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15-1. Perception and Communication Problems

It’s estimated that managers spend over 80 percent of their day communicating with others. *  Indeed, much of the basic management process—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling—cannot be performed without effective communication. If this weren’t reason enough to study communication, consider that effective oral communication—achieved by listening, following instructions, conversing, and giving feedback—is the most important skill for college graduates who are entering the workforce. *  Communication is the process of transmitting information from one person or place to another. While some bosses sugarcoat bad news, smart managers understand that effective, straightforward communication between managers and employees is essential for success.

One study found that when employees were asked whether their supervisor gave recognition for good work, only 13 percent said their supervisor gave a pat on the back, and a mere 14 percent said their supervisor gave sincere and thorough praise. But when the supervisors of these employees were asked if they gave recognition for good work, 82 percent said they gave pats on the back, while 80 percent said that they gave sincere and thorough praise. *  Given that these managers and employees worked closely together, how could they have had such different perceptions of something as simple as praise?

Let’s learn more about perception and communication problems by examining 15-1a the basic perception process, 15-1b perception problems, 15-1c how we perceive others, and 15-1d how we perceive ourselves. We’ll also consider how all of these factors make it difficult for managers to communicate effectively.

15-1a. Basic Perception Process

As shown in Exhibit 15.1, perception is the process by which individuals attend to, organize, interpret, and retain information from their environments. And because communication is the process of transmitting information from one person or place to another, perception is obviously a key part of communication. Yet perception can also be a key obstacle to communication.

As people perform their jobs, they are exposed to a wide variety of informational stimuli such as emails, direct conversations with the boss or coworkers, rumors heard over lunch, stories about the company in the press, or a video broadcast of a speech from the CEO to all employees. Just being exposed to an informational stimulus, however, is no guarantee that an individual will pay attention or attend to that stimulus. People experience stimuli through their own perceptual filters—the personality-, psychology-, or experience-based differences that influence them to ignore or pay attention to particular stimuli. Because of filtering, people exposed to the same information will often disagree about what they saw or heard. As shown in Exhibit 15.1, perceptual filters affect each part of the perception process: attention,organization, interpretation, and retention.

Attention is the process of noticing, or becoming aware of, particular stimuli. Because of perceptual filters, we attend to some stimuli and not others. For instance, a study at the University of Illinois asked viewers to watch people in black shirts and white shirts toss a basketball back and forth and to count the number of times someone in a black shirt tossed the basketball. Because their perceptual filters had narrowed to track the activities of people in black shirts, half of the viewers did not notice when the experimenters had someone in a gorilla suit walk through the midst of the people tossing the basketball back and forth. *  Organization is the process of incorporating new information (from the stimuli that you notice) into your existing knowledge. Because of perceptual filters, we are more likely to incorporate new knowledge that is consistent with what we already know or believe. Interpretation is the process of attaching meaning to new knowledge. Because of perceptual filters, our preferences and beliefs strongly influence the meaning we attach to new information (for example, “This decision must mean that top management supports our project”). Finally, retention is the process of remembering interpreted information. Retention affects what we recall and commit to memory after we have perceived something. Of course, perceptual filters affect retention as much as they do organization and interpretation.

For instance, imagine that you miss the first 10 minutes of a TV show and turn on your TV to see two people talking to each other in a living room. As they talk, they walk around the room, picking up and putting down various items. Some items, such as a ring, watch, and credit card, appear to be valuable, while others appear to be drug-related, such as a water pipe for smoking marijuana. In fact, this situation was depicted on videotape in a well-known study that manipulated people’s perceptual filters. *  Before watching the video, one-third of the study participants were told that the people were there to rob the apartment. Another third were told that police were on their way to conduct a drug raid and that the people in the apartment were getting rid of incriminating evidence. The remaining third of the participants were told that the people were simply waiting for a friend.

After watching the video, participants were asked to list all of the objects from the video that they could remember. Not surprisingly, the different perceptual filters (theft, drug raid, and waiting for a friend) affected what the participants attended to, how they organized the information, how they interpreted it, and ultimately which objects they remembered. Participants who thought a theft was in progress were more likely to remember the valuable objects in the video. Those who thought a drug raid was imminent were more likely to remember the drug-related objects. There was no discernible pattern to the items remembered by those who thought that the people in the video were simply waiting for a friend.

In short, because of perception and perceptual filters, people are likely to pay attention to different things, organize and interpret what they pay attention to differently, and, finally, remember things differently. Consequently, even when people are exposed to the same communications (for example, organizational memos, discussions with managers or customers), they can end up with very different perceptions and understandings. This is why communication can be so difficult and frustrating for managers. Let’s review some of the communication problems created by perception and perceptual filters.

The Power of Perception

Perception is a powerful influence on human behavior. A group of researchers testing the relationship between the size of a wine glass and the amount of wine consumed discovered that people who are served wine in a large glass drink more wine overall in one sitting than do people served the same amount of wine in a smaller wine glass. Why does this happen? Even though they are being served the same amount, the people drinking from the larger glass perceive that there is less wine in the glass. To compensate, they order more glasses throughout the evening.

15-1b. Perception Problems

Perception creates communication problems for organizations because people exposed to the same communication and information can end up with completely different ideas and understandings. Two of the most common perception problems in organizations are selective perception and closure.

At work, we are constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli: phones ringing, people talking in the background, computers dinging as new email arrives, people calling our names, and so forth. As limited processors of information, we cannot possibly notice, receive, and interpret all of this information. As a result, we attend to and accept some stimuli but screen out and reject others. This isn’t a random process.

Selective perception is the tendency to notice and accept objects and information consistent with our values, beliefs, and expectations, while ignoring or screening out inconsistent information. For example, in a research study, pedestrians are stopped on a sidewalk by a man who asks for directions. Ten seconds into giving directions, two people carrying a door walk between the man who asked for directions, on the left, and the pedestrian, on the right. When the door goes by, the man who asked for directions quickly switches places with one of the young men carrying the door. The pedestrian, however, doesn’t see this switch because the door blocks the view. Like the invisible gorilla example cited earlier, 50 percent of the time people don’t even notice that they’re talking to a different man and go right back to giving directions. Selective perception, is one of the biggest contributors to misunderstandings and miscommunication, because it strongly influences what people see, hear, read, and understand at work. *

After we have initial information about a person, event, or process, closure is the tendency to fill in the gaps where information is missing, that is, to assume that what we don’t know is consistent with what we already do know. If employees are told that budgets must be cut by 10 percent, they may automatically assume that 10 percent of employees will lose their jobs, too, even if that isn’t the case. Not surprisingly, when closure occurs, people sometimes fill in the gaps with inaccurate information, which can create problems for organizations.

15-1c. Perceptions of Others

Attribution theory says that we all have a basic need to understand and explain the causes of other people’s behavior. * In other words, we need to know why people do what they do. According to attribution theory, we use two general reasons or attributions to explain people’s behavior: an internal attribution, in which behavior is thought to be voluntary or under the control of the individual, and an external attribution, in which behavior is thought to be involuntary and outside of the control of the individual.

If you’ve ever seen someone changing a flat tire on the side of the road and thought to yourself, “What rotten luck—somebody’s having a bad day,” you perceived the person through an external attribution known as the defensive bias. The defensive bias is the tendency for people to perceive themselves as personally and situationally similar to someone who is having difficulty or trouble. *  When we identify with the person in a situation, we tend to use external attributions (that is, features related to the situation) to explain the person’s behavior. For instance, because flat tires are common, it’s easy to perceive ourselves in that same situation and put the blame on external causes such as running over a nail.

Now, let’s assume a different situation, this time in the workplace:

 

A utility company worker puts a ladder on a utility pole and then climbs up to do his work. As he’s doing his work, he falls from the ladder and seriously injures himself. *  

Answer this question: Who or what caused the accident? If you thought, “It’s not the worker’s fault. Anybody could fall from a tall ladder,” then you interpreted the incident with a defensive bias in which you saw yourself as personally and situationally similar to someone who is having difficulty or trouble. In other words, you made an external attribution by attributing the accident to an external cause or some feature of the situation.

Most accident investigations, however, initially blame the worker (that is, an internal attribution) and not the situation (that is, an external attribution). Typically, 60–80 percent of workplace accidents each year are blamed on “operator error,” that is, on the employees themselves. In reality, more complete investigations usually show that workers are responsible for only 30–40 percent of all workplace accidents. *  Why are accident investigators so quick to blame workers? The reason is that they are committing the fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency to ignore external causes of behavior and to attribute other people’s actions to internal causes. *  In other words, when investigators examine the possible causes of an accident, they’re much more likely to assume that the accident is a function of the person and not the situation.

Which attribution—the defensive bias or the fundamental attribution error—are workers likely to make when something goes wrong? In general, as shown in Exhibit 15.2, employees and coworkers are more likely to perceive events and explain behavior from a defensive bias. Because they do the work themselves and see themselves as similar to others who make mistakes, have accidents, or are otherwise held responsible for things that go wrong at work, employees and coworkers are likely to attribute problems to external causes such as failed machinery, poor support, or inadequate training. By contrast, because they are typically observers (who don’t do the work themselves) and see themselves as situationally and personally different from workers, managers tend to commit the fundamental attribution error and blame mistakes, accidents, and other things that go wrong on workers (that is, an internal attribution).

Consequently, workers and managers in most workplaces can be expected to take opposite views when things go wrong. Therefore, the defensive bias, which is typically used by workers, and the fundamental attribution error, which is typically made by managers, together present a significant challenge to effective communication and understanding in organizations.

15-1d. Self-Perception

The self-serving bias is the tendency to overestimate our value by attributing successes to ourselves (internal causes) and attributing failures to others or the environment (external causes). *  The self-serving bias can make it especially difficult for managers to talk to employees about performance problems. In general, people have a need to maintain a positive self-image. This need is so strong that when people seek feedback at work, they typically want verification of their worth (rather than information about performance deficiencies) or assurance that mistakes or problems weren’t their fault. *  People can become defensive and emotional when managerial communication threatens their positive self-image. They quit listening, and communication becomes ineffective. In the second half of the chapter, which focuses on improving communication, we’ll explain ways in which managers can minimize this self-serving bias and improve effective one-on-one communication with employees.

15-2. Kinds of Communication

There are many kinds of communication—formal, informal, coaching/counseling, and nonverbal—but they all follow the same fundamental process.

Let’s learn more about the different kinds of communication by examining 15-2a the communication process, 15-2b formal communication channels, 15-2c informal communication channels, 15-2d coaching and counseling, or one-on-one communication, and 15-2e nonverbal communication.

15-2a. The Communication Process

At the beginning of this chapter, we defined communication as the process of transmitting information from one person or place to another. Exhibit 15.3 displays a model of the communication process and its major components: the sender (message to be conveyed, encoding the message, transmitting the message); the receiver (receiving message, decoding the message, and the message that was understood); and noise, which interferes with the communication process.

The communication process begins when a sender thinks of a message he or she wants to convey to another person. For example, you had a flu shot and a pneumonia shot, and yet you’ve had an unexplainable fever for nine days, so you visit the doctor. The doctor asks a series of questions regarding your appetite, fatigue, tenderness in your abdomen, andwhether your fever comes and goes during the day. The doctor, the sender, runs some tests and then has you, the receiver, come back the next day to give you a diagnosis and recommend a treatment.

The next step is to encode the message. Encoding means putting a message into a written, verbal, or symbolic form that can be recognized and understood by the receiver. In our example, this means the doctor has to take the technical language of medicine and lab test results and communicate it in a way that patients can understand. This is not easy to do. And the difficulty of doing this well is compounded by the average doctor’s visit lasting less than 15 minutes. And, while your visit might be 15 minutes, you’re not getting a full 15 minutes to talk to the doctor. Not surprisingly, 60 percent of patients feel as if their doctor is rushing through their exam. Despite this, 58 percent of surveyed patients say their doctors do a good job of explaining things to them. But, as we’ll see in a few steps, that doesn’t mean communication has been effective. *

The sender then transmits the message via communication channels. The traditional communication channel for doctors and patients is face-to-face discussion in the doctor’s office. Ironically, though, the introduction of electronic health records may be interfering with that. Dr. Rita Redberg, at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, says, “The recent introduction of electronic health records in the office, for example, requires many doctors to spend much of a patient exam looking at a computer screen instead of the patient in order to record information.” Studies show that one-third of the time, doctors forget to give patients critical information. Another critical study found that across 30 different medical conditions, patients only received all the information they needed from their doctors about 55 percent of the time. * Why? In an average 15-minute doctor’s visit, the doctor will spend just 1.3 minutes telling the patient about his or her condition, prognosis, and treatment. Furthermore, as we will see, that 1.3 minutes is filled with information that is too complex and technical for the typical patient to understand. *

With some communication channels such as the telephone and face-to-face communication, the sender receives immediate feedback, whereas with others such as email (or text messages and file attachments), voice mail, memos, and letters, the sender must wait for the receiver to respond. Unfortunately, because of technical difficulties (for example, fax down, dead battery in the cell phone, inability to read email attachments) or people-based transmission problems (for example, forgetting to pass on the message), messages aren’t always transmitted.

If the message is transmitted and received, however, the next step is for the receiver to decode it. Decoding is the process by which the receiver translates the verbal or symbolic form of the message into an understood message. Surveys indicate that many patients clearly do not understand what their doctors are telling them. Up to 85 percent of hospitalized patients don’t even know the name of the doctor in charge of their treatment. As many as 58 percent don’t know why they were admitted to the hospital. Likewise, in a typical 15-minute doctor’s appointment, half of patients will leave without understanding what their doctor has told to them to do to get better. *  Unfortunately, even when patients seem to understand what their doctors are telling them in their 15-minute visit, it turns out that they immediately forget 80 percent of that medical information, and then half of what they do remember is wrong! *

The last step of the communication process occurs when the receiver gives the sender feedback. Feedback to sender is a return message to the sender that indicates the receiver’s understanding of the message (of what the receiver was supposed to know, to do, or not to do). Feedback makes senders aware of possible miscommunications and enables them to continue communicating until the receiver understands the intended message. Because of the difficulties of communicating complex medical information in too little time, many doctors now employ the “teach-back” method at the end of a patient visit, where they ask patients to explain in their own words what they’ve heard the doctor say regarding their problem (diagnosis), whether they’ll get better (prognosis), and what the patient is supposed to do after they leave the doctor’s office (that is, treatment plan and managing medications). *  Even so, much progress needs to be made, as about half of patients are not even asked if they have questions. *

Unfortunately, feedback doesn’t always occur in the communication process. Complacency and overconfidence about the ease and simplicity of communication can lead senders and receivers to simply assume that they share a common understanding of the message and, consequently, to not use feedback to improve the effectiveness of their communication. This is a serious mistake, especially as messages and feedback are always transmitted with and against a background of noise. Part of the background noise in medicine is how well medical information is communicated between medical professionals. After all, medicine is a “team sport” involving various doctors, physician assistants, nurses, and other care professionals for each patient. Medical mistakes kill 500 people per day, and 80 percent of those deaths are caused by miscommunication that occurs when patients are transferred from one set of caregivers to another, for instance, the night-shift nurses not communicating key information to the day-shift nurses, or one doctor not being aware of the diagnosis and treatment plan of another doctor on a case. *

Noise is anything that interferes with the transmission of the intended message. Noise can occur in any of the following situations:

• The sender isn’t sure what message to communicate.

• The message is not clearly encoded.

• The wrong communication channel is chosen.

• The message is not received or decoded properly.

• The receiver doesn’t have the experience or time to understand the message.

Emotional outbursts are an often unrecognized type of noise. Whether yelling, crying, sulking, or table pounding, strong emotions interfere with the transmission of intended messages. The outburst itself, however, is a signal that what’s being discussed touches strongly held beliefs or values. The first step in addressing noise related to strong emotions is spotting early indicators, such as body language not matching words. Acknowledge the difficulty of the issue, and then ask them to share their views. Next, listen to the response, and ask follow-up questions. Finally, work toward resolution by helping them articulate their core issues. *  We’ll cover listening and asking questions in greater detail in section 15-2d on coaching and counseling.

Jargon, which is vocabulary particular to a profession or group, is another form of noise that interferes with communication in the workplace. Jargon is a common cause of misunderstandings between doctors and patients. Brian Jack, chief of family medicine at Boston Medical Center, says, “We throw papers and throw words at patients. It is crazy to think they would understand.” *  The result, says Dr. David Langer, chief of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, is that patients, “would go home and call back and say they didn’t understand, and then ask me the same questions…Doctors often do a terrible job at educating their patients.” *  To combat this problem, Dr. Langer and his colleagues have begun using digital videos to explain CT scans and MRIs, as well as to provide detailed post-visit medical instructions. While preparing for an upcoming surgery, Emily Monato watched the video of her brain MRI several times to better “grasp these big chunks of information.” *  She had her children, father, and friends watch it, too.

15-2b. Formal Communication Channels

An organization’s formal communication channel, is the system of official channels that carry organizationally approved messages and information. Organizational objectives, rules, policies, procedures, instructions, commands, and requests for information are all transmitted via the formal communication system or channel. There are three formal communication channels: downward communication, upward communication, and horizontal communication. *

Downward communication flows from higher to lower levels in an organization. Downward communication is used to issue orders down the organizational hierarchy, to give organizational members job-related information, to give managers and workers performance reviews from upper managers, and to clarify organizational objectives and goals. *  Michael Beer, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, says, “You can never overcommunicate. When you think you’ve communicated well, go out three or four more times and communicate again.” Beer’s consulting firm, TruePoint, studied 40 CEOs whose companies have been above-average performers for more than a decade. He found that those leaders spend an immense amount of time in downward communication. “They have a simple story, and that story gets out every place they go.

Upward communication flows from lower levels to higher levels in an organization. Upward communication is used to give higher-level managers feedback about operations, issues, and problems; to help higher-level managers assess organizational performance and effectiveness; to encourage lower-level managers and employees to participate in organizational decision making; and to give those at lower levels the chance to share their concerns with higher-level authorities. Salesforce. com, the largest customer relationship marketing platform in the world, is used by companies to find, manage, and close more sales leads and to better manage and monitor existing customer relationships. CEO and founder Marc Benioff and his senior leadership team encourage upward communication by regularly participating in the “Airing of Grievances” chat group that is open to everyone in the company. *  Salesforce’s Jody Kohner, vice president of employee marketing and engagement, says that Airing of Grievances is based on a communication philosophy of “‘bring it out into the open, let’s talk about it and solve it’—because that’s what the world’s most innovative companies do, they solve problems.” *

Horizontal communication flows among managers and workers who are at the same organizational level, such as when a day shift nurse comes in at 7:30 a.m. for a half-hour discussion with the midnight nurse supervisor who leaves at 8:00 a.m. Horizontal communication helps facilitate coordination and cooperation between different parts of a company and allows coworkers to share relevant information. It also helps people at the same level resolve conflicts and solve problems without involving high levels of management. Many hospitals now use bedside shift reports for horizontal communication during shift changes. Both nurses, one leaving and the other coming on, discuss the patient’s status at their bedside with family members present. Beverly Johnson, CEO of the Institute for Patient-and-Family-Centered Care, says bedside shift reports, “ensure that complete and accurate information is shared and there is mutual understanding of the care plan and other priorities.” *  Shift reports usually take three to seven minutes per patient and nurses typically hand off three to six patients per shift.

In general, what can managers do to improve formal communication? First, decrease reliance on downward communication. Second, increase chances for upward communication by increasing personal contact with lower-level managers and workers. Third, encourage much better use of horizontal communication.

15-2c. Informal Communication Channels

An organization’s informal communication channel, sometimes called the grapevine, is the transmission of messages from employee to employee outside of formal communication channels. The grapevine arises out of curiosity, that is, the need to know what is going on in an organization and how it might affect you or others. To satisfy this curiosity, employees need a consistent supply of relevant, accurate, in-depth information about what is going on in the company and why. Some companies using tracking technology to measure how well informal communication functions in their organizations and how it can be improved. As it prepared to move to new offices, BCG, a global consulting firm, had one in five employees wear badges that tracked where they went in the office and who they talked to (but not their conversations). BCG managing partner Ross Love, who headed the research, said the firm learned that employees were spending too much time with their bosses and subordinates, thus hurting cross-team communication. However, employees who spoke to a wider variety of people within the office spent five fewer hours in meetings each week because, he thinks, they were obtaining and sharing information much more effectively—just as informal grapevines should. *  As a result of what BCG learned, it created a town-square lounge in its new offices, offering free breakfast, lunch, and snacks to increase informal interactions and reduce formal meetings.

Grapevines arise out of informal communication networks such as the gossip or cluster chains shown in Exhibit 15.4. In a gossip chain, one highly connected individual shares information with many other managers and workers. By contrast, in a cluster chain, numerous people simply tell a few of their friends. The result in both cases is that information flows freely and quickly through the organization. Some believe that grapevines are a waste of employees’ time, that they promote gossip and rumors that fuel political speculation, and that they are sources of highly unreliable, inaccurate information. Yet studies clearly show that grapevines are highly accurate sources of information for a number of reasons. *  First, because grapevines typically carry “juicy” information that is interesting and timely, information spreads rapidly. During Allstate’s annual Leaders Forum, a gathering of 2,000 agents and employees, CEO Thomas Wilson announced plans for reducing the company’s sales force and changing sales commission rates. Later that evening, a group of employees were at the hotel bar, complaining about the changes and about Wilson, when the president of Allstate’s home and auto insurance division, was allegedly overheard using two expletives in reference to Wilson. By the next day, nearly all conference attendees had heard the critical remarks. The president of that division was abruptly let go just a few weeks later. *

Second, because information is typically spread by face-to-face conversation, receivers can send feedback to make sure they understand the message that is being communicated. This reduces misunderstandings and increases accuracy. Third, because most of the information in a company moves along the grapevine rather than through formal communication channels, people can usually verify the accuracy of information by checking it out with others.

What can managers do to manage organizational grapevines? The very worst thing they can do is withhold information or try to punish those who share information with others. The grapevine abhors a vacuum, so rumors and anxiety will flourish in the absence of information from company management. Why does this occur? According to workplace psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo, “The main focus of rumor is to figure out the truth. It’s the group trying to make sense of something that’s important to them.” *  A better strategy is to embrace the grapevine and keep employees informed about possible changes and strategies. Failure to do so will just make things worse. And, in addition to using the grapevine to communicate with others, managers should not overlook the grapevine as a tremendous source of valuable information and feedback. In fact, research shows that, contrary to popular belief, grapevines are fast, accurate, and focused on information more than gossip. *

15-2d. Coaching and Counseling: One-on-One Communication

When the Wyatt Company surveyed 531 U.S. companies undergoing major changes and restructuring, it asked the CEOs, “If you could go back and change one thing, what would it be?” The answer: “The way we communicated with our employees.” The CEOs said that instead of flashy videos, printed materials, or formal meetings, they would make greater use of one-on-one communication, especially with employees’ immediate supervisors instead of with higher-level executives whom employees didn’t know. *

Coaching and counseling are two kinds of one-on-one communication. Coaching is communicating with someone for the direct purpose of improving the person’s on-the-job performance or behavior. *  Managers tend to make several mistakes when coaching employees. First, they wait for a problem to arise before coaching. Why? Because similar to performance appraisals, most managers also dislike giving employees feedback. Peggy Klaus, an executive trainer, says that managers “worry that the person will go to HR and get into a big kerfuffle.” *  When she told an executive she was working with that he needed to give employees more feedback, he responded, “I’d rather have a colonoscopy.” *  Second, when mistakes are made, managers wait much too long before talking to the employee about the problem. The late management professor Ray Hilgert said, “A manager must respond as soon as possible after an incident of poor performance. Don’t bury your head.…When employees are told nothing, they assume everything is okay.” *  Jack Welch, who was CEO at GE for two decades, says, “I’ve spoken to more than 500,000 people around the world, and I always ask audiences, ‘How many of you know where you stand in your organization?’” He says, “Typically no more than 10 percent raise their hands. That’s criminal! As a manager, you owe candor to your people. They must not be guessing about what the organization thinks of them. My experience is that most employees appreciate this reality check, and today’s ‘Millenials’ practically demand it.” *  In short, says Welch, “You have no right to be a leader if someone who works for you doesn’t know where they stand.” *  So coach your employees about their job performance.

 

When one executive was told that he needed to give employees more feedback, he responded, “I’d rather have a colonoscopy.”

 

In contrast to coaching, counseling is communicating with someone about non-job-related issues such as stress, child care, health issues, retirement planning, or legal issues that may be affecting or interfering with the person’s performance. But counseling does not mean that managers should try to be clinicians, even though an estimated 20 percent of employees are dealing with personal problems at any one time. Dana Kiel, regional director in Account Management at Magellan Health, says, “We call it the quicksand. If you’re a good supervisor, you do care about your employees, but it’s not your job to be a therapist.” *  Instead, managers should discuss specific performance problems, listen if the employee chooses to share personal issues, and then recommend that the employee call the company’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP). EAPs are typically free when provided as part of a company’s benefit package. In emergencies or times of crisis, EAPs can offer immediate counseling and support; they can also provide referrals to organizations and professionals that can help employees and their family members address personal issues. On the first day of her new job, Wendy Wolfson was called to pick up her first grader from school. Worried she might have to quit unless she could find childcare, Wolfson called her employer’s EAP for help with this problem. Despite their proven effectiveness and a wide variety of assistance services (including mental health, substance abuse, financial counseling, and elder care services), only 4–6 percent of employees use EAPs. *  According to Wolfson, “The problem is, you’re pressed for time and you don’t know where to go. It was a resource and another set of options.” *

15-2e. Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication is any communication that doesn’t involve words. Nonverbal communication almost always accompanies verbal communication and may either support and reinforce the verbal message or contradict it. The importance of nonverbal communication is well established. Researchers have estimated that as much as 93 percent of any message is transmitted nonverbally, with 55 percent coming from body language and facial expressions, and 38 percent coming from the tone and pitch of the voice. *  Because many nonverbal cues are unintentional, receivers often consider nonverbal communication to be a more accurate representation of what senders are thinking and feeling than the words they use. If you have ever asked someone out on a date and been told “yes,” but realized that the real answer was “no,” then you understand the importance of paying attention to nonverbal communication.

Kinesics and paralanguage are two kinds of nonverbal communication. *  Kinesics (from the Greek word kinesis, meaning “movement”) are movements of the body and face. *  These movements include arm and hand gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, folding arms, crossing legs, and leaning toward or away from another person. For example, people tend to avoid eye contact when they are embarrassed or unsure of the message they are sending. Crossed arms or legs usually indicate defensiveness or that the person is not receptive to the message or the sender. Also, people tend to smile frequently when they are seeking someone’s approval.

It turns out that kinesics play an incredibly important role in communication. One of the most powerful ways is mirroring, in which people in conversations mimic or mirror physical gestures, facial expressions, or pitch and tone of voice. Brain scanning studies indicate that when mirroring occurs during conversations, peoples’ brains react in similar positive ways at the same time. Mirroring, while usually done unconsciously, can be used intentionally by managers as a positive nonverbal behavior. David Hoffied, author of The Science of Selling, says, “It’s not something you do to someone. It’s something you do with someone. The very process of mirroring will help you keep your focus where it should be—on the other person.” * .

Kinesics provide clues about people’s true feelings, over and above what they say (or don’t say). Unfortunately, not making or maintaining eye contact is an increasingly frequent and negative occurrence in today’s workplace. Consultant Suzanne Bates, author of Speak Like a CEO, says that some of her CEO clients check their phones so much during appointments that, “it’s the equivalent of not showing up for half of the meeting.” And that, she says, breeds resentment in others who think, “I’m just as busy as the CEO. I just have different things to juggle.” *  In fact, a survey of business professionals found that strong majorities think it is inappropriate to answer phone calls (86%) or write texts or emails (84%) in meetings or at business lunches (66%). The kinesics related to checking smartphones in these situations communicate a lack of respect, attention, listening, and self-control. *  TalentSmart’s Travis Bradberry says, “Take a page out of the Old West and put a basket by the conference room door with an image of a smartphone and the message, ‘Leave your guns at the door.’” *

What if Your Emotions Were an Open Book?

Over the course of his career, 83-year-old psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman built a catalog of more than 5,000 facial muscle movements that communicate one of six base emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, or surprise. What started out for Ekman as an anthropological study has recently been transformed by big data, as a host of software start-ups are building programs to uncover people’s hidden emotions. One software company, Emotient, has video recorded encounters with hundreds of thousands of people and extracted 90,000 data points from each frame. Rival company Affectiva has measured billions of emotional reactions from 2.4 million face videos taken in 80 countries. Enthusiastic organizations such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and others have used the software to gauge consumers’ emotional reactions to products and advertisements; law-enforcement agencies have used the software in criminal interrogations; and retailers have used it to determine how people are feeling as they exit their stores. But despite their foundation on big data, emotional software programs run the risk of misinterpreting emotions or incorrectly labeling people as liars. Critics are wary, however, because people are not always aware they are being recorded. Privacy advocate Ginger McCall says, “I can see few things more invasive than trying to record someone’s emotions in a database.”

Paralanguage includes the pitch, rate, tone, vol ume, and speaking pattern (use of silences, pauses, or hesitations) of one’s voice. When people are unsure of what to say, for example, they tend to decrease their communication effectiveness by speaking softly. When people are nervous, they tend to speak faster and louder. How much does paralanguage matter? A study in which 1,000 people listened to 120 different speeches found that the tone of the speaker’s voice accounted for 23 percent of the difference in listener’s evaluations of the speech, compared to speech content, which accounted for only 11 percent. *  So paralanguage was twice as important as what was actually said.

In short, because nonverbal communication is so informative, especially when it contradicts verbal communication, managers need to learn how to monitor and control their nonverbal behaviors.

15-3. Managing One-on-One Communication

When it comes to improving communication, managers face two primary tasks, managing one-on-one communication and managing organization-wide communication.

On average, first-line managers spend 57 percent of their time with people, middle managers spend 63 percent of their time directly with people, and top managers spend as much as 78 percent of their time dealing with people. *  These numbers make it clear that managers spend a great deal of time in one-on-one communication with others.

Let’s learn more about managing one-on-one communication by reading how to 15-3a choose the right communication medium, 15-3b be a good listener, and 15-3c give effective feedback.

15-3a. Choosing the Right Communication Medium

Sometimes messages are poorly communicated simply because they are delivered using the wrong communication medium, which is the method used to deliver a message. For example, the wrong communicationmedium is being used when an employee returns from lunch, picks up the note left on her office chair, and learns she has been fired. The wrong communication medium is also being used when an employee pops into your office every 10 minutes with a simple request. (An email would be better.)

There are two general kinds of communication media: oral and written communication. Oral communication includes face-to-face interactions and group meetings through telephone calls, videoconferencing, or any other means of sending and receiving spoken messages. Studies show that managers generally prefer oral communication over written because it provides the opportunity to ask questions about parts of the message that they don’t understand. Oral communication is also a rich communication medium because it allows managers to receive and assess the nonverbal communication that accompanies spoken messages (that is, body language, facial expressions, and the voice characteristics associated with paralanguage). Furthermore, you don’t need a PC and an Internet connection to conduct oral communication. Simply schedule an appointment, track someone down in the hall, or catch someone on the phone. A&E Network executive Mel Berning travels two weeks a month, and when he is at headquarters, he forgoes what he calls “antiseptic” formal meetings and instead prefers impromptu informal meetings in which he breezes into the offices of direct reports in the morning. “You have a conversation that is less hurried and less guarded,” he says. “Face-to-face encounters are so much more revealing than a text or an email. *  Amit Singh, president of Google for Work, agrees. He says that because “so much gets lost in translation in emails,” companies should make greater use of face-to-face discussions, where there is “a clash of ideas, but a respectful clash.” *

Former Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Fry worries that voice mail and email have made managers less willing to engage in meaningful, face-to-face oral communication than before. In fact, 67 percent of managers admit to using email as a substitute for face-to-face conversations. While there are advantages to email (for example, it creates a record of what’s been said), it’s often better to talk to people instead of just emailing them. Fry writes, “If you’re close enough that the person you’re emailing uses the plonk of your return key as a cue to look for the little Outlook envelope, [it’s] best [to] think carefully about whether you should be typing instead of talking.” *  But the oral medium should not be used for allcommunication. In general, when the message is simple, such as a quick request or a presentation of straightforward information, a memo or email is often the better communication medium.

Written communication includes letters, email, and memos. Although most managers still like and use oral communication, email in particular is changing how they communicate with workers, customers, and each other. Email is the dominant form of communication in organizations primarily because of its convenience and speed. The average adult spends more than an hour each day reading and sending emails. In fact, nearly 300 billion emails are sent around the world every year. *

Part of the reason for email’s dominance is that, as written communication, it is well suited for delivering straightforward messages and information. Furthermore, with email accessible at the office, at home, and on the road (by laptop computer, cell phone, or web-based email), managers can use email to stay in touch from anywhere at almost any time. And, because email and other written communications don’t have to be sent and received simultaneously, messages can be sent and stored for reading at any time. Consequently, managers can send and receive many more messages using email than by using oral communication, which requires people to get together in person or by phone or videoconference.

Email has its own drawbacks, however. One is that it lacks the formality of paper memos and letters. It is easy to fire off a rushed email that is not well written or fully thought through. The opportunity to lash out with an angry email reply is incredibly tempting. To avoid that temptation and the damage it does to your work relationships, Pamela Rutledge of the Media Psychology Research Center recommends asking yourself, “Do I want an outcome where someone throws a cup of coffee at me? Or do I want an outcome where we work toward a solution” *  Another drawback to email is that it lacks nonverbal cues, making emails very easy to misinterpret. A final drawback to email is the sheer volume that employees receive each day. At global IT-services company Atos, workers were spending 15 to 20 hours every week corresponding by email—and that just includes emails to and from other Atos employees.According to human resource manager Philippe Mareine, email “was becoming a burden to our employees rather than an enabler.” To curb the time spent on emails, management began urging employees to use the company’s internal social network, BlueKiwi. Since this move, employees’ average email load has dropped to just six messages per day, and the time sales consultants take to resolve queries collaboratively has dropped from two hours (over email) to 45 minutes (using BlueKiwi). Over the past five years, email volume has fallen 70 percent at Atos, while operating margins have increased 60 percent. *

Although written communication is well suited for delivering straightforward messages and information, it is not well suited to complex, ambiguous, or emotionally laden messages, which are better delivered through oral communication. At software company Autodesk, 62 percent of managers have at least one remote employee. Because of this, all employees are trained to makes sure that the medium fits the message. For sharing information and ideas, employees use email. For brainstorming or problem solving, they use video calls or video conferencing. For making difficult decisions or resolving conflicts, they meet face to face. *

15-3b. Listening

Are you a good listener? You probably think so. In fact, most people, including managers, are terrible listeners. A recent study from Stanford Graduate School of Business showed that listening was among the least mentioned strengths in CEO performance evaluations. *  You qualify as a poor listener if you frequently interrupt others, jump to conclusions about what people will say before they’ve said it, hurry the speaker to finish his or her point, are a passive listener (not actively working at your listening), or simply don’t pay attention to what people are saying. *  On this last point—attentiveness—college students were periodically asked to record their thoughts during a psychology course. On average, 20 percent of the students were paying attention (only 12% were actively working at being good listeners), 20 percent were thinking about sex, 20 percent were thinking about things they had done before, and the remaining 40 percent were thinking about other things unrelated to the class (for example, worries, religion, lunch, daydreaming). *

How important is it to be a good listener? In general, about 45 percent of the total time you spend communicating with others is spent listening. Furthermore, listening is important for managerial and business success, even for those at the top of an organization. T-Mobile CEO John Legere says that when he took the top job at the telecommunications company, he needed Wireless for Dummies. His response to his lack of familiarity with the industry was simple—listen. He listened to customer service calls, visited stores to listen to customers and employees, and even interacted with users over social media. Legere says, “My business philosophy is to listen to your employees, listen to your customers. Shut up and do what they tell you. And each of our uncarrier moves and the way I run my company is completely aligned with that.” *

Listening is a more important skill for managers than ever because Generation X and Millennial employees tend to expect a high level of interaction with their supervisors. They want feedback on their performance, but they also want to offer feedback and know that it is heard. In fact, managers with better listening skills are rated more highly by their employees and are much more likely to be promoted. *

So, what can you do to improve your listening ability? First, understand the difference between hearing and listening. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, hearing is the “act or process of perceiving sounds,” whereas listening is “making a conscious effort to hear.” In other words, we react to sounds, such as bottles breaking or music being played too loud, because hearing is an involuntary physiological process. By contrast, listening is a voluntary behavior. So, if you want to be a good listener, you have to choose to be a good listener. Typically, that means choosing to be an active, empathetic listener. *

Simon Mulcahy, chief marketing officer at Salesforce, is deliberate in meetings about listening, with “this sort of background music playing all the time: Don’t tell. Ask questions. Don’t tell. Ask questions.” *

Active listening means assuming half the responsibility for successful communication by actively giving the speaker nonjudgmental feedback that shows you’ve accurately heard what he or she said. Active listeners make it clear from their behavior that they are listening carefully to what the speaker has to say. Active listeners put the speaker at ease, maintain eye contact, and show the speaker that they are attentively listening by nodding and making short statements.

Several specific strategies can help you be a better active listener. First, engage in immediacy behaviors, such as putting your phone away, turning off the TV, leaning forward and making eye contact, and using short words such as “yes,” “uh-huh,” and “okay,” to encourage the speaker to continue and to demonstrate that you’re listening. *  In group settings, that means not following the “rule of three,” which is that in a group of five or six people, it’s acceptable to look at your phone as long as three people have their heads up and appear to be paying attention. *  The “rule of three” is not active listening. Second, clarify responses by asking the speaker to explain confusing or ambiguous statements. Third, when there are natural breaks in the speaker’s delivery, use this time to paraphrase or summarize what has been said. Paraphrasing is restating what has been said in your own words. Summarizing is reviewing the speaker’s main points or emotions. Paraphrasing and summarizing give the speaker the chance to correct the message if the active listener has attached the wrong meaning to it. Paraphrasing and summarizing also show the speaker that the active listener is interested in the speaker’s message.

Exhibit 15.5 reviews immediacy behaviors and lists specific statements that listeners can use to clarify responses, paraphrase, or summarize what has been said. Active listeners also avoid evaluating the message or being critical until the message is complete. They recognize that their only responsibility during the transmission of a message is to receive it accurately and derive the intended meaning from it. Evaluation and criticism can take place after the message is accurately received. Finally, active listeners recognize that a large portion of any message is transmitted nonverbally and thus pay very careful attention to nonverbal cues (that is, immediacy behaviors) transmitted by the speaker.

Empathetic listening means understanding the speaker’s perspective and personal frame of reference and giving feedback that conveys that understanding to the speaker. Empathetic listening goes beyond active listening because it depends on our ability to set aside our own attitudes or relationships to be able to see and understand things through someone else’s eyes. Empathetic listening is just as important as active listening, especially for managers, because it helps build rapport and trust with others. Unfortunately, an analysis of 14,000 college students across 72 studies found a 40 percent decrease in empathy over the last 30 years. *  Since most of that decline occurred between 2000 and today, it’s clear that companies need to focus on developing their managers’ ability to empathize.

Thankfully, one interesting study suggests that empathy and listening skills can quickly improve. Two groups of children were asked to accurately identify peoples’ emotions in pictures and videotapes. The first group attended a five-day device-free camp (no phones, tablets, or computers), while the second group did not. After the camp, the two groups were tested again. There was little difference in the second group’s scores, but the first group improved nearly 40 percent. Why? Students at camp weren’t watching TV or playing video games five hours a day. Aggie Chamlin who attends a no-device camp, said, “I think a cell phone’s a virtual wall that you put up for yourself.” *  Yalda Uhls, lead author of the study and senior researcher with the UCLA’s Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, commented, “You can’t learn nonverbal emotional cues from a screen in the way you can learn it from face-to-face communication.” *  MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, explained the results this way: “They talked to one another. In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” *

The key to being a more empathetic listener is to show your desire to understand and to reflect people’s feelings. You can show your desire to understand by listening, that is, asking people to talk about what’s most important to them and then by giving them sufficient time to talk before responding or interrupting.

Reflecting feelings is also an important part of empathetic listening because it demonstrates that you understand the speaker’s emotions. Unlike active listening, in which you restate or summarize the informational content of what has been said, the focus is on the affective part of the message. As an empathetic listener, you can use the following statements to reflect the speaker’s emotions:

• So, right now it sounds like you’re feeling.…

• You seem as if you’re.…

• Do you feel a bit…?

• I could be wrong, but I’m sensing that you’re feeling.…

In the end, says management consultant Terry Pearce, empathetic listening can be boiled down to these three steps. First, wait 10 seconds before you respond. It will seem an eternity, but waiting prevents you from interrupting others and rushing your response. Second, to be sure you understand what the speaker wants, ask questions to clarify the speaker’s intent. Third, only then should you respond first with feelings and then facts (notice that facts follow feelings). *

A word of caution, however: Not everyone appreciates having what they said repeated back to them. Manager Candy Friesen says that whenever she did that, “I seemed to engender animosity or hostility.…the person to whom you’re speaking may not appreciate having his thoughts paraphrased one little bit.” *  So, when applying these listening techniques, pay attention to the body language and tone of voice of the person you’re communicating with to make sure they appreciate your attempts to be a better listener.

15-3c. Giving Feedback

In Chapter 11, you learned that performance appraisal feedback (that is, judging) should be separated from developmental feedback (that is, coaching). *  We can now focus on the steps needed to communicate feedback one-on-one to employees.

To start, managers need to recognize that feedback can be constructive or destructive. Destructive feedback is disapproving without any intention of being helpful and almost always causes a negative or defensive reaction in the recipient. By contrast, constructive feedback is intended to be helpful, corrective, and/or encouraging. It is aimed at correcting performance deficiencies and motivating employees. But finding the fine line between the two can be difficult. Ranstad, a global HR services company, adopted a philosophy of radical candor out of concerns that managers and employees were not having honest, constructive discussions about performance. A recipient of radically candid feedback said it “cut me to the bone.” Wendy Finlason Seymour, a director of talent management, said the candid feedback is “not there to destroy,” but “sometimes the truth can hurt.” *

For feedback to be constructive rather than destructive, it must be immediate, focused on specific behaviors, and problem-oriented. Immediate feedback is much more effective than delayed feedback because manager and worker can recall the mistake or incident more accurately and discuss it in detail before it’s too late to have a meaningful conversation. Employees at PwC use an app called Snapshot to request short, immediate assessments from their managers on everything from overall business acumen to specific technical capabilities. The feedback is visible to the employee, career coach, direct supervisor, HR manager, and the partner in charge of the team, and analytics tools assess the quality of the feedback and how quickly the manager responded. PwC vice chairman Tim Ryan says that the goal is to develop employees in real time: “We analogize it to athletes. They get feedback every time they come off the court.” *

Specific feedback focuses on particular acts or incidents that are clearly under the control of the employee. For instance, instead of telling an employee that he or she is “always late for work,” it’s much more constructive to say, “In the last three weeks, you have been 30 minutes late on four occasions and more than an hour late on two others.” Furthermore, specific feedback isn’t very helpful unless employees have control over the problems that the feedback addresses. Giving negative feedback about behaviors beyond someone’s control is likely to be seen as unfair. Similarly, giving positive feedback about behaviors beyond someone’s control may be viewed as insincere.

Last, problem-oriented feedback focuses on the problems or incidents associated with the poor performance rather than on the worker or the worker’s personality. Giving feedback does not give managers the right to personally attack workers. Although managers may be frustrated by a worker’s poor performance, the point of problem-oriented feedback is to draw attention to the problem in a nonjudgmental way so that the employee has enough information to correct it. Executive coach Deborah Bright says, “As an example, consider someone who cares about being respected by peers but is habitually 10 minutes late to weekly staff meetings and often blames her tardiness on her busy schedule. A manager might simply reprimand her—either nicely (“Please make more of an effort to be on time”) or sharply (“Do we need to get you a new watch?”). But a more effective strategy is to say something like: “How do you think coming in late affects your reputation with your colleagues?” *

15-4. Managing Organization-Wide Communication

Although managing one-on-one communication is important, managers must also know how to communicate effectively with a larger number of people throughout an organization.

Learn more about organization-wide communication by reading the following sections about 15-4a improving transmission by getting the message out and 15-4b improving reception by finding ways to hear what others feel and think.

15-4a. Improving Transmission: Getting the Message Out

Several methods of electronic communication—email, collaborative discussion sites, streamed or video-shared speeches and conferences, and broadcast voice mail—now make it easier for managers to communicate with people throughout the organization and get the message out.

Although we normally think of email, the transmission of messages via computers, as a means of one-on-one communication, it also plays an important role in organization-wide communication. With the click of a button, managers can send an email to everyone in the company via distribution lists. John Rae-Grant, lead product manager for Gmail, says, “People have been forecasting the death of email for the last 25 years,” yet, “there’s no sign that email usage is abating. It’s certainly changing, but in the working world, email is still the baseline glue that pretty much carries everything.” *  But, as a communication tool, email is a huge burden for most managers and employees, with 40 percent of white-collar employees devoting a minimum of three hours per workday to email. Forty-three percent of employees have felt so controlled by their email that they’ve put themselves in “detox,” completely avoiding touching their email for three to four days. *  The most overwhelmed emailers declare email bankruptcy by deleting all their unanswered email. Via an email blast to all of their contacts, or using auto reply, they communicate that they’ve deleted all email and that if you urgently needed something from them, you should send your message again. With a now-empty inbox and the likelihood that most deleted emails won’t be resent to them, they can start over. *

Collaborative communication tools are another means of electronically promoting organization-wide communication. Discussion channels and chat rooms use web- or app-based communication tools to hold company-wide, department-based, topic-based, team, or private discussions. The Salesforce “airing of grievances” chat mentioned earlier is an example of a company-wide channel or chat room. Public questions posed to human resources (HR) about, say, medical insurance coverage, that HR answers publicly would be a department- or topic-based channel or chat room. Team room channels are often restricted to team members working together, while private discussions are typically invitation-only for teams or for one-to-one work sessions. Discussion channels and chat rooms allow the sharing of expertise, avoid duplicating solutions already discovered by others, and provide a historical database for people dealing with particular problems. They promote collaborative discussion via participant comments and through document sharing and editing (see Chapter 17, “Managing Information,” for further explanation).

Slack is a robust group communication platform (on computers, smartphones, and tablets) that includes automatic archiving, a powerful search engine, and more informal and accessible online collaboration. Slack’s “open channels” increase communication transparency by making messages, files, comments, images, and video visible to everyone else in the team (or company). And with everything searchable, anyone can quickly catch up to find out where projects or discussions stand. Technology guru Walt Mossberg says, “It’s sort of like a combination of Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, and Dropbox, but just for you and your co-workers. *  Companies have adopted Slack primarily because it increases communication effectiveness so much that email usage within teams or companies often drops by 70 or 80 percent. New York Times reporter Farhad Manjoo is based in California and has found that Slack helps him stay connected to “the mother ship in New York. Using Slack, I can peer into discussions that would never have been accessible to me. I can see how the producers and editors who are handling my column are discussing how to present it, and how the team overseeing the home page is thinking about my work.” *

The Right to Disconnect from Email?

France’s right to disconnect law requires companies with 50 or more employees to “switch off” after-hours email and communication. The goal is to protect employees from unpaid work that constantly intrudes on their home lives. France has long had a 35-hour work week, but in reality, most managers and a third of employees get around the law that by working at home on evenings or weekends. While noble in intent, can it work in the real world? Professor Anna Cox says, “Some people want to work for two hours every evening, but want to be able to switch off between 3 and 5 p.m. when they pick their kids up and are cooking dinner. Others are happy to use their daily commute to get ahead before they arrive in the office.” Under a similar law, German companies such as Volkswagen only allow emails to be received during work hours. Is this enforceable, or would companies and their employees “cheat?” Would this policy increase or decrease email stress in your life?

Source: A. Levitt, “France Is Forcing Its Employees to Power Down: Will It Work?” QuickBase, February 14, 2017, accessed May 2, 2017,  http://www.quickbase.com/blog/france-is-forcing-its-employees-to-power-down-will-it-work .

Livestreamed/videotaped speeches and meetings are a third electronic method of organization-wide communication. Streamed/videotaped speeches and meetings are simply speeches and meetings originally made to a small audience that are either simultaneously streamed to other locations in the company or recorded for subsequent distribution and viewing by a broader audience.

Voice messaging, or voice mail, is a telephone answering system that records audio messages. In one survey, 89 percent of respondents said that voice messaging is critical to business communication, 78 percent said that it improves productivity, and 58 percent said they would rather leave a message on a voice messaging system than with a receptionist. *  Nonetheless, most people are unfamiliar with the ability to broadcast voice mail by sending a recorded message to everyone in the company. Broadcast voice mail gives top managers a quick, convenient way to address their workforces via oral communication—but only if people actually listen to the message, and that turns out to be a challenge with today’s workers, who are much more likely to use their smartphones for social media rather than phone calls. Consequently, company leaders are increasingly using real-time messaging tools like Yammer, a Facebook-like social media platform for companies, or Skype for Business, to broadcast text or video-based messages to their workforces.When Poojan Kumar, CEO of data storage manufacturer PernixData, wanted to change how employees received internal communications, he blocked companywide emails and insisted that messages intended for all employees be posted to Yammer instead. To encourage use, Kumar began posting snapshots of the company’s equipment in action that he took during his travels. Human resources also put up a company directory with employees’ photos. Getting employees to embrace a new communication platform, Kumar says, “will only happen if there’s enough interesting content.” *

15-4b. Improving Reception: Hearing What Others Feel and Think

When people think of “organization-wide” communication, they think of the CEO and top managers getting their message out to people in the company. But organization-wide communication also means finding ways to hear what people throughout the organization are thinking and feeling. This is important because most employees and managers are reluctant to share their thoughts and feelings with top managers. Surveys indicate that only 29 percent of first-level managers feel that their companies encourage employees to express their opinions openly. Another study of 22 companies found that 70 percent of the people surveyed were afraid to speak up about problems they knew existed at work.

Withholding information about organizational problems or issues is called organizational silence. Organizational silence occurs when employees believe that telling management about problems won’t make a difference or that they’ll be punished or hurt in some way for sharing such information. *  A survey of executives found that 85 percent had at some point kept quiet when they saw a serious problem at work. *  Financial company Charles Schwab CEO Walt Bettinger explains that organizational silence isolates managers in two ways: “people telling you what they think you want to hear, and people being fearful to tell you things they believe you don’t want to hear.” *  Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder of Infosys, the India-based global information technology consulting firm, agrees, saying, “If you’re a leader, you can put yourself in a cocoon—a good-news cocoon,” he notes. “Everyone tells you, ‘It’s all right—there’s no problem.’ And the next day, everything’s wrong.” *

Company hotlines, survey feedback, frequent informal meetings, surprise visits, and blogs are additional ways of overcoming organizational silence. Company hotlines are phone numbers that anyone in the company can call anonymously to leave information for upper management. Company hotlines are incredibly useful, as 41 percent of the calls placed to them result in an investigation and some form of corrective action within the organization. Anonymity is critical, too, because as those investigations proceeded, 59 percent of the callers did not want their identities revealed. *

Survey feedback is information that is collected by survey from organization members and then compiled, disseminated, and used to develop action plans for improvement. Many organizations make use of survey feedback by surveying their managers and employees several times a year. Sunovian Pharmaceuticals, a small drug maker in Massachusetts, which had a divided office, with employees on the second floor and executives two floors up, discovered through its annual survey that employees felt walled off from their leaders. So, chief commercial officer Rick Russell, who managed 1,100 people, put a desk in a glass-walled office in the middle of the second floor, which employees quickly dubbed “the fish bowl,” where he worked every Friday without an assistant. Soon, the company’s chief medical officer joined him, and the following year, survey feedback showed that employee trust in senior leadership improved. Russell says, “You have to rally the troops. You can’t do it from a memo.” *

Take a Memo: The Rise in Anonymous Venting

A new app called Memo allows employees to vent about their employers by posting anonymous “memos” (vents). Users of the app can post new memos, comment on existing memos, and even upload photos and documents to support their memos. Employees at companies such as Delta Airline, Ernst & Young, and Hasbro are using Memo to vent about compensation, managerial inefficiency, and working from home. After a user is verified, Memo removes all identifiable data about the person’s activity, making that person’s posts completely anonymous. Memos (posts) are organized onto public message boards that can be seen by all users and private boards organized by company. Not all companies are thrilled at the availability of Memo. Visa, Boeing, and Hewlett-Packard have all circulated internal corporate memos (the traditional kind) discouraging employees from using the app and reminding them of the risk of proprietary information being released to the public.

Frequent informal meetings between top managers and lower-level employees are one of the best ways for top managers to hear what others think and feel. Many people assume that top managers are at the center of everything that goes on in organizations, but top managers commonly feel isolated from most of their lower-level managers and employees. * Consequently, more and more top managers are scheduling frequent informal meetings with people throughout their companies.

The World Bank, with 10,000 people in 120 offices worldwide, is a non-governmental organization that aims to end extreme poverty and promote “income growth for the bottom 40 percent of every country.” *  When James Wolfensohn became president of the World Bank, “he went on fact-finding trips to developing countries to understand the kinds of projects that the bank was doing. After several visits he realized that he was only being shown successful projects, smiling villagers, and grateful government officials.” He told consultant and author Ron Ashkenas that “he eventually learned to stray from his tour guides so that he could meet people who hadn’t been prepped for his visit, to see what was really happening. This dramatically changed his assessment of how much of the bank’s aid was getting through the local government, to the people who really needed it.” *

Have you ever been around when a supervisor learns that upper management is going to be paying a visit? First, there’s shock. Next, there’s anxiety. And then there’s panic, as everyone is told to drop what he or she is doing to polish, shine, and spruce up the workplace so that it looks perfect for the visit. Of course, when visits are conducted under these conditions, top managers don’t get a realistic look at what’s going on in the company. Consequently, one of the ways to get an accurate picture is to pay surprise visits to various parts of the organization. These visits should not just be surprise inspections but should also be used as opportunities to encourage meaningful upward communication from those who normally don’t get a chance to communicate with upper management.

Blogs are another way to hear what people are thinking and saying, both inside and outside the organization. A blog is a personal website that provides personal opinions or recommendations, news summaries, and reader comments. When the 2.0 version of popular time-tracking app Hours was released with new functionality, it was featured on the Apple App Store. Within days, the app had tens of thousands of new customers. However, Hours’ tech support team soon received hundreds of complaints about the app’s new team functions. Company founder Jeremy Olson used the corporate blog to candidly admit the problems and how the company was trying to solve them. He also announced that Hours 2.0 would be free until a fixed version was released, and that all who had purchased a yearly subscription would get a free second year. In response, customers rallied around the company, including Aaron Whitney, who commented on Olson’s post, “I’ve been one of the people struggling with issues since launch day…and, admittedly, after three weeks, was frustrated almost to the point of bailing out. This post changed my perspective. Anyone who wants to know how a company should properly handle a less than stellar customer experience should read your post. It’s perfect.” *

Monitoring social media, such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, written by people outside the company can be a good way to find out what others are saying or thinking about your organization or its products or actions. McDonald’s put together a social media plan called “Our Food. Your Questions.” to monitor and engage with both customers and critics. Laney Garcia, McDonald’s manager of brand reputation and public relations, said, “What we did was audit the conversations that were happening from a social perspective. We looked at conversations that were happening on Twitter, Facebook, and we really scrubbed the data to find out when consumers have questions about our brand.” *  Common questions included, “Is your meat 100 percent beef?” “Are your eggs real?” “Does your meat include pink slime?” McDonald’s prepared answers to questions already posted on social media and assembled a team of rapid responders to address new questions. The result, says Garcia, was a sizable increase in traffic, both to the company’s website and to the videos where questions were answered. And, she says, “For the first time, we’ve seen customers really responding in the sense that they’re defending us.” *

Finally, in addition to being a way to deliver organizational communication, so-called town hall meetings can be an effective way for companies to hear feedback from employees. In 2016, Dubai-based Emirates Airline carried 51.9 million passengers, and by 2020, it expects that number to rise to 70 million. To meet growing demand, Emirates Airline will hire 5,000 additional cabin staff, but in the meantime, the 20,000 current cabin crew employees are working more hours on shorter layovers. Crew members who had worked their way to first-class assignments, a prestigious posting, are having to return to economy class to cover staff shortages. Many staff members have had annual leave allocations deferred. To better understand crew member complaints, the airline held three town hall meetings—the first of which lasted four hours—during which staff aired grievances to senior management. Terry Daly, Emirates’ senior vice president of service delivery, announced the meetings in an email, writing that he was “aware that there are a number of subjects that are causing concern at the moment” and that the meetings would be “an opportunity to talk about these directly with me.” *