Know why talking, listening, reading, and writing are vital to managing effectively
Liberty University
AVIA 245 Aviation Leadership
Professor: Jim Molloy
2022
One-on-One Conversations
Increasingly, managers find that information is passed orally, often face-to-face in offices,
hallways, conference rooms, cafeterias, restrooms, athletic facilities, parking lots, and literally dozens of
other venues. An enormous amount of information is exchanged, validated, confirmed, and passed back
and forth under highly informal circumstances.
Telephone Conversations
Managers spend an astounding amount of time on the telephone these days. Curiously, the
amount of time per telephone call is decreasing, but the number of calls per day is increasing. With the
nearly universal availability of cellular and satellite telephone service, very few people are out of reach
of the office for very long. The decision to switch off a cellular telephone, in fact, is now considered a
decision in favor of work-life balance.
Video Teleconferencing
Bridging time zones as well as cultures, videoconferencing facilities make direct conversations
with employees, colleagues, customers, and business partners across the nation or around the world a
simple matter. Carrier Corporation, the air-conditioning manufacturer, is now typical of firms using
desktop videoconferencing to conduct everything from staff meetings to technical training. Engineers at
Carrier’s Farmington, Connecticut, headquarters can hook up with service managers in branch offices
thousands of miles away to explain new product developments, demonstrate repair techniques, and
update field staff on matters that would, just recently, have required extensive travel or expensive,
broadcast-quality television programming. Their exchanges are informal, conversational, and not much
different than they would be if the people were in the same room.
Presentations to Small Groups
Managers frequently find themselves making presentations, formal and informal, to groups of
three to eight people for many different reasons: they pass along information given to them by
executives, they review the status of projects in process, and they explain changes in everything from
working schedules to organizational goals. Such presentations are sometimes supported by overhead
transparencies or printed outlines, but they are oral in nature and retain much of the conversational
character of one-to-one conversations.
Public Speaking to Larger Audiences
Most managers are unable to escape the periodic requirement to speak to larger audiences of
several dozen or, perhaps, several hundred people. Such presentations are usually more formal in
structure and are often supported by PowerPoint or Prezi software that can deliver data from text files,
graphics, photos, and even motion clips from streaming video. Despite the more formal atmosphere and
sophisticated audio-visual support systems, such presentations still involve one manager talking to
others, framing, shaping, and passing information to an audience. A series of scientific studies, beginning
with Rankin, Nichols and Stevens, and Wolvin and Coakley, confirm: most managers spend the largest
portion of their day talking and listening. Werner’s thesis, in fact, found that North American adults
spend more than 78% of their communication time either talking or listening to others who are talking.
According to Werner and others who study the communication habits of postmodern business
organizations, managers are involved in more than just speeches and presentations from the dais or
teleconference podium. They spend their days in meetings, on the telephone, conducting interviews,
giving tours, supervising informal visits to their facilities, and at a wide variety of social events.
Each of these activities may look to some managers like an obligation imposed by the job. Shrewd
managers see them as opportunities to hear what others are thinking, to gather information informally
from the grapevine, to listen in on office gossip, to pass along viewpoints that haven’t yet made their
way to the more formal channels of communication, or to catch up with a colleague or friend in a more
relaxed setting. No matter what the intention of each manager who engages in these activities, the
information they produce and the insight that follows from them can be put to work the same day to
achieve organizational and personal objectives. “To understand why effective managers behave as they
do,” writes Kotter, “it is essential first to recognize two fundamental challenges and dilemmas found in
most of their jobs.” Managers must first figure out what to do, despite an enormous amount of
potentially relevant information (along with much that is not), and then they must get things done
“through a large and diverse group of people despite having little direct control over most of them.”
The Role of Writing
Writing plays an important role in the life of any organization. In some organizations, it becomes
more important than in others. At Procter & Gamble, for example, brand managers cannot raise a work-
related issue in a team meeting unless the ideas are first circulated in writing. For P&G managers, this
approach means explaining their ideas in explicit detail in a standard one-to-three-page memo,
complete with background, financial discussion, implementation details, and justification for the ideas
proposed.
Other organizations are more oral in their traditions—3M Canada is a “spoken” organization—but
the fact remains: the most important projects, decisions, and ideas end up in writing. Writing also
provides analysis, justification, documentation, and analytic discipline, particularly as managers
approach important decisions that will affect the profitability and strategic direction of the company.
Writing is a career sifter. If managers demonstrate their inability to put ideas on paper in a clear,
unambiguous fashion, they’re not likely to last. Stories of bad writers who’ve been shown the door early
in their careers are legion. Managers’ principal objective, at least during the first few years of their
career, is to keep their name out of such stories. Remember: those who are most likely to notice the
quality and skill in managers’ written documents are the very people most likely to matter to managers’
future.
Managers do most of their own writing and editing. The days when managers could lean back and
thoughtfully dictate a letter or memo to a skilled secretarial assistant are mostly gone. Some senior
executives know how efficient dictation can be, especially with a top-notch administrative assistant
taking shorthand, but how many managers have that advantage today? Very few, mostly because
buying a computer and printer is substantially cheaper than hiring another employee. Managers at all
levels of most organizations draft, review, edit, and dispatch their own correspondence, reports, and
proposals.
Documents take on lives of their own. Once it’s gone from the manager’s desk, it isn’t theirs
anymore. When they sign a letter and put it in the mail, it’s no longer their letter—it’s the property of
the person or organization it was sent to. As a result, the recipient is free to do as she sees fit with the
writing, including using it against the sender. If the ideas are ill-considered or not well expressed, others
in the organization who are not especially sympathetic to the manager’s views may head for the copy
machine with the manager’s work in hand. The advice for managers is simple: do not mail the first draft,
and do not ever sign your name to a document you are not proud of.
Communication Is Invention
Without question, communication is a process of invention. Managers literally create meaning
through communication. A company, for example, is not in default until a team of auditors sits down to
examine the books and review the matter. Only after extended discussion do the accountants conclude
that the company is, in fact, in default. It is their discussion that creates the outcome. Until that point,
default was simply one of many possibilities.
The fact is managers create meaning through communication. It is largely through discussion and
verbal exchange often heated and passionate that managers decide who they wish to be: market
leaders, takeover artists, innovators, or defenders of the economy. It is only through communication
that meaning is created for shareholders, employees, customers, and others. Those long, detailed, and
intense discussions determine how much the company will declare in dividends this year, whether the
company is willing to risk a strike or labor action, and how soon to roll out the new product line
customers are asking for. Additionally, it is important to note that managers usually figure things out by
talking about them as much as they talk about the things they have already figured out. Talk serves as a
wonderful palliative: justifying, analyzing, dissecting, reassuring, and analyzing the events that confront
managers each day.
Information Is Socially Constructed
If we are to understand just how important human discourse is in the life of a business, several
points seem especially important. Information is created, shared, and interpreted by people. Meaning is
a truly human phenomenon. An issue is only important if people think it is. Facts are facts only if we can
agree upon their definition. Perceptions and assumptions are as important as truth itself in a discussion
about what a manager should do next. Information never speaks for itself. It is not uncommon for a
manager to rise to address a group of her colleagues and say, “The numbers speak for themselves.”
Frankly, the numbers never speak for themselves. They almost always require some sort of
interpretation, some sort of explanation or context. Do not assume that others see the facts in the same
way managers do, and never assume that what is seen is the truth. Others may see the same set of facts
or evidence but may not reach the same conclusions. Few things in life are self-explanatory.
Context always drives meaning. The backdrop to a message is always of paramount importance to
the listener, viewer, or reader in reaching a reasonable, rational conclusion about what they see and
hear. What’s in the news these days as we take up this subject? What moment in history do we occupy?
What related or relevant information is under consideration as this new message arrives? We cannot
possibly derive meaning from one message without considering everything else that surrounds it.
A messenger always accompanies a message. It is difficult to separate a message from its
messenger. We often want to react more to the source of the information than we do to the
information itself. That’s natural and entirely normal. People speak for a reason, and we often judge
their reasons for speaking before analyzing what they have to say. Keep in mind that, in every
organization, message recipients will judge the value, power, purpose, intent, and outcomes of the
messages they receive by the source of those messages as much as by the content and intent of the
messages themselves. If the messages managers send are to have the impact hoped for, they must
come from a source the receiver knows, respects, and understands.
Managers’ Greatest Challenge
Every manager knows communication is vital, but every manager also seems to “know” that she is
great at it. Managers’ greatest challenge is to admit to flaws in their skill set and work tirelessly to
improve them. First, managers must admit to the flaws. Larkin and Larkin write, “Deep down, managers
believe they are communicating effectively. In ten years of management consulting, we have never had
a manager say to us that he or she was a poor communicator. They admit to the occasional screw-up,
but overall, everyone, without exception, believes he or she is basically a good communicator.”
Managers’ Task as Professionals
As a professional manager, the first task is to recognize and understand one’s strengths and
weaknesses as a communicator. Until these communication tasks at which one is most and least skilled
are identified, there will be little opportunity for improvement and advancement.
Foremost among managers’ goals should be to improve existing skills. Improve one’s ability to do
what is done best. Be alert to opportunities, however, to develop new skills. Managers should add to
their inventory of abilities to keep themselves employable and promotable. Two other suggestions come
to mind for improving managers’ professional standing. First, acquire a knowledge base that will work
for the years ahead. That means speaking with and listening to other professionals in their company,
industry, and community. They should be alert to trends that could affect their company’s products and
services, as well as their own future.
It also means reading. Managers should read at least one national newspaper each day, including
the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the Financial Times, as well as a local newspaper. Their
reading should include weekly news magazines, such as U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg’s
Business Week, and the Economist. Subscribe to monthly magazines such as Fast Company and Fortune.
And they should read at least one new hardcover title a month. A dozen books each year is the bare
minimum on which one should depend for new ideas, insights, and managerial guidance.
Managers’ final challenge is to develop the confidence needed to succeed as a manager,
particularly under conditions of uncertainty, change, and challenge.
