked several jobs before Sparkbox and I been part of these conversations and my personal opinion, this has changed a little bit with the ease of communication. With tools like Slack and some of these other things that are always on that get everybody instant access to any group they want. So I would love to hear... Or have you encountered this and have you come across any? Do you have anything good to say here?
Traci:
I've definitely come across it. And it comes across in so many different ways. Back before there was Slack and email and all these platforms that we could... Twitter and Facebook and all these platforms where people can just type whatever they want and say whatever they want. A lot of it was just what was happening around the water cooler, right? Or the conversations you were having at happy hour after work. Now, we see it coming out in so many different ways. And people becoming very comfortable saying things on Slack or misinterpreting things that are said on email or having face to face conversations where we're crossing boundary lines with each other. So, it does come back to emotional intelligence. I mean it is the key differentiator when it comes to that gap between good leadership and great leadership, is understanding your emotional expression skill.
Some people don't express enough. And like we were talking about before, then we start to imagine what's going on in their head, and that's not healthy. And some people just express too much. They just don't know. They cross the line sometimes of respect. Or they're not being professional. And it happens because we can sometimes get too comfortable with each other and we can start sharing too much or making comments about other people we shouldn't. We can go down a lot of different avenues.
And oftentimes when I'm coaching people that have trouble holding their tongue, I go back to sort of the model of like, we really need to have proper boundaries. It is part of intentionally communicating properly at work. And even in our own relationships, personal relationships, whether it's our marriages, our friendships, we all should respect certain boundaries.
And we don't want to be obnoxious with each other or too aggressive with each other or manipulative or insincere or overly gushy. We want to find that balance where we're authentic, but at the same time, we're respectful.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
And I think we should be that way. We should be those types of human beings in every relationship, but especially at work. We're getting paid to perform a job and we need to take that seriously. We need to represent our team well, our company well. And really respect the workplace. Respect that atmosphere.
Rob:
I completely agree with that. Yeah. As I go through and think about my day-to-day, and how I respond to things, I know it's so easy to put things in a writing medium on Slack or email or whatever that's curt. That's short, sweet, but sometimes doesn't communicate well or overly communicates things depending on how they're written. I think most people have a habit of reading intention into words when conversations are taking place over a digital medium.
And one of the things that I've been trying to be good at is, at any hint of that, where it's a one-on-one interaction or one on small group, to get the pause button and be like, "Hey, can we jump on a phone call or a video chat?" I'd love to see your face while we have this conversation. And that clears up so much.
Traci:
So much. I mean, it's so important to know when to stop typing and when to pick up the phone. And it is a lost art. And I can't tell you how many times I would go out at work and ask somebody to call a client and they would tell me, "I emailed them." When I follow back up. "Oh, I sent them an email." I'm like, "You know what, I asked you to call..."
It's a lost art but what we forget is, it is so efficient and so effective to communicate via phone or via Zoom where we can see each other's face or hear each other's voices and you can hear all of that intention and authenticity and sincerity, that is lost when we're just typing something.
Rob:
I hate when my cell phone rings. But I think that having the ability to pick up the phone and talk to people, clients, employees, other relationships is a superpower. If you can harness it. Like it's-
Traci:
It's amazing.
Rob:
It's like... I realized that you're asking for someone's attention, but you're also requiring it and getting it in real time.
Traci:
Right. It's human connection we go back to. That client is going to trust you infinitely more after that phone call than before. And so is that coworker. When you walk over to talk to them as opposed to Slacking them. It's more connection. It's getting to truly know each other and it increases trust.
To going back to over communicating, sometimes I see Slack communications or conversations and people will get on a roll. And they will say a lot. And they feel a lot of freedom, especially in remote environments. Right?
So, you're in your own little universe and you're typing away and saying things that maybe you shouldn't say or you think it's funny. And sometimes we forget... And I'm going to sound probably like an old fuddy-duddy when I say this but, sometimes I like to say it to just remind us to get our perspective rejiggered, is that, our jobs, we should always think of them as a gift. As it's a privilege. And when we don't feel like it's a privilege to work at Sparkbox anymore, we shouldn't work at Sparkbox anymore. Right?
If we really want to be working with people that really honor the job that they have… And when we feel that way, our communication changes. We think about what we type, about what we say because we're like, "Oh wait. Is that really as respectful as I should be?" Or, "Is that as professional as I should be?"
And I think that's really, can be lost sometimes. We can forget we're not in a college dorm or we can forget that we're not talking to our sister, our brother, or spouse. That we have to have boundaries that and offer perspective when we’re communicating.
Rob:
Oh yeah. I completely agree. So, I've been taking some notes and I think I can boil this down to a couple of the points we've made.
The first was, we need to over communicate things that are important to be heard. It will take up to seven times to hear them before they truly internalize them. Do a good job of making sure that we understand the context and we think before we speak and know the context which we're speaking. I think the third thing I heard is, just pick up the phone sometimes or do a zoom or whatever. Move it to the right medium.
And the thing that I think I heard you say over and over and over again today was, it's all about trust. And looking for ways to build that trust in relationships up, makes communication work. And if you're going to have difficult conversations or communicate hard things, that if you don't have that trust, then good luck.
Traci:
Yeah. And trust causes us to care for each other. And we have to say those hard things. When you don't say those hard things, you're making no progress at work. So care about each other, but challenge each other and be honest and truthful.
Rob:
That's great advice. Just so you know Traci, I trust and care about you.
Traci:
And I do you too.
Rob:
Yeah. All the time.
Traci:
All the time.
Rob:
So, I think that kind of wraps up. Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to add?
Traci:
The last thing I'll say is, it takes intention. So, even as you're listening to this, think about, are you communicating? How's it going? Have you thought about it? Have you asked somebody how you're communicating? Thought about it? Have you asked somebody how you're communicating?
Rob:
Ooh, communication feedback.
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
Sometimes very hard to hear.
Traci:
Hard to hear, but so good.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
So good.
Rob:
Well, thanks everybody. We appreciate it. Come back.
All right, Traci, be good.
Traci:
You too.
Rob:
All right.
Traci :
This podcast would not be possible without the amazing Communications Team at Sparkbox. If you'd like what you've heard, please subscribe and tell your friends to listen as well. The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. Thanks for listening.
