Essential to avoid miscommunication
Miscommunication is something that happens so often in our lives. Not only does it happen in our professional life, but also in our personal life. I just had a conversation with a friend about something that happend in our friend group which caused friction and imbalance purely because there was miscommunication of two parties.
The same happens in our companies and the same happens with our clients. Anywhere there is social interaction the danger of miscommunication occurs. In this blogpost I will tell you something you can build in when you’re talking to your clients, being in a meeting and when you need specific documents/ actions from your employees.
I think miscommunication is one of the hardest things to solve in communication because it stems from:
Not being able to reflect deeply enough on how person A thinks/feels about an event. What is their take on it and why do they think so?
Not being able to really express in words how person A thinks/ feels about a certain event.
Assuming that because you feel/think like this - other people will too. You don’t communicate certain things because you assume it is well known/ evident.
Not being able to express in a body language, voice tone kind of way, so that person B doesn’t feel intruded. For example: a certain event may have caused irritation with person A due to what he/she already experienced in his/her life. When being in heat of the moment you can express certain things, because of history, that you will regret afterwards.
The same thing goes for interpreting everything that person A says by person B. Everyone has a filter and even though it might look objective, it never is.
Not being fully there in the conversation or the brain might make weird connections by hearing certain words
The single biggest problem in communication is the idea that it has taken place.
- George Bernard Shaw
Even though it is really difficult to change how we interact with people I think we can pay attention to it more and reflect more on what we personally think/ feel about certain aspects.
Set and get expectations with our employees/ manager
I’ve been in the following situation quite often, and I am 100% sure you can relate:
My manager comes over to me and tells me I get a new project to work on. He explains the whole project (what the history is, where it’s located, what the budget is, what the client wants,..) and what I need to do.
I’m excited but I can’t start yet because I have other projects to work on first which also have a high priority. I don’t know until what degree I have to do the new project (how precise everything needs to be), when the deadline is, how it should be presented to the client because I assume that the manager would have told me.
Two days later the manager comes checking in with me to see how things are going. I tell him that I’m excited about the project, that I immediately started despite the other high priorities. I started off the new project and I wanted it to be perfect, so it took a lot of time to really think about the details and to make sure the client and my manager would be happy about the outcome.
Two days later, my manager comes in and asks me how the project is going. I’m telling him that there are some issues with some details but that I’m wrapping my head around it.
The manager isn't happy. He sees that the project isn’t finished, and he has a meeting with the client in a few hours. The level of detail is also way too deep and it was just the idea to get a quick overview of what the possibilities could be for the client.
A lot of things went wrong but it also could have been worse:
In this case, I assumed rightly that the deadline was really near and that it needed to be put in front of other necessities. I was able to assume that because of the way the manager explained me the project. I could have assumed wrongly though, because maybe I was anxious when receiving the information, or the manager could have been anxious over another project. Pure luck here.
He didn’t mention the level of details that needed work. Too many hours were put into something that could have taken a few hours, just to get an idea across.
I didn’t know how the manager expects the final presentation to look like: is there some kind of template you should hold on to?
Other “catastrophes”
So what could we have done to prevent (or reduce the amount of miscommunication) this from happening?
Make a list beforehand to make sure all the information comes across
How should the final result look like, make an example of what your expectations are. If you don’t have any expectations, be content with what your employee suggests. So really think about what you need, set expectations.
What level of detail does the task need to have? Give an example and point out what is important to show, what is not important to show to the client.
Give an indication of how many hours should go in it roughly, based on this you can also see how detailed the tasks needs to be.
Give a deadline, always.
When the employee has already a lot to do, look into their priority list and help them reprioritize. Most of the time managers have more information back log so that they intuitively know what needs to go first.
Same goes for the employee: ask for more information if you didn’t get answers to these (and more) questions. Get the expectations.
I promise that when people know exactly what is expected from them, that the work is easier and goes much quicker.
Set and get expectations with our clients
Same goes for communicating with our clients, and this is where my beautiful graph comes in.
When you set expectations for what emotional rollercoaster you client might go through, they will be more content at the end of the whole experience. You showed empathy and you already know in advance that there will be some inconveniences throughout the process which might affect the clients budget, patience, mood, ..
For example in the picture you see the process of a window company. Quotation, order, measurements and order confirmation often go pretty quickly. The waiting game starts when the windows are being fabricated. Due to current crisises the fabrication of windows have, together with the price, gone through the roof. When telling the client that this will occur, it won’t soothe the discomfort that brings but it does show empathy.
You can apply this to many things. Especially when people go through something for the first time, they often don’t know what to expect. If you assure them of what is expected and what is normal to feel during that process, there will be a significant positive difference in how that person will approach your business.
Conclusion
Miscommunication happens in a lot of different ways. It’s most important to be aware of how we communicate, what we didn’t communicate and how certain things might have come across. Don’t worry about returning questions as in ‘Try to explain me about X so I know we’re on the same page’.
Make things as visual as possible. A picture tells more than 1000 words and it’s the best way to communicate.